How can a newbie recover from - or avoid falling victim to - "Information Overload"?

Hey there, to be honest man I used to get it alot too. But what helped me was focusing on the CORE PRINCIPLES of the business model you are learning and nothing else until you have that down.

Once you have learned enough to take real ACTION then that is when you need to just stop learning and start DOING and do not stop until you have done all you can on your own with no help. Then go back and learn the next steps.

It also helps to find one mentor or guide that you resonate with best and is teaching what you want to learn and stick with them and tune everything else out.

Frank Kern stuck to Dan Kennedy's stuff and ONE business model and never paid attention to much else. I think it worked out well for him.

This is easy, just pick one method and stick with it... don't focus on all the other stuff because you will just get confused.

Example: John started with solo ads... he struggled with it at first, but after a month straight of focusing on solo ads and nothing else he mastered it and now he is getting good results. Now he is moving on to guest posting and article syndication since he has mastered solo ads

Once you have masterd one internet marketing method then you can move on.

To many people are jumping form idea to idea and they never get the chance to see their results because they don't stick with one thing.

Whatever seems to be the most interesting method that you would like to do, then pick it and don't stop until you have mastered it.

Dont be like me, when I first started I tried mastering 10 different methods and thats when the information overload kicks in... and thats why so many people fail and get discouraged.

Oh and yes it is always good to have a mentor... but they might not be that cheep

Come to the forum ONLY when you need to ask a concrete targeted question with something you are stuck with.

Other than that stop reading when you start doing things

It looks you've got the proverbial big picture. So now start with ONE single thing; when I started I knew I needed a squeeze/optin page.

That task can be divided in several smaller chunks:
- do I need graphics? If no, cool, go on. If yes (and not good with it) outsource it for $5.
- do I know HTML to make a simple html page? (I did know) > do it!
- do I have an autoresponder? If yes > make a form. If not > subscribe and make a form.
- put it all together
- test it
- ask a friend to test it... and more friends

Next, preparing the 'irresistible offer' I would use to "bribe" visitors to sign up to the list.

Meanwhile, when the optin page is done, you can go to the copywriter subforum here and ask for a review, opinion. They are very helpful - just get a thick skin, they are quite blunt.

If you get stuck with any of the steps in your development - come back and ask. Not general questions like the one above in your OP, but to the point. When you get the answer, close the forum window and go back to your 'drawing table'...

I hope you got the idea

2 Things you should learn before you do anything else.

Read on the right mindset you should have.

Truly understand what building an email list is.

These 2 things you must know, understand and use no matter what you do to make money online. If anyone tells you other wise, they them self's do not understand the fundamentals of making a long term income online.

Stick with ONE method and do your hardest to ignore everything else.

Samuel, I am also a newbie and I have suffered from information overload. It hit me pretty hard a few or so ago and I stopped IM really quickly after getting started. I am just getting back into it now.

So far I have managed to learn a lot and avoid the overload. Here is what I do:

1. I set goals each day. These goals are normally not "make X amount of money". What do I want to get done today, be it get x fixed on my site, write x number of articles (normally one), etc. I plan out more than just a day, what do I want to get done in a week, month, etc. This is just a soft plan for me to guide me in my information seeking. If I need to adjust, then I do so.

2. Figure out what I need to do to complete this goal. If today's goal is to finish making my blog secure, then I come here or google something like "ways to make my blog more secure". I get the information I need and then I put it to use right away. Repeat for each goal.

3. For subjects that take more time to learn than say blog security, I limit my active topics. If I pick more than one subject I try to pick subjects that help each other, for example SEO, Social Media and Blogging/Article writing. I then come on the forum and look up those topics and only those topics. I try to read forums or articles on those subjects for 30 min to an hour a day and then get my butt in motion practicing what I learned that day.

4. If I have short amounts of free time I will sometimes pop on the forum and browse. I call this my wandering time. I use this time to just look around and see if there are small tidbits of information that can help me and to see if there is any topics I can add value to. The point of this time is mostly to interact or just browse, no hard studying, no attempting to pick up a new focus. This is my downtime.

Figure out what you want to do, what you need to work on and focus on that. Trust me I know it is easy to lose focus but stay strong.

Dive in and start marketing. Try something that you learned - even if it's just 1 thing that you can remember. Try to make that method productive for you, and if it is... scale it up, and implement other online marketing strategies that you have learned.

I would say that what has worked for me is choosing some specific areas where I want to focus. Then commit to those areas for a good amount of time. I've seen a lot of people who do something for two or three weeks and give up because they're not wealthy from it yet. It takes time, patience, and commitment. If there's something specific where you feel you need a change, look for information on it.

One of the biggest challenges is to learn how to recognize when you are dealing with information designed to get you excited, (hyped up) once you begin to see that small difference, then you can focus in on what really matters.

There are a lot of different products in the marketplace, the one thing that most people fail to observe in learning about IM is that you just cannot take an idea and make money with it, at least not a long term income, you have to put some work into that idea.

One more thing, products are where most of the warriors here have made money, you can buy WSO products all day long and some of them are well worth the money, but if you never do anything but buy other peoples products, how will you become successful?

Information is good, but its really only as good as the person that packages it up, just like going to Walmart, if the person bagging up your groceries, puts the bread in first and the canned food in last, your going to end up with flat bread and not the kind you can make a sandwich out of either.

Good info in this thread. I would also add which helped me tremendously through training WSO and recovering from a "major life lesson" that taking 5 minutes as soon as you wake up and 5 minutes right before knocking out just concentrating on your breathing by listening to it and feeling the breath had a huge impact in reseting my brain. It cleared things up and helped organize priorities. Hope that helps!

If you're suffering from information overload, you've likely been exposed to a lot of different ideas, methods, concepts, tricks, traps, etc. So I believe it's safe to say that you've consumed enough information that you have some ideas about how money is made on the internet. I recommend you back off from that for a bit, and think about WHY you want to make money on the internet. What drives you, what are you passionate about, what's important to you, and what do you want your life to be about? Invest some quality time in thinking about those things and put your thoughts on paper. If you can put your life purpose into a single concise statement, that would be ideal. After you've done that, think about online business in terms of a means to accomplishing what's most important to you. Is there something in all that you've studied that pops into your head when you think in terms of supporting your passion? If so, that's what you should focus on.

Yeah, information overload is the real enemy!
On the other hand it is also a school for us!
In the end you need to focus on one quality IM course
and follow its guidelines!

Make a plan and strategy! Paper and pen works fine with me!
The next big thing is action towards your goals!
Plan everything from what you should do today, this week,
this month, year...

Information overload is THE #1 Killer of Productivity.

In the early going, it's tough as heck because "You don't know what you don't know." Everything seems of equal importance and you keep running into "Oh, I didn't think of that!"

Give yourself a time limit for research. Say "I'm going to spend 3 days on looking at things. And then I'm going to STOP. After that, I'll implement with what I've got." Look for strategy, not tactics, in the early going: what are the basics you need to know to make money? If something looks like a shiny conversion thing, ignore it for now.

You will never know everything. I've been in IM a year and a half and see new things all the time. After a bit of time in, you can apply your filters: Is this something that will specifically help me with achieving my goal? Otherwise, ignore it.

Every so often, spend a day looking at new things. You can learn and grow as you go--but if you never get started, you'll have nothing to build on. You cannot make everything perfect. You can simply learn something and get started. Get good at that thing. Then build.

Maybe it's not so much information overload as much as it is procrastination. The idea of marketing is to take what you've learned and put it into action. So many marketers want to learn "EVERYTHING" before they take action and therefore get stalled by the "paralysis of analysis" and do nothing. They only get more confused because they want to try everyone else's way because they "seem " to be successful. Slow down and build "YOUR" brand and make the information your own in your own unique way.

Secondly , the subscribers subscribe to your list because they believe that you have something that will help THEM. The moment you lose that focus, is the moment you've lost your business. It's always about solving their problem and by doing so they are willing to compensate you. Hope this helps.

Learn something, get in the game and put it into action. Make a few mistakes, learn from them, continue to study while remaining in the game. The key is to be doing while learning. Reading and gathering information is great but the only way to truly learn a thing is by doing it.

We just covered Overwhelm in our latest podcast. In a nutshell, make sure you are only learning the stuff you can use in the next month or two. For example, it's not much use reading or learning about setting up an affiliate program for your website if you don't have a product. It's so tempting to learn everything at once, but you'll get overwhelmed and give up - don't do it. Take it month by month and discipline yourself to get good at one or two things at a time. By the year end you'll be amazed at how much you've mastered!