Options are great, aren't they? I mean, you go into a grocery store and you have 10 choices of salsa. That's awesome!

Except...

If you're like me, you sit there for 20 minutes reading labels, figuring out which one has the most calories, which one has more ounces, which one is priced the best...

Options can be so overwhelming, right?

Don't you feel the same about affiliate marketing? I mean, every time I turn around, there's some new tool or product or strategy. 

You can do PPC or article marketing, or total bum marketing. You can use Squidoo, Hubpages, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Ezines, GoArticles or millions of other article directories and web 2.0 sites. 

Then there's backlinking, link exchanges, free traffic system, linkvana. 

And don't forget the keyword tools. Google's KW tool, SEO Book, Market Samurai, Micro Niche Finder, Word Tracker. 

And let's not get started with all the other things out there that can make your life "easier". I mean, I've probably read about 1000 different strategies. And I can't remember a darn one except for One Week Marketing (and I still need to reread that one sometimes to remember)!

Every time I think I have this stuff down, 10 new things pop up! A lot of days I feel like I've started over and became a complete newbie again. It's like that movie Groundhog Day - I keep living Day 1 over and over and over...

It can be really overwhelming to have so many choices and so much information available. So what do we do about it?

#1. Appreciate it. I actually think all of this information is a GREAT thing. I mean, I have learned more in the 10 months that I've been doing this than I have at any 4 years at a normal job. I love it!

And don't you feel so smart when you tell your friends and family what you're up to? Throw into your conversation about how you had to FTP a new theme to your web host for your wordpress blog, and they will look at you like you are Michael Jordan. LOL.

#2. Test stuff out. Take all of this great information, and USE it! Sometimes we get so caught up (and I'm DEFINITELY including myself in this!) in all of this information and different ways of doing things that we sort of stand still and do nothing. It's that overwhelment feeling again.

Find a way to push through that and just try some stuff out. Get excited about it. Make it fun. Make your own path. I am learning to do this too.

#3. Focus. Once you figure out a task that you need to do, DO IT. (Talking to myself again here! LOL) Do it until it's done. And do it quickly. Forget about anything else that needs to be done. And forget about it being perfect. There's no such thing, it doesn't matter. It's the Internet for pete's sake. Whatever you put out there will probably be 20x better than most of the stuff out there! Haha. 

In Dr. Oz's book "You on a Diet", one of the things he says that's really important is to eat the same things every day for breakfast and lunch, and give yourself limited options at dinner. Because when you give yourself too many food options, you end up getting confused about the right things to eat and you sabotage your efforts.

So, don't sabotage your affiliate marketing efforts either. Once you find a good strategy, stick with it!