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Information overload is a serious problem for most of the bloggers. We constantly consume information in order to keep up to date with our blogging topic. Frankly speaking, a lot of time spent consuming information is wasted time.

Therefore I decided to start a weekly post series on how to deal with information overload. I will offer you some tips on information overload every week.

How I deal with Information Overload?

Today you are free to subscribe unlimited number of RSS feeds, and spend most of your time reading the popular bloggers. However, I argue that this is a waste of your valuable time. You need to take baby steps everyday to achieve your goals.

Since the beginning I have a simple principle: Spend most of your time on creating blogging ideas, not for reading other’s blogger’s posts hours and hours.

This simple principle helped me improve my blogging significantly.This does not mean that I don’t read any RSS feed at all. I do. But I limited it to five:

• making money online (problogger, john chow, caroline middlebrook)
• copyblogger (Brain Clark)
• entrepreneurship (Yaro Starak)

I did not even read every blog post from these bloggers. I scan their headlines using my iGoogle, and only click on the ones I am interested.

iGoogle is one of the tools I regularly use to deal with information overload. If you haven’t read already, please read iGoogle - Your Blogging Command Center

RapidReader - Deal With Information Overload

Rapid Reader is a simple yet powerful tool which lets you read text on screen faster. It takes a few days to get used to it. But as you exercise, you can reach at a speed of 500 words per minute with Rapid Reader. In other words, you can read a 50 pages blogging report in 10-12 minutes. Imagine the amount of time you are saving here.

Most of the top bloggers are using programs like Rapid Reader to consume the information faster than majority of the bloggers.

You can read PDF, DOC, TXT files with RapidReader. It also lets you import the HTML files to read blog posts faster than ever.

The faster, the better! We are living in an era where the fast fish swallow big fish. I strongly suggest you to take advantage of Rapid Reader. The prices are affordable. Standard Windows version is only $29.95. Your saving is priceless.

By the way, how do you deal with information overload?

Popularity: 23% [?]

There are nearly infinite online discussions taking place in the Web. Do you have any idea how many of them are related to your blog’s topic? How can you identify the problems&questions which you already answered with your previous blog posts? Wouldn’t it be great replying those discussions by giving one of your previous post’s URL?

However, there are more than 100,000 boards and forums, how can you keep track of all?

Well, you are so lucky that some smart people thought about this before, and came up with a remarkable solution. Omgili monitors what people are saying online about anything. Just type the keyword (be as specific as possible to get better results), and click on search button. You are done! That’s it!

Omgili search engine scans millions of online discussions worldwide in over 100,000 boards and forums for you. It is able to differentiate between discussion entities, such as, title, topic, answer and post date. You can use Omgili to find consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions. Excellent tool, isn’t it?

You don’t believe me? Why don’t you check these sample searches I did for you?

(Remember to click on Advanced Search to get the exact search results you are looking for, you can set the time period, sort by date, even specify the words in title, topic, or reply)

Keyword : SEO - selected Yesterday as period - Omgili Search Results

Keyword : RSS - selected last week as period - Omgili Search Results

Keyword : Pagerank - selected last week as period - Omgili Search Results

If you check online discussions with Omgili  everyday, and then write your posts to answer some of the most popular (or sometimes the least popular, depends on your blogging niche!) discussions, you will add more value to your readers. Even you will gain more exposure, and eventually increase the number of your readers.

I hope you find Omgili very valuable to your daily blogging. Now, I would like to check whether you know alternative ways to monitor online discussions. Please share them with me and my fellow readers. Thanks in advance!

Popularity: 22% [?]

There is an increasing trend in selling online using ecommerce software. Total orders rose by 20% in 2006 when compared to 2005 according to MarketingSherpa’s Ecommerce Benchmark Guide 2007. Most of the online marketers expect even higher growth rates in the coming years. If you are planning to sell your products online, I can not think of a better period than this time. More people tend to buy online because they can easily compare the prices online in a few minutes. Also they have less time to spend in shopping malls, and online shopping is much more easier.

Which Ecommerce Software to Choose

Actually there are hundreds of online ecommerce software available in the market. But I suggest you to start with free 30 day trials of CoreCommerce or Volusion. And then decide which one to choose as a beginner. According to experienced online marketers CoreCommerce is better than Volusion. See the comparison here ecommerce software comparison

It is very clear to me why CoreCommerce is more popular when compared to Volution. CoreCommerce is a great solution for most of the online marketers because it allows them to start selling online without paying huge start up costs. They are able to use the ecommerce software, web hosting, an SSL, a free template and their features for $39.99 a month. See their ecommerce software pricing

Even though selling online is increasing significantly, this does not mean that you will succeed in selling online for the first time. Therefore it is not a good idea to spend hundreds of dollars only in the start up phase. I believe CoreCommerce will provide all the features required for beginners. You may then switch to their pro or platinum services.

Popularity: 25% [?]