Keith Goodrum

On a Saturday morning in late March last year Jeff Herring, Felicia Slattery & I were on Twitter talking about doing a 100 articles in 100 days marathon challenge. And mostly from prodding by Jeff (Go figure… Jeff Herring… The Article Marketing Dude… Felicia & I are his students… we’re talking about writing articles) any how we make the decision to light this candle.

The funny part is other people who were watching this back and forth between the three of us started joining in on our little challenge. Pretty quick is seemed like we had hundreds of people tweeting about the challenge. It was going viral right before our eyes.

I created the hash tag #HAHD. This would make it easier to follow everyone’s progress on Twitter during the challenge. Jeff tossed up a website. And Felicia came up with doing a 100 Article 100 Days launch teleseminar.

It didn’t take to long to get the attention of Chris Knight

I wonder why? There were only hundreds of people tweeting about submitting an article a day to Ezine Articles…

So, Chris decided to provide some swag to anyone who completed the challenge.

The challenge ended in July, and it was a huge success. It was also fun to complete the challenge.

The 2nd #HAHD challenge started in August and finished in November. I skipped this one, and now wish I hadn’t. I had stopped writing all together… big mistake.

The 3rd #HAHD Marathon Challenge is starting today

You can get all the details by clicking here.

It’s the perfect time to have this kind of challenge. What a better way to help you with your new year’s resolution of creating more content for your online efforts. You get to have a bunch of other people helping, encouraging and participating along with you on your own challenge.

I’ve always found it easier to complete goals or challenges with a group of like minded along on the same journey.

See you on the way to 100 articles!

Lately I’ve been getting more into affiliate marketing outside of the make money online arena. It’s fun, and I’m finding it much easier to rank for keywords in Google. There seems to be much less competition… at least is feels that way. Plus if you do find any competition, they are usually not as savvy as the selling internet marketing to internet marketers.

I’m doing the usual things… setting up blogs, forum marketing, article marketing, social bookmarking. Things like that. I’m also writing under a pen name to make it harder to find out what niches I’m playing in. It’s kinda cool to use a pen name because you can take on a different persona. A little bit of Kabuki theater never hurts!

Anyhow, today I started… or should I say I attempted to set up a Squidoo page. The plan was to set up several Squidoo pages, but it didn’t exactly work out that way. First mistake was to jump in without reviewing, or studying any how to information. After all how hard could this be… right? I mean you slap up a couple modules, a picture, YouTube video, toss in an affiliate link & away you go!

Well, Hang On There Sparky… Not So Fast!

Seems like when I open my dashboard my new lens still “Needs Some Love”. Which is Squidoo’s way of telling me my lens SUCKS! Yeah, sure the guys at Squidoo are too nice to use those exact words… but they won’t let my lens out of the “works in progress” column. In other words – I’m not allow to go out and play until I clean up, comb my hair & put on some nicer clothes.

I suppose I could rail against Squidoo, and say there’s nothing wrong with my lens. They are a bunch of nit-picky morons, and are in a conspiracy against left handed, middle-aged male, east coast, quilt knitters! (one of my ultra-mirco niches)

But seriously… I’m the one to blame here.

After all, I did jump into this thing without reading the rules. I had a little too much swagger in my step, and figured – Hey, Piece of CAKE! And guess what?

It didn’t take too long for me to get slapped down… Lesson learned. Time to eat a little humble pie, and head back to the drawing board. Going to have to learn the rules, and then set up a lens the right way.

Hey, I have and idea!

Wonder if there are any Squidoo lenses teaching you the right way to set up a Squdioo lens?

Hmmm…

http://www.squidoo.com/links_to_learn

http://www.squidoo.com/squid_etiquette

http://www.squidoo.com/first_lens

Well, it looks like I didn’t make to the 21 days of writing and posting something to my blog. I could come up with a good reason for not doing it, but in the end I didn’t get it done. I guess you could say I’ve had a set back.

So, my only solution to this is…

Start all over again. It’s a pretty simple solution. Just have to reset the calendar and get going. No big deal really… I want to re-establish the habit of blogging, and the only way to do this is by blogging.

Even though this is a minor setback it is a good example of how to overcome setbacks. Now, I’ll admit this is a minor setback, with an easy solution. But, it is a good opportunity to take a look at this process.

Remember One Thing About Setbacks…

They happen to everyone. Any goal worth reaching will have several obstacles and setbacks. No, reason to hide from this fact or pretend it didn’t happen. That would actually be counterproductive. You must acknowledge when they happen, and realize it is part of the process. Just remember this… you must learn from the experience and continue on.

A Big Key To This Is To Remain Optimistic

It’s important to keep you attitude up. Remaining optimistic will help you maintain your strength, keep your enthusiasm and make the transition smoother. Hey, you have a choice here; you can choose to get bummed out or remain optimistic. It doesn’t matter which one you choose… Positive or negative. You will still have to go through the experience. You might as well take the optimistic approach.

The Most Important Step Is To Evaluate, Make Adjustments And Take Action…

This step is critical to high achievement. It’s important to evaluate the situation, make some new plan if it is warranted and then get back into the game. Taking fast action is a key component of highly successful achievers.

The opposite is true of quitters. They have a habit of dwelling on their situation, getting down and assigning blame. They will spend so much time on the mistakes and many times will talk themselves out of taking action. They are more likely to throw their hands up in frustration and give up.

It’s OK to go though an evaluation process… but remember to get through this fast, lay out a new plan (if needed) and take action.

So, that’s what I’m going to do here. Get back on the blogging bike. How about you? Have you done this yourself? Let me know any of your success stories you’ve overcome with setbacks.