You have a to-do list a mile high and no idea how to organize it. Worse still, the requests keep coming in and you just can't seem to prioritize. Has this happened to you? Here's my advice for getting a handle on things.

The first thing you should do is ask your boss. Oh, wait. You're an entrepreneur. You don't have a boss. When you quit your day job you also quit the opportunity to pass off the responsibility of prioritizing. Don't panic, though.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed, my best friend reminds me to write out a to-do list to get everything out of my head. Once the stuff is on paper, it never seems as daunting. I can stop worrying and start working.

So the first thing I suggest is to make a list of everything you need to accomplish. At this point, order is not important. Just make sure you get it all down and we will work on order in a minute.

Now that you have it all written down, spend a minute or so considering the following elements:

Time

How long do you think this project will take? Is it a quick fifteen-minute fix or do you need to dedicate a full week to complete it? Projects have a way of mutating once you start working on them, so you don't have to hold yourself to this. Just try your best to come up with an idea of the amount of time you will need for the task.

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Lately I've seen a bunch of articles in which the author explains his favorite few tools and why. Rather than duplicate what has already been done well, I thought I'd cover an area that has been my biggest small business hassle as of late, getting a hold of finances and money.

It seems like banking and financial services are either designed for individuals or giant corporations, with very few options for those small business owners in between. Thankfully there are a few good new and old tools and tricks that work especially for the small business owner. I rely pretty heavily on these 10.

1. Mint.com

   Mint is an extremely new online program that quickly integrates your bank accounts and breaks them down in order to show you where you’re spending your money. I’ve only been using this for a couple of weeks and already found myself relying on it heavily to plan out my personal and business savings. As an aside, this service is ridiculously easy to setup, so even if you don’t have a lot of extra time, this one may be worthwhile.

2. The Perfect Calculators

   I’m in love with the CCH Calculators. They’re the small businessman’s version of an actuary. I use them to plan out the feasibility of taking on a new loan, the long-term expected ROI on a short term project, or just to play around with things like my retirement plan. Literally everyone I’ve shared my enthusiasm for these things hasn’t felt the same, so I don’t blame you if you disagree. But I would encourage you to go ahead and spend a few hours with these calculators just because putting hard and fast numbers to your ideas is a good way to weed out the really crummy ones.

3. Quickbooks OE

   This is the mother of all small business finance tools. The online edition is frequently updated and will pull in all of your various business accounts (with the notable exception of PayPal). I use this tool to constantly have great documentation of all our company’s activities and it saves me a lot in year end accounting fees, b/c everything is done for me.

4. Wells Fargo Payroll Services

   Not so much an online tool as an online service, Wells Fargo payroll service is the cheapest on the market (at least among the 5 different services I quoted). Having checks made out and sent through them is not only a lot more professional than signing your own checks, it also saves a ton in end of the year accounting fees because they keep track of all of your withholdings and prepare your quarterly tax returns for you.

5. Continental's Frequent Flyer Program

   I live and work out of Houston (which is Continental Airlines hub) so that program works really well for me, but you can basically find an airline rewards program for whatever company is biggest in your city. I only fly about twice a month, but since I always do it with the same airline that’s enough to get me free first class upgrades almost every time I fly, and I get to bring a free guest on some of my flights. I know that a airline rewards plan isn’t specifically a finance tool, but it is a means that I rely pretty heavily on to make my business’ travel dollars go a lot farther.

6. Basecamp

   I realize that its trite to rely on Basecamp, and I sort of hate the fact that I give them $20 something dollars a month to use their software, but using Basecamp has literally saved our business thousands by keeping us organized. I’d suggest that you setup a number of different projects and different to-do lists for each site rather than trying, as most users do, to utilize just a single to-do list.

7. Freshbooks

   Again, it isn’t original, but it is vital. I used to rely heavily on freshbooks for invoicing and time tracking. While I use the service less now that the company has grown, it remains one of the only tools designed for small business owners that actually works the way its supposed to.

8. Google Docs & Spreadsheets

   Why are you still using MS Word and Excel. If you’re a small business, especially an online business, there’s usually tons of collaboration taking place between people in different offices. I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets on a daily basis to collaborate when researching new domains or website niches, as well as to collectively draw up specs on a new project.

9. My Small Business AMEX Card

   I originally thought that only millionaires had AMEX platinum business cards. Not true. Basically if you have good credit you can get one no matter how small your company is. The benefits are a lot better than any other comparable card in terms of the travel rewards as well as the fact that you get into the executive lounges in all major airports for free (many have free liquor BTW). From a finance perspective, AMEX also prepares a complete end-of-year rundown for you for free which provides you with a good foundation if you plan on doing your own taxes.

10. Top Blogs

    There are a number of really bad small business finance blogs on the internet. Thankfully there are also a few really good ones.

Obviously there are different tools that work for different people and different companies. So take the 10 recommendations I've made with a grain of salt. They've worked for me, but all I can really say is that you should consider giving these a try because I can attest that they're proven techniques for getting a handle on your small business finances.

Domaining and SEO have been around forever. But for whatever reason, they seem not to have found each other until this year. Combining the two offers the possibility of a lot bigger profits, but it also is going to require all of us (SEOs and Domainers alike) to change the way we approach the game.

The relative advantages that SEOs and Domainers each bring to the table are pretty obvious. As Brian Provost has already noted:

"...SEO’s completely house Domainers in low-scale development. Domainers completely house SEO’s on scalability, the lower level of resources required to scale, and upside on liquidity events."

From an SEOs perspective, the key to running a successful SEO/Domaining combo company is to maintain the quality of your SEO work and combining it with the dramatic scale of domaining operations. Put simply, you gotta get big without getting crappy. As I see it, the best way to accomplish both is to automate your site development process to a degree that most SEOs haven't in the past.

That means we SEOs need to take some, though certainly not all, of the personalization out of your development. Here's an initial list of components to focus on automating:

1. Design:

A lot of SEOs want to build a custom site every single time they decide to develop. To get some scalability, however, we all need to take a page from the playbook of Domainers who have mastered the art of throwing the same annoying landing page on literally thousands of sites. I'm not saying that we need cookie cutter sites, but working from a single template (there are tons of quality freebie templates available) and simply tweaking it rather than starting anew, changes your dev schedule from 1 month to 1 day.

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