Pro-Tip: Have a Throwaway Project Before You Enter A Niche
As some of the regular readers (all six of you!) will know, I’ve been working on a project that’s been taking ages to finish. An interesting thing has happened over the past couple of days: As this project draws to a close (or, at least it won’t be a major time suck like it has been,) I’ve been getting itchy trigger-fingers when it comes to new projects.
If you train yourself to concentrate on one project at a time, then you’ll find that once you see the light at the end of that project-tunnel, your brain will start to deliver new ideas to keep you occupied.
In the past, I’ve jumped straight from one thing to another, grass-is-greener syndrome in full effect. You might find that you do this as well. On the one hand, it’s great; when you have a new subject, you delve in with masses of enthusiasm that you’re probably never going to have again. On the other hand, you’ll find that you have a lot of dead-end, nowhere projects that cost time and money that you never recuperate.
I’ve certainly got a lot of those.
What you really need is a compromise; a place where you can jump into a new area without feeling any pressure for it to be a long-term success, yet somewhere you’ll catalogue all the new things you’re learning so that when you start your project proper, you’ll be able to load up your thoughts and ideas from the past.
In short, you need a throwaway project.
What Is A Throwaway Project?
A throwaway project does what is says on the tin.
You create a project in your niche that is intended to be read or used by very few people. Maybe you write under a pen name, or you write completely anonymously. You don’t do it for attention. You don’t do it for money.
A throwaway project is designed so that you can learn to mimic the writing style of the niche, get together your thoughts and learn as you go along.
It might take the form of an alter-ego on a message board, an anonymous blog, a Twitter account or a quick e-book under a pseudonym. Whatever form it takes, you’re doing it because you want to get experience in a niche before jumping in head first, writing the worst book on a subject ever and then killing your career in less than two weeks. (Just kidding.)
Elsewhere I’ve written that you should write lots of material before you ever consider publishing. The throwaway project is designed so that your “pre-release” material is actually good enough to be seen by the world – even if it isn’t.
Sure, you could just write word documents and keep them saved on your PC somewhere, but then you’ll never know if your material is good enough for consumption.
How To Build A Throwaway Projects
There are millions of ways to go about this. I’ll talk about one way (which I’ve used in the past, and still use.)
I recommend starting two blogs: One blog is a designated “throwaway blog” and the other is a “market specific throwaway blog.”
I wrote not too long ago about blogging not really being that great of a business idea. When you have a blog, you write a lot of ideas for little reward. Essentially, every time you post you’re throwing a nugget of information out in the hopes that someone will land on your page and convert into a reader.
That’s a terrible business strategy, but it’s great for throwaway projects.
The throwaway blog is just one where you write a blog about any topic that comes to mind. I have a throwaway blog where I write about various subjects. It’s a private blog, and I doubt I’ll let anyone read it. But it’s a great point of entry for any niche because I write it as though it’s an actual blog post. If I can’t write a single 500 word blog post, then I don’t have it in me to create a niche site on the subject. You get the picture.
The second blog is a niche blog. This is the rehearsal run. Here you can release your Inner Thespian as well; create a different character. Go all in with the pen name, and see what you can add to your writing style. You might want to join a forum under this new identity, and build out your niche site (or other project – I keep saying “niche site” because that’s what my next project will be. This works equally well with a book or authority site or whatever.) Join a foru, get people to read and critique, and see how you can improve.
Then when you’re ready; Pull the plug.
Make your site disappear, but retain all the information, articles and the like.
You’re then ready to build out your real project.
Why Have a Throwaway Project?
If you’re still reading this, you might wonder, “This sounds like a lot of effort. Why would I do this?”
Here’s a quick bullet point list of reasons why you should do this:
- You get to start over without making the mistakes from the first time around.
- You’ll have an idea about how much you actually know about the topic, and whether you can keep up writing about it.
- You’ll be able to add all the bells and whistles that you wouldn’t be able to with a secret project. (Like your name, face or what-have-you)
- There’s no telling whether a project is going to be worth it or not. Best to find out it’s worth it before you write an 80k novel or spend three months building a site for it.
- It keeps things fresh and entertaining, and gives you a “productive procrastination” project for when you’re unmotivated.
There’s another reason as well, but I’ll save that for the final thoughts section.
Final Thoughts On Throwaway Projects
If you tend towards laziness, then throwaway projects are great. It’s taken me ages to build up the habit to work hard and smart for extended periods. The last thing I want to do is finish working on a project, have nothing to do for a week or two and then get bored, fall into lazy habits and then have to retrain myself to work hard all over again.
Instead, I can fire up my throwaway blog, write about a few things I’m interested in, and see where that takes me. Then, once the old project is completed, I have a handful of great ideas to start working on, as well as a couple from the last cycle of doing this that I’m ready to build into a full-blown project.
As a final, final reason, let’s just be honest: having a secret identity is just awesome, isn’t it? Having different pen names that only you know the identity of is one of the coolest things you can achieve short of being a superhero or something.