Many people get stuck with half-finished projects and ideas that they never work out whether they were good or not because they never tried to implement them. I’m guilty of this.
Yesterday, I wrote about fear-based procrastination. I left one exercise off because I thought it had particular relevance to niche site building, so I thought I’d write about it today.
At this point, you all know about the niche site challenge. At the height of that challenge, I knew I had to create a website basically every other week.
To get around this, I threw up a load of sites without thinking about it. Some succeeded, some didn’t, but one thing was sure: I built a ton of websites, wrote a ton of articles and just got on with it.
Since the end of the project though, I have slipped into old habits. This isn’t just about niche sites, but it’s spread over a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing:
- I’m taking more time to do things
- I’m second-guessing stuff without testing it
- More time spent “planning” and “getting it right in theory”
Those things are the province of procrastinators. They don’t build niche sites and they don’t make your business grow.
So let’s talk about another lesson learned after the fact with the niche site challenge and a really simple exercise.
Write A Terrible Short-Form Sales Letter That You KNOW You’ll Replace
Split-testing is the root of all that’s successful in the world.
If you haven’t tried something, you have no real and valuable data as to whether it’s going to work or not. It doesn’t matter how much you read, who you ask and which masters of whatever it is you’re studying have given their valuable thoughts.
Everything eventually requires direct and tangible experience.
That was all a bit theoretical, so let’s put it in simple terms: When you’re building a website, niche project or business, you have to start.
A crappy website that earns $2 a month is better than a hundred awesome articles sat on your hard drive that you’re “waiting to post.”
You won’t know how successful your site is going to be until you put it up. You might as well start now. (More on that later.)
When it comes to niche sites specifically, you also have two added bonuses to throw on the above:
- Nobody reads an unsuccessful niche site – there’s no fear of failure
- You can rewrite the thing anyway.
It’s crazy, but with a lot of my recent projects, I’ve been afraid to push the “publish” button because I’ve thought that the copy could be better. This second guessing of my ability is, among other things, a waste of time.
More importantly though, it’s more stupid when you consider that in the past I’ve written multiple variations of a sales letter in order to split-test them.
If you ever think your sales letters, product reviews or anything like that are important in and of themselves, then you’re on the wrong track. You shouldn’t coddle them and sculpt them like fine clay, you should make them compete with each other and mercilessly get rid of non-performers.
Final Thoughts
Today’s article is a short one. That’s because the premise is simple: If you’re stuck on a niche site project or particularly rubbish review, just write a “control” article that you will come back to and improve upon later.
Instead of psyching yourself up to write a 2,000 word masterpiece that covers every possible facet of a buyer’s psyche, just write a bare-boned 500 word summary and get it published. One of a few things will happen:
- It won’t be as bad as you think
- It will be, but you’ll be able to come back later having gotten the procrastination out of your system
- You’ll actually break the writer’s block you’re experiencing and end up writing the 2,000 anyway
- Your loved ones will look at your measly 500 word article and laugh at you (obviously won’t happen)
- This exercise will be ignored and it’ll stay an idea in your head, and when you’re old and frail, you’ll realise you really could have made a decent website about snorkelling gear or whatever. (Don’t do this.)
With that said, it’s time for me to get out of here and time for you to write some possibly-but-not-guaranteed terrible articles.
See you next week.