”…in fact, I can probably copy/paste everything I just said, clean it up, and turn it into a post called, ‘Why I started this blog’”
- Me, chatting on Skype about the material in this post 5 weeks ago.
I love writing, and I’ve toyed with the idea of creating a blog for about three years now. I’ve owned multiple domains and every single time I wanted to get started I would sit there staring at a list of themes and never really get anywhere. Ultimately I told myself that I couldn’t start writing until I knew exactly what I wanted my focus to be.
Learning SEO and implementing it for the companies I worked with screwed me up further. I started thinking of my writing as something that needed to be carefully tailored to drive traffic, rather than an enjoyable experience that also had the potential to provide value to those who found it. Don’t get me wrong, SEO is important, but it’s not something that should prevent you from starting your site. This is especially true when you’re creating a site with zero financial motive.
Then two months ago I discovered Sebastian Marshall’s blog. Specifically I discovered this post. Two quotes from here really hit home:
“I believe in the Equal-Odds Rule, which states roughly that a creator can’t entirely control the quality of their output. In order to do high impact excellent work, you have to do a lot of work, which includes low impact not excellent work.“
Well that’s no good. If that was true then I really needed to get started if I ever wanted to write something meaningful. Then I read further…
“My audience is whoever likes it - the site is written for me. If someone doesn’t like it at this point in their life, they’re not my audience for now.”
So I read that post, bought a domain, installed a horrible theme(that has since been replaced), wrote the frst post as quickly as I could, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and hit Publish. When you stop focusing on perfection and instead focus on putting stuff out there you find you get over the ego issues remarkably quick. After the first post they’ve come easier and easier. Plus I’m already seeing tiny improvements in my writing.
Now I realize that all of my reasoning before about why I hadn’t started writing was just me being stupid, lazy, or giving into resistance. If you wait for the planets to align and everything to be perfect you’ll never get anything done. Being a perfectionist only becomes a good thing after you’ve shipped.
You can always change course down the line, and it’s easier to steer the boat once you leave the harbor. Stop waiting for the timing to be perfect, or researching every last detail of whatever your next project is and just launch it. Get started, you’ll probably learn everything faster making the mistakes yourself than you would reading about them anyway.
Hi Brett, I found your blog via Sebastian Marshall’s.
I think you’ve taken the right attitude toward blogging. It’s a learning process, you just have to do it and get better as you go along.
I’m in the process of starting a new blog, this time “for real.” I’m still working out a few kinks, with the intention of launching at the end of the month. For the time being, I’m writing a bunch of posts. I want to keep a steady posting schedule, so having a few posts sitting around will help if I have a few days (or a week) where I just don’t get around to writing.
I don’t really see blogging as a good way to make a living in and of itself, but I think having a solid presence on the web can open up a lot of opportunities. Your thoughts?
Hi Henry, Thanks for stopping by. Reading your comment made me realize that I didn’t mention a lot of things that I probably should have in this post. I have zero direct financial intention from this blog. While I know it’s more than possible to earn a living from a site like this if you know how to properly monetize it that isn’t my goal. This is really here to to help me create connections with people I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. In fact I’ll probably do a follow up on the motives that I should have included in this post later this weekend.
For financial reasons I’ve put up hundreds of websites and landing pages in the past five years, this is a much needed break from squeezing every last extra penny out of a site and thinking of each visitor as a piece of traffic to be monetized, exit popped over, and coerced/tricked into clicking a giant submit button. This is my attempt at something much more authentic.
If you need any help at all feel free to reach out.