I'm paralyzed and I can't start. Help.
Hey,
Yigit here. I'm a copywriter and growth marketer. I've been thinking of building a site for three months now. The goal is to have a side income and eventually make it my main generator.
I want to write about interesting marketing cases, content marketing, copywriting, behavioral psychology and SEO. There are lots of services to sell in those topics such as:
- Content Strategy
- Conversion copywriting
- Copywriting deep dive
- Email copywriting
- SEO copywriting
- Copywriting course
- Content marketing course
- and the list goes on
I know picking a niche is extremely important and being an all-around solution is confusing for customers.
I'm not asking you to choose it for me. I know it's quite personal.
But too many of you guys have somehow started. And maybe passed from the same state and beat it.
How did you beat it?
Don't worry about niching immediately! You have a lot of ideas, interests, and knowledge. My suggestion is to just start.
I struggle with wanting my website and blog posts to be perfect before telling anyone about them. But the truth is, probably close to zero people will read the first article you write. Don't just pick a niche, explore the field and choose the niche that is most rewarding.
Say you chose to be all about Content Strategy today and just ignored the others. How would ever find out what opportunities lie in those other categories? The easiest way to learn what opportunities there are and figure out what clicks with audiences is to write about it and see the analytics data. So just write about everything and see what's clicking and what's not. You can always focus on a niche later.
The best way to get started is to just open a text editor and start writing. Make it a habit. Write a lot. Remove the barriers to building a site by using some type of hosted blog like Wordpress or the million others. That way you can focus on just writing great content.
Don't worry about being perfect. Just start :)
I strongly endorse this.
It seems tautological ("to start you need to start?") but it honestly is just that. I'll attempt to dig into why this is very good advice.
To build/write/produce, you need feedback loops. Do, get feedback, adjust, do again...
The trick to being successful doesn't lie in any single "do" step. You will never have an iteration where you "just nail it", and produce something that is done, and final. Instead, the secret sauce is taking the process holistically. Did you do it well? Do you get feedback? What is the quality of the feedback? Do you listen to feedback and adapt, or stubbornly repeat your mistakes?
So if you look at it from this viewpoint, your bottleneck is "do you get feedback?"
You don't get any feedback, cause you're not doing anything that might generate it. So start not by "building a huge project to generate side income", but start with a "light the spark" action item (small scope, clearly defined steps, and an objective completion state. All of these should help combat that friction):
(depending on how what you've done, maybe you already have a placeholder page. In that case, write a "Hello World" post. Alternatively, maybe you don't have a domain. In that case, make the goal to buy a domain, etc. Keep these small)
Let these steps compound, like an avalanche. This is why it doesn't matter how you start with. You put out one minuscule insignificant thing, get back 2+ pieces of ideas/feedback. You adapt, put it out there again, get back 4+ pieces of feedback.
Pretty soon you'll be burning the midnight oil. Good luck!
Thanks for breaking my comment down so nicely! I agree with everything you added and elaborated on.
There are two parts to get feedback. Do a thing and tell people about it. Indiehackers is a great place to tell people about what you're doing. https://pioneer.app is also a great place to get feedback.
I didn't know about pioneer.app, that looks very cool. Thanks for mentioning.
I've been thinking about it and here I wrote it.
Just like you said, I'm getting feedback about my paralysis and how to start. I already started practicing, thanks for sharing your experiences @jki.
I'm going to buy the domain before tomorrow.
Sweet, congrats on having started already ;)
Thanks a lot. You know I'm reading, reading, thinking and over and over.
I realized I'm overdoing everything and your comment is a good signal that telling me to start. Actually one other thing holding me back is the domain name.
It's important to use the keywords in the domain. In that case, it's copy, SEO or content. But maybe I can use the word "marketing" and stop paralyzing myself.
Right on!
You don't even have to worry about the domain too much. You can always rebrand, change the name, etc.
Best of luck!
You can start with publishing what you like to write about marketing is a great niche overall and lot of money to be made there even if it's a small piece of the pie. When you build your initial audience let's say 1000 you can ask them what specific topics they want to hear from you and focus on that
Yes, you're right! One step at a time. Thanks.
I am not a copywriter myself, but I think a methodical approach can get you started:
Hope it helped. Go and get started and let us know about your first post and niche you had chosen.
Thank you cip, that's a good idea
I'll do it today and probably start my blog today or tomorrow. And I'll definitely let you know after several posts.
Being ignorant of all the ways my idea goes wrong is great power, especially if you start in an industry where you have no previous knowledge. I started two different fintech companies after not really understanding what exactly happened during the 2008 great financial crises. One way was to get to know the industry better is to try to fix part of it.
But what exactly hold you back to start? Fear of failure?
Thank you for your comment!.
Starting wrong. Not knowing where I'm heading.
Name, tagline or structure. Positioning is connected with the idea and I feel like I don't have one but multiple.
That feeling is natural. Uncertainty is high in these situations. But the best strategy for early resolution of uncertainty is just to start somewhere and do not care too much where you are heading in the first few years. You should fight your "analysis paralysis" regularly and fearlessly ;)
External pressure can help, e.g. quitting your job and having a declining bank account, having a co-founder or partner of some sort that you feel committed to, having an investor you feel indebted to, or having an audience you'd be embarrassed to slack off in front of. It's tough for 100% your motivation to come from within.
It seems like an indie hackers originals idea to me :) Thanks a lot.
Quitting sounds like a hardcore plan for now. But once I start to see some life in my product, then I think I can do that.