If you’re saying this, you got one thing very right …
Putting a product out there for anyone to buy can be scary.
So scary, that it’s a wonder you published it at all, right?
Agonizing over details, alignment, color schemes, spelling, everything. Editing for clarity. Re-editing. And editing again.
Finally you put the link up
And the next day … You find a better way to do something, or an insight that makes several pages or a whole module unnecessary.
Dang it, right? 🤣
What do you do next though? Do you take it down until you fix every little thing … again?
Or … do you leave it be, and update it later?
Of course it could be better.
It always could be better.
More complete, more clear, more engaging, more customized.
Thing is, though, even if you fix it, dress it up, gold-plate it, it will always be just more.
Never most.
Never completely done, absolutely complete, most engaging.
There will always be something.
My latest product could have been better.
My Obsidian Starter Kit for Content Creators shipped recently.
It’s a collection of templates, dashboards, and processes that I’m using to create a second brain in the Obsidian Markdown editor, so that I can create great content more prolifically.
Since I’m using this myself, it’s a constant work in progress. The Dashboard concept is helpful for me as it helps me to focus on a particular second-brain task (like linking up related notes, or grouping them in an index).
Still, using the dashboards by themselves is a bit clunky. Every time I open up a dashboard, I end up needing to adjust the width, put it alongside another window, or otherwise fiddle with it. And that adds friction to my workflow, which I’d rather not have.
Tonight, I found out about a core feature already in Obsidian that I had completely overlooked: Workspaces.
Simply put, a Workspace is an arrangement of views that can be saved for later. All I need to do now is set up my notes and other views once, and save the configuration. Now I can re-load things and position everything with a single command.
Much nicer! It will change substantial parts of the product by adding them in.
Here’s the key lesson
Seeing how a product could be better is natural, even inevitable.
I’m saying that about my current product.
But here’s the key:
I shipped.
I shipped an imperfect, likely incomplete product, because I saw it still had value anyway.
And if you’re saying the same thing about your product, you got that part right too.
The time to ship is probably earlier than you think.
There’s a strong argument for shipping early and often.
An initial product almost always is a draft.
If you have the means to put your product in front of some users for testing, then you may be able to bypass the first iteration of public changes and improvements.
If not, though, you’ll get feedback on what works and what doesn’t (mainly what doesn’t!) Or what’s missing and should be included.
Shipping earlier means that there’s the opportunity to improve earlier.
Incorporating the feedback makes the product better. The earlier that happens, the better.
An improved, more complete product is worth more.
Whereas the first product might be $9, the next one that works more smoothly and has more features could go for $19.
And the next one, for $29.
Soon it’s a $199 package.
And that, of course, means more money per sale.
That’s the direction we want to go!
My initial product is still up for sale.
If you’re a content creator looking to completely organize your work and milk every ounce of goodness you can with smart linking and processing …
… then my $9 Obsidian Starter Kit for Content Creators will do a couple of things for you, maybe not quite all of that 🤣
HOWEVER — you’ll get lifetime updates, so your $9 purchase could morph into a $49 value, or more, as I update it! So I invite you to check it out for your second-brain needs!
Photo by Shuken Nakamura on Unsplash