The Perfect Website

byprimevaldad

230 followers

Updated 10 years ago

Why am I such a perfectionist?!?

Honestly, it's a burden. A perfectionist, according to Google:

pərˈfekSH(ə)nəst/

This is trouble (while building niche websites, for example) -

Have you fallen victim to the fate of a perfectionist content creator? I have! Here, I'll highlight some of my experiences building not building websites with perfectionism as I've tried to market my content and share my creations.

This post is also a mechanism by which I hope to begin to overcome these silly set backs. I'm putting this in writing as a little kick in the butt to steer clear of allowing perfectionism to halt my progress. For all else who have struggled with doubts about your content, your process, your site theme, or your color scheme - even if it has not been at the hands of the perfection monster - I wish an abundance of steadfastness and persistence.

Let's begin with something amazing

You know you can outshine the competition!

Here's a story about how being a perfectionist can really cramp your site-making, content-creating, value-providing style:

1. Through thorough research, you find a viable market
   • there are books in demand on the subject and sub-categories
   • there is some advertiser activity on search results pages
   • there are active forums with lively discussions about purchases folks have made
   • et cetera

   This is a hot market!

2. With diligence, you analyze several keywords to find some with promising attributes
   • these indicate many monthly searches
   • these indicate low to moderate competition. You know you can outshine the competitors!
   • these represent customers on their way to a "buying mode"
3. Tippety-tappety-type! You tap away to create content
   • First, write a few articles with great content that you know people are looking for
   • Then, gussy it up with some photos and videos (incidentally...)
   • Also, link to some relevant content
   • Next--

Progress stops. Maybe you don't even publish your post to your live site. Maybe you do publish, but you don't share your post on social media, link to your post in appropriate and relevant articles across the web, or ask for feedback and shares from the WA community and abroad.

Here's what is happening a little too often for me at this point:

Is this even worth sharing?

The topic is tougher to research and write about than I initially thought. Half of the front-page Google search results, which I thought were poorly written with a bad user experience have begun to look more professional than my first evaluation. I'm getting next-shiny-object syndrome, where I want to move on to something that feels more exciting. I'm not sure I can do anything with the content I created. Is this even worth sharing? Does it have any value?

Out of fear of failure, I decide I better become more of an expert on the subject. Maybe I need to edit or rewrite a couple of posts to make them more authoritative. The pictures I've chosen don't really look all that great. Maybe my theme is off. The tone is wrong.

I'll get back to this later.

Off to do something fun, like find more super valuable keywords! (I'm fooling myself; keywords are only as valuable as the success formula within which they are applied)

Fix It!

Here's what is going to happen in order to break the perfection monster website-halting cycle:

Press ever forward - making a move in the right direction now is much better than being stagnant and planning your next perfect move forever. Perfect moves will develop organically out of practice.

Acknowledge greatness - sometimes the greatness will be out there somewhere. Learn from it. Sometimes the greatness will come from within. Allow it to spill forth. Sometimes (and this one is important) greatness must be edited. Let the time come naturally, and don't resist when it is here.

Know what time it is - it is time to get moving. The inner perfectionist needs to hear this: the most perfect website...is the one that gets you one step closer to your goals.