Just get started already

I’m trying out something new this week. To add a little more depth to my newsletter, I’ve made a template that I’ll be roughly following with a shorter body, and then some SEO tips from whatever I’ve been working on (all hands-on stuff), and finally, resources that I’ve been using.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Hey you, thanks for reading my newsletter! I know you. You’re the guy who has been riding the fence about getting started for, oh, how long has it been now? That’s right. It’s been forever. You have waffled around for so long and done nothing.

No accomplishments.

No closer to a successful business than you were a couple of years ago when you were reading those self-books (you remember Unf*ck Yourself, don’t you?), and buying Udemy courses.

How are those working out for you? Oh.

You didn’t finish them. Not a single one of them. Well, courses don’t work all that great when you don’t do them. Oh well. Next time, right?

Right?

Just do something

Look, you just need to do something. Anything!

The problem with most people in not a lack of ideas. It might not even be a lack of ambition. The problem with almost everyone is a lack of willingness to just go do something.

I started reading BowTied Opposum’s Substack a few days back and he is so dead on the money with his analysis. You don’t need it all figured out. You don’t need to rack your brain thinking about the perfect affiliate. His suggestion is lamps.

Yes, just plain old lamps. That is, of course, just a suggestion to get you started, but it certainly got me started, too.

You don’t need to have the 30,000-foot view in the beginning. In fact, even if you had it, you wouldn’t know what to do with it. Let me illustrate how this is.

For the first five years of my career as a freelancer, I was only doing stuff in the aviation and aerospace space because that was my background. But as you do more, your voice and talents with broaden and evolve.

Learn along the way

This past few months, my amount of actual writing has gone way down. Why?

Because my long-standing gigs have pivoted, and I’m pivoting with them.

My longest-largest gig to date, www.dirtlegal.com/, has nearly 300 blog posts published, of which roughly a third are mine.

Lately, we’ve found that the oldest posts have peaked and then tanked in clicks, so we are going through them one by one and updating them to improve relevance. Two years ago, shoot, one year ago, I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start.

And since we aren’t producing any more new content right now, that client would be on the back burner, along with the big checks they write me.

But I have been following my own advice and making myself indispensable. How? Just learning along the way.

Look, everything you need to know is already out there, published by someone, and it is almost always free. At least you can get a passable start and move on from there. Just start doing, and it will come together.

SEO Tips of The Week

This week is all about getting started, and there is no better place to get started with SEO than this:

This is a compilation of dozens of great articles from SEO providers, Google itself, and a bunch of other things. 10/10.

Long-form content has a superpower: it can take a while to build up steam, but when it gets up to speed, it can sit at the top of Google for a long time, generating organic leads for months, maybe years.

Emails don’t do this. Social media definitely doesn’t do this.

Resources & Recommended Reading

This week in my paid work has been all about refreshing information. Several of our articles still rank #1 on Google, but their clicks have really fallen off after peaking last year.

If your website has articles that rank well but are getting old, they probably need a refreshing. Here’s a great guide on how to do just that.

Also, if you have posts that aren’t necessarily all that old but haven’t performed as well as you think they should, check this article out:

Let me know in the comments what you think! And if you are still on the fence about how to get started, make sure to check out my ebook on using Upwork to make some cash and maybe even kickstart a career!