Don’t worry about your website

Most people don’t need a website when they’re first starting out.

The only exception to this is online retailers or use an online shop as a place for people to buy their goods. If this is you – sure, put up the website. But don’t spend too much time or money on it in the beginning.

Here’s why.

When you’re first starting out, all you have is an idea of what you want to do. You don’t have the lived experience of doing it and learning from your mistakes. Getting paid to do what you love is going to be different than doing it as a hobby.

In the first 6 months, your work will change a million times. You can’t know who you want to work with before you’ve worked with lots of people, it’s hard to know how to write about your work before you’ve done it, and you won’t have answers to a lot of important website-y questions, like:

• Do you list your price on your website? Do you not?

• What is your price? Will it change in a few weeks or months? Will that matter?

• Who, exactly, are you writing to? Who are your people?

• What do people say about working with you?

• What’s your brand like? Are you high end? Are you casual?

When you try to build a website before you’ve gained some real life experience, you’ll have to solve problems in your mind without any feedback from the real world. How do you write about your work? That’s a problem you can’t solve until you test out your work in the real world and have described it to lots of different people, lots of times. But here’s the good news.

You don’t need a website, brand, or fancy photos in the beginning. Even in this age of technology, personal networks still beat the internet.

There are people out there right now without websites making six figures in their businesses. I know a lot of them.

Tell your network what you’re up to. Go to coffees, meet old coworkers, send emails to your extended family. Tell everyone. This is the simplest, easiest way to get started and it always worth your time.

People want to help you. They want to refer people to you. Your first five clients or first five sales are already in your network. They’re just one or two conversations away.

Doing what you love can be simple. You can do this.