In the year 1770, Voltaire had a message for internet marketers: "The best is the enemy of good." In other words, stop worrying about whether you've crushed the last little flaw in your product or website, and just launch it. If you wait for perfection, you'll never launch.

Why is this such hard advice for some people to follow? Because we're afraid to fail. "Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

That may be good advice for some people. But if you're going to run your own business, it's the sure path to failure. Either get your product to "good enough" and launch it, or go get a job from The Man. Don't lie to yourself and say you're an entrepreneur if you don't dare jump off the cliff and trust your wings.

If you need a little help screwing up your courage, consider what Terry Dean wrote:

How many software programs were PERFECT with version 1.0?

Why in the world would you expect your complete website and business to be a home run with version 1.0?

For that matter, how many software programs were perfect with version 6.0? If everybody else is shipping imperfect products, why should you be afraid to do so?

Less Learn, More Earn

A similar issue that trips up a lot of would-be internet marketers is the problem of always learning and never implementing. A while back, I wrote:

You'll get more value out of implementing the lessons from one course than from learning and not implementing the lessons from 100 courses. Plus, it's a lot less expensive. The other courses will still be there waiting for you to buy them once you've finished with the last one.

For many, I'd imagine endless studying is a way to avoid the same fear that keeps people tweaking and waiting for perfection.

Perfect Marketing

What is perfect marketing? It's what you do after you've figured out what you did wrong the last time.

You'll never get there. You'll never figure it all out.

But you'll get a lot closer by doing imperfect marketing than by endlessly tweaking an untested effort.