I’ve been updating the OWNWARD site, and I caught myself making a simple mistake on the subscription page.
I wanted to show people a sample before asking them to sign up, something that gave them a feel for the writing before asking for a spot in their inbox. Except the sample was from an essay.
The writing was fine. I kept looking at it, making adjustments, trying to get it to land better. It took a few rounds before I realized I was improving something that didn’t belong there in the first place.
Someone deciding whether to subscribe wants to know what the newsletter is like. An essay from the same site doesn’t quite answer that.
Once I replaced it with a passage from “Collab With Yourself,” a previous edition of this newsletter, the page made sense. You could read part of an actual issue, get something from it, and decide whether you wanted the next one.
It’s obvious when I say it now. But when you know your own work, you understand how everything connects, so you forget how much you’re asking a new person to fill in. I knew what the newsletter offered. They only had what I’d put in front of them.
The play
Pick one thing you want someone to read, use, or buy, and look at what they encounter before they get to the useful part.
How much of that path is you explaining what they’re going to get? And how much lets them experience any of it?
I made a similar change to the Products page. Instead of leaving people with a cover, a description, and a buy button, I added a before-and-after example from the Narrative Pivot Kit and a complete prompt from Evening Shutdown.
Now someone can read the example or try the prompt and decide whether the thinking helps them. They have something to go on beyond how I describe it.
Look for that piece in your own work. Maybe it’s the example halfway through a guide that always makes the idea click. Maybe it’s the decision behind a project that gets people interested every time you explain it in person, but somehow never made it into your portfolio. That’s probably worth bringing forward.
You don’t necessarily need to make something else. You may already have the useful part sitting somewhere people won’t reach.
Where it breaks
The temptation is to pick whatever makes the work look most impressive. I get it—you want to put the strongest thing out front.
But something can be impressive and still need too much explanation to work as a sample. If I have to walk you through the whole product before you understand why this piece matters, I haven’t made the decision any easier.
Choose a piece that does one thing well enough for someone to use it without you there. A complete example is usually more helpful than an introduction promising what comes later. It should also feel like the rest of what you’re offering, so people know what they’re choosing.
I spent time trying to write a better explanation of the value when I could have just moved some of the value closer to the front. Before you add another paragraph to your page, it’s worth seeing if you’ve done the same.
— Fresh
OWNWARD
Game worth giving.