When it comes to developing web applications, web sites, plugins, and so on you need to ask yourself a very important question. Just how good does it need to be? The question is intended to be for the initial release. In other words, at what point is the thing your working on good enough to be released or published?

I find myself frequently in a state of analysis-paralysis. I keep thinking about how to do something the right/perfect way, and in the end I never find time to actually get starting building it. It happens when I’m thinking about creating a web site, but also something as simple as posting to some of my blogs. There’s a fine line here.  I don’t want to publish something that’s junk and will hurt my reputation or the site’s reputation, but at the same time if I wait too long or spend so much time getting it perfect I lose out on potential traffic and revenue.

Whether you are a pure developer (i.e., all you do is develop) or a person like me that does some marketing on the Internet and does his own development too, you really need to think about the criteria for release 1 of what you’re doing. The point is that you can always have subsequent releases that improve upon the initial release. Updating a web site, blog post, plugin, etc. is so much easier on the Internet. Take a look at the apps the Google has developed. All of them are still considered "Beta".  The idea is that they are never really "done", but rather in a continuous state of evolution.  I think that’s a great way to think about not only software but also our marketing and sales efforts on the Internet.