It’s gripping to peek into the thoughts of an indie entrepreneur at the moment they find focus. I’m buzzing in my seat as I read Dave’s article.

The added bonus is that I was able to play a part in what led up to this moment for Dave.

Let me back up. Below we’re publishing an article that Fizzler Dave Stuart wrote in the Fizzle Forums. Dave built his blog, Teaching the Core and a speaking career to help teachers kick ass.

I’ll be back at the end of the article to add some thoughts. Enjoy!

---

Dave’s post

My blog hit it’s 3 year birthday this past May, and currently has 10K subs and 35K unique visitors per month. If you had asked me what changes I wanted to make to the site last January, I would have said that I was willing to drop $10K (about 15% of my annual revenue) on a professional designer who could finally rid my site of its homemade-ishness.

However, that mindset has changed largely thanks to the mastermind group that I spent Q1 and Q2 of this year with. I realized that design had to follow the purpose of my site, and so I did things like interview audience members and read through comments to figure out what it was that I do here on the internet.

This is how I came to discover that my business archetype is that of the thought leader, not because I consider myself some sage but because I tend to publish rough draft thinking and slowly develop that thinking into easily understood ways of thinking about the work that is K-12 education.

Additionally, five years out I see myself with several traditionally published books that I can proudly recommend, with a preponderance of my revenue coming from speaking engagements priced toward the top of my market and healthy additional revenue streams from royalties, pay What You Want online products, and select sponsorship and affiliate streams.

All of this has led me to landing on a hypothesis for about how to design your website if your goal is to be a thought-leader: reader first and foremost, always. The only 2 questions I need to ask as I tweak my site are:

1. What would I want as a reader?

2. How can I best deliver that to my readers.

These questions, importantly, help with both visual and workflow design.

Visually, this design orientation allows me to make easier decisions: readable font, minimal distractions (pop-ups, sidebars, etc).

In terms of workflow, my chief design consideration is how do I spend as little time as possible doing things that are not writing for my audience.

I will be testing this hypothesis starting on August 1st, and I’ll measure it’s success in terms of standard metrics like subscribers, speaking engagement leads, and revenue.

Here is why I think the results will be positive (and again, this is just a hypothesis at this point – I’m just sharing for whatever it’s worth):

1. Where I used to feel like I had to follow All The People to keep up with the latest and greatest internet marketing tactics, now I can stop that. Why? Because my design orientation tells me to trust that my reader is not an idiot and that she can easily figure out how to subscribe to my newsletter if she wants.

There will be a link to joining the newsletter at the end of posts, through the primary navigation menu, and on my home landing page (in development). Dave From January would have worried that my site won’t optimally convert if I don’t do more than that; Reader-Centered Dave realizes that the kinds of readers I want don’t need to be cajoled or manipulated or nagged to subscribe; they’ll subscribe when and if they feel a need to stay apprised of my work. The better and more consistently that I write, the more likely it is that they will feel that need…

2. …and reader-centered design will force me to become a better writer because I won’t be wasting energy following All The People and fretting over design decisions and plugins. I’ll be trying to write + listen to readers + write + listen to readers x infinity because that is what I would want as a reader – a writer who is publishing work on a consistent basis and whose work is getting better all the time.

3. I think that while reader-centered design will lack the panache or slickishness of professionally designed sites, it will actually yield greater authority and opportunity. Thought leaders aren’t thought leaders because they have a sweet-looking websites, nor do they sell a lot of books because of sweet-looking websites.

They are thought leaders because they do such a great volume of thinking that they inevitably produce a few great ideas (those few being the lottery tickets), and they do the work of developing those ideas to the point of making them readily communicable. Much of that idea development process is done in front of their readers because they consistently publishing and listening and etc.

4. Reader-centered design bleeds over into other decisions, like how to format my newsletter and what to do with social media. An RSS-driven newsletter makes most sense because it allows me to spend less (nearly no) time writing newsletter copy and it allows my readers the option of clicking through to my site or just reading from their inbox.

True story: I was stuck on a plane recently, and I read dozens of posts by the only two newsletters I subscribe to that use RSS; these people developed a dedicated fan that day.

Like I said, I’ll be testing this hypothesis over the coming school year; my hope is that it allows me to spend a greater percentage of time doing the real work rather than the feels-like-work work that thought leaders do.

I’d like to thank Barrett Brooks and James Clear for essentially living out this hypothesis publicly on their blogs. Barrett’s blog rants are some of my favorite emails lately – read “42 Minutes” to get started. Also, two years ago Chase’s Web Design course (join Fizzle to check this one out for free) here in Fizzle completely changed how I, as a totally non-design guy, think about design.

If you’re curious, I ended up not hiring a designer at all. Instead, I signed up with WPCurve (about $60/month), and I’ve been outsourcing any tweaks I don’t know how to make to them; they’ve been great, and it really is possible to do a fair amount of design work with them if you have a vision for what you’d like your site to look like.

---

Concluding thoughts from Chase

Here’s three of the most important bits from Dave’s post:

1. Design follows purpose

I realized that design had to follow the purpose of my site, and so I did things like interview audience members and read through comments to figure out what it was that I do here on the internet.

So many people approach me to design their website. Very few of them have a coherent idea about the real purpose of their site besides “more email subscribers and traffic.” You have to go deeper.

Your insight has to include a sense of the mission your audience is on. (I get into this in the design course in depth. #Yoda.) Dave realized his audience isn’t full of idiots. He can treat them with respect. In fact, he has fundamental, built-in respect for them because of the heaviness of the work they do (teachers).

What is the purpose of your site? What mission do you help your visitors with? If you need help on this, for G-d’s sake, get your free month of Fizzle and take the design course.

2. Hypothesis & measurement

I’ll measure it’s success in terms of standard metrics like subscribers, speaking engagement leads, and revenue. […] I’ll be testing this hypothesis over the coming school year…

You get ideas. You get excited about them. You don’t naturally treat them like a hypothesis, building a test or two to see if it’s an idea your target audience could get behind. Instead, you go all in, you try to “CRUSH IT!,” and you end up actually killing it… like, it’s dead.

Every idea you have is a hypothesis. Come up with a way to test if there’s a market for it or not.

Do you know what your hypothesis is? Do you know how you’ll measure the results? Do you know what your expectations are?

3. Models

I’d like to thank Barrett Brooks and James Clear for essentially living out this hypothesis publicly on their blogs.

Being exposed to models, to examples of the kind of things you’re looking to create, is a game changer. It’s not just imagining what you could do, it’s seeing it, in the flesh.

For myself, I immediately catch a new vision, it feels better, more true, and I can see in what ways I’ll want to change it for my audience (based on #1 above).

So, who are the models you will pay attention to? Who’s doing it the way you want to do it? If you don’t have any right now, go and do the work to find some. Invest as much time as necessary because a great model or two will fill in so many gaps you don’t yet know you have.

Changes

What sticks with you about Dave’s “reader-centered” focus for his site? Does it make you long for the same focus on your project?

Each question in this article can lead to simple changes on your site. Doesn’t have to be a massive redesign… it could simply lead to some updates here and there.

So, what changes will you make?

---

---

Learn how to set goals that actually stick!

---

The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business

Every week we talk with entrepreneurs. We talk about what’s working and what isn’t. We talk about successes and failures. We spend time with complete newbies, seasoned veterans, and everything in between.

One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.

These conversations have been fascinating, so we compiled a list of the 10 mistakes we hear most often into a nifty lil' guide. Get the 10 Most Common Mistakes in Starting an Online Business here »