If you were involved in the Quality revolution of the 1990s, you might have come across the saying: Get it right first time.

I do understand the philosophy behind this approach, but frankly it can also be a big burden to creating real quality – quality in your products, quality in your marketing, and most importantly, quality in your profits.

In today’s fast-paced world, I would rather say: Get it right next time. Or, as one of my clients put it, “Practise on the world”.

In other words, rather than wasting endless hours fine-tuning every little detail of every on-line marketing campaign, just get it 80% right. Stop looking for Mr/Ms Right and settle for Mr/Ms Right Now.

It’s the 80/20 Rule in action: 80% of what matters is done in 20% of the time; the remaining 80% of time makes very little difference. This is also known as the law of diminishing returns. After you create your first draft, making improvements makes sense only up to a point. After that point, every improvement takes more effort and returns less and less value.

How will you know when you’ve reached the magic 80%? You won’t know exactly. But as a general rule, it happens sooner than you think.

So stop worrying about whether your e-mail campaign will address the reader as “Dear Mr. Bloggs” or “Dear Joe”; stop fretting over the exact font colour of your sub-headings; stop optimising that product photo so that it gives you exactly the right balance between quality and file size; stop that debate about whether to say “who you’re afraid to ask” or “whom you’re afraid to ask”. For the most part, none of this stuff matters. Just get it out there and let your market be the judge.

This idea won’t necessarily apply in every industry. For example, if you’re selling health products, security items or parachutes, perhaps it’s not good enough to get your products 80% right! But in most cases, you’re probably doing too much work for too little effort.

If you still feel uncomfortable about working this way, here are five things that could help.

1. Announce it’s a “beta” version.

If you’re releasing a product that is 80% complete, tell your customers that this is a first draft, a test, a beta version, a pre-release version – whatever. This allows you to release something at 80% quality, and in fact it encourages customers to give you real feedback on it.

2. Give them an incentive to buy it now.

For example, with information products that you deliver electronically, it’s easy to release the first version quickly, promising that you will send your customers a free upgrade to the full version when it’s available. This allows your initial customers to get the product now, without penalising them.

3. Choose your market carefully.

If you’re really not sure about the quality of your product, and perhaps you’re worried that it might damage your reputation, don’t tell everybody about it. Instead, select a few trusted, loyal customers only and offer it to them first. They will appreciate the fact that you chose them and they will give you valuable feedback about the product.

4. Ask your friends.

If you think it’s still too early to expose to customers, ask your online social networks – your Facebook friends, people in a particular LinkedIn group, a select Google+ circle – for their opinion. You can also ask offline social networks, such as a business mastermind group, close colleagues, or members of an industry association.

5. Leak it out in bits and pieces.

Post it to your blog before you publish it in a book. Change your dinner menu one item at a time and ask your customers for feedback. Break it into pieces and release them one at a time – with enough time between them to allow you to change what’s coming next if you need to.

So many things now are free, fast, easy and effective – and yet, so many people don’t do them, even when they truly believe in their benefits. For example, just in the area of online marketing, it’s easy to create a blog, set up a Twitter account, sign up to Google+, or publish a YouTube video. You know millions of people – professionals and amateurs alike – are doing them, and yet you might still not have started.

One of the reasons for this is that many people get stuck at the “starting barrier”. This video explains what I mean:

So are you getting stuck at any starting barriers? If so, get over yourself – and get over that barrier!

Many business owners are optimistic, and that’s usually a good thing. There’s a lot of evidence to show that optimists tend to be healthier, happier, and have better relationships than pessimists. But it isn’t all good news! There are also some things that optimists don’t do as well as pessimists, and they can be holding you back from achieving your goals. This applies in many areas of life, but is very common with Internet marketing, which usually takes more time and effort than most people expect.

Here are five common mistakes that optimistic business owners make with their Internet marketing strategy, and how to overcome them.

Mistake #1: Setting expectations too high

There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big dreams and setting “stretch” goals, but if your expectations are unrealistic, it’s easy to become disappointed quickly.

For example, you might start publishing a blog or e-mail newsletter, and expect it to bring you a lot of incoming traffic, and a lot of profitable incoming traffic as well. Unfortunately, this rarely happens unless you’re very lucky. Building a following online takes time and persistence. If you expect too much too soon, you’ll be disappointed – and there’s a risk of giving up too soon as well.

So don’t expect too much too soon. When you start, focus on the process, not the outcome; and measure your success by the quality of your material and the consistency of your publishing it.

Mistake #2: Expecting it to be too easy

This is related to the previous point, but it refers to the process rather than the outcome. Overly optimistic people under-estimate the amount of time, effort, focus and money involved in doing tasks. In other words, they expect things to be easier than they really are, which can lead to disappointment, frustration and stress when the rubber hits the road.

For example, you “know” creating video is easy, because millions of amateurs upload video to YouTube every day. But when you come to record your own videos, you might be surprised at how long it takes to get it just right.

With many online tasks, the only real way to know what’s involved in a task is to actually do it. So to overcome this problem, get started as soon as possible, and then use that experience when making future estimates. In other words, don’t estimate how long it will take to record 20 videos. Record one video instead, and then estimate how long it will take to do the other 19.

Mistake #3: Overlooking potential problems along the way

Overly optimistic people also don’t think about problems and obstacles along the journey, so they don’t have contingency plans, alternatives and backup strategies in place.

For example, you might delegate your social media management to a smart, savvy, Gen Y staff member in your organization, but what if she leaves one day – and leaves you in the lurch? If you don’t have some backup plan in place, this can bring your entire online strategy to a grinding halt.

The solution to this problem is easy: Create contingency plans. You don’t have to cover every possible thing that could go wrong, but at least consider the most obvious possibilities. You will usually find it doesn’t take much to be able to recover from small bumps along the way – as long as you have considered them in advance.

Mistake #4: Failing to learn from failure

Most people who go on a gambling trip to Las Vegas will lose money. But the optimists who return to Las Vegas are likely to lose more money than the pessimists. That’s because the optimists brush aside their losses from the first trip (for example, “Oh, well, at least I didn’t lose that much”) rather than learning from their mistakes.

This happens with online marketing as well. I’ve seen many people try something online, discover it isn’t working, and then give up with a shrug of their shoulders, happy that it didn’t cost much time and money. That might be true, but they often never find out why it didn’t work, and will probably make the same mistake with the next thing they try. This is especially true with many online marketing techniques, because they really don’t cost much to get started, so it is easy to shrug them off if they don’t work, rather than investing time and effort in making them work.

Mistake #5: Not putting a safety net in place

Overly optimistic people jump into a new venture head first, cutting all ties with the past and assuming they will never have to take a step back. Now, there’s certainly something to be said for creating this sort of forced commitment, but it isn’t always appropriate, and it’s sometimes very risky.

For example, when Facebook first launched its “Pages” service, which allowed organizations to create their own presence on Facebook, some business owners (foolishly) decided to close down their Web site and e-mail newsletter, and turned their full attention to their Facebook page. But that wasn’t a smart choice, because they no longer owned their online properties, and were subject to Facebook’s whims.

Be a realistic optimist!

Have you made any of these five mistakes? If so, at least realise you’re not alone!

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be optimistic – far from it. The secret is not to be overly optimistic. Be optimistic, but be a realistic optimist.