The difficulty with online publishing is not:

1. Choosing a design
2. Making it pretty
3. Adding widgets
4. Having it figured out

The hard part is simply the decision to publish. To create content and hit go. To overcome fear of letting this fragment be.

It’s not even about perfection. The act of doing creates momentum that improves the quality of content over time.

An assignment, then. Look at the blog/newsletter of two people who I consider to have earned some of the most trust when it comes to publishing their ideas.

1. Seth Godin – He still uses a subdomain from typepad. Why? Because it’s not broken. People read him because of the content and who he is, not his design or URL.
2. Bob Lefsetz – He gives his unfiltered view of the the landscape. He focuses on music, but it spills over to the stuff of life. He has earned his readership over years of consistent writing. He focuses on the email distribution. You can access his newsletters/posts online, but other than the words, it’s pretty much undesigned.

As a note, neither of them have comments, yet both are accessible through email. For them it’s an act of generously sharing. They grow trust over time. And that’s harder than building a short-term and well-funded campaign.

PS – Bonus: Check out John Saddington. He publishes several online places. His experience is that consistent content vastly trumps design. That’s why he simply uses a good basic theme (the plain version of a wordpress theme he originally designed). But he publishes every day.