Ship One Tiny Pdf Before Midnight

The Tools page: the stack we build these on — The free tools behind every step of today’s drill sit on one page, from exporting the doc as a PDF to putting a price on it. It’s the exact setup we run for our own micro-guides. If you’re stuck on “okay, but which tools do I actually use,” start there instead of opening thirty tabs to shop around.

Evan Kelly’s one-subject skill packs — Evan Kelly makes those small, single-subject digital products that get you genuinely competent at one thing fast, no 12-hour course bolted on top. Same shape as the thing you’re shipping tonight, so his catalog shows you how tight a tiny product can get. Buy one and study how he draws the edges before you cut your own. (Affiliate link, the building takes a cut.)

Ship a Tiny PDF in a Day

Idea to a live four-to-nine-dollar product before midnight.

You know one thing cold. Some fix you’ve explained to five different people for free, because it was faster than watching them flail at it. That fix is the product, folks. Today it gets a price and a download button, live before you sleep. Small on purpose: a real course eats a month you don’t have, and a 60-page manual dies half-written in your drafts. So we build neither. Five pages, priced around a good cup of coffee. Up on your store tonight.

1 // Pick the problem you keep solving for free

Open a notes file. List every question people actually bring you, the ones where the answer’s already sitting in your head. Now knock that list down to the single problem you can fully answer in five pages. Skip ‘how to start a podcast,’ way too big. ‘How to EQ a muddy vocal in 6 moves,’ that’s the size. If you’d have to go research it, it’s the wrong one. Pick what you could explain half-asleep at 2am.

2 // Write the five steps and quit

Blank doc. Put the problem up top as a one-line promise. Under it, write the fix as numbered steps, five of them, each one a thing the reader physically does. Each step names the move, then shows it done with a quick screenshot or example. Ninety minutes, tops. Write like you’re texting the answer to a buddy stuck on his shift right now. Any section that isn’t a move the reader makes, kill it. Nobody paid for your damn origin story.

3 // Cover, price, publish, tonight

Export the doc to PDF. Build a cover in a free design tool: title in big type with one bold color behind it, your name small at the bottom, ten minutes, don’t fuss it. Price it at seven bucks (anywhere four to nine lands right; go under four and buyers read it as junk). Upload to your store page, write three sentences that say who it’s for and what they’ll be able to do after, and hit publish. A live seven-dollar page beats the perfect one that ships ‘next week,’ which is a date that never comes.

One-day rule, no mercy: if it won’t be live by midnight it’s too big, so cut it in half and ship the half tonight.

THE TIP. Lock your one-day product small by writing the title as a promise with a number in it before you type a single step. “Fix a Muddy Vocal in 6 Moves” tells you exactly when to stop: at move six. Every tiny thing we’ve put out uses that trick, and you can see the whole shelf of them on the store. The Store

DEAD AIR · RIVERGATE / LOWER LEVEL

The directory by the old south gate still has its red YOU ARE HERE arrow. Tuesday it pointed at the food court. This morning it points at the parking deck. The map sits behind glass. Nobody on the crew carries a key for it.

PS. Hit reply and send me the one title you’re shipping today. Just the line, nothing else. I want to see how small you can cut it. ~ J.D.