The Difference Between Availability and a Launch

The Difference Between Availability and a Launch

For a long time, I treated release and availability as the same thing.

When something was ready, I told myself it needed a launch, a moment, a narrative, a push, before it could truly be “out there.”

That made sense in projects built around momentum, audience engagement, or optimisation.

Launches create urgency, focus attention, and mark a point of collective acknowledgement.

But after doing that repeatedly, I began to notice something about the way it shaped my relationship to the work.

A launch always feels like a beginning and an obligation rolled into one.

There’s anticipation, preparation, validation, performance.

Even if I didn’t intend it to be, the launch became a pressure point, something to manage, something to justify.

With Info Product Build, I wanted to try something different. I wanted the work to be available, not launched.

The distinction sounded subtle at first, but the more I leaned into it, the clearer it became.

  • Availability is simply presence.
  • It doesn’t demand attention.
  • It doesn’t prescribe timing.
  • It doesn’t create a moment that must be justified or defended.

A launch creates a boundary between before and after, an event with expectations tied to it.

Availability does not.

When I made Info Product Build available without a launch framework, a few things happened that surprised me:

  • I felt less pressure to perform against an arbitrary moment.
  • I didn’t feel the urge to “announce” or “convince.”
  • I was free to let the work exist on its own terms.

In practice, that changed how I wrote, how I positioned the work, and how I thought about its completion. There was no crescendo to manage. No drop to recover from. Just presence.

That, more than anything, confirmed the decision to treat Info Product Build as a work that simply is, not something that had to be introduced with fanfare or expectation.

Availability doesn’t require resolution. It just requires acceptance.

And that, in itself, was a significant lesson.

About The Author

Steve King writes about building small, resilient online income systems and the operational decisions that determine whether they work. His experience comes from running resale and digital catalogue businesses in the UK. When he’s not working, he’s usually playing golf or re-watching favourite films and box sets.