Follow them or perish
It was rough.
When I started writing online 9 years ago, I sucked harder than a granny eating a gobstopper.
But I went through a transformation.
I’ve gone from being a terrible writer, to being an okay enough writer to make money.
Which is fine by me.
I’d rather make money than learn how to use a semicolon any day.
All it came down to was understanding the laws of digital writing.
Always publish your draft
For the longest time, I used to hide articles away that I didn’t think were good enough.
Then I made my rule and started publishing anyway. And guess what? Those articles were always received well.
This happened with my newsletter last week, where I thought I’d phoned it in. I didn’t think my points were clear or my writing was any good at all, and I got this response:
It’s a matter of confidence. Press publish anyway and move on to the next article.
Stories come first
Digital writing isn’t a battle of writing ability. It’s a battle to best connect with the reader.
Building an audience is such an overused term that it’s become meaningless. In reality, you’re building a connection with one person and then another.
Picture it as people coming to listen to you speak at a cafe.
Every fan you get is one more person excited to come to the cafe, and here you talk.
They won’t show up if you lecture them, they’ll show up because you connected with them. You helped them learn, be seen, or be entertained, and you can only do that by telling stories.
You connect with someone by telling them stories. Stories of the things you did and the experiences you learned. It doesn’t matter if you’re teaching
The most focused wins
Some people have a devil on their shoulder. I have a chipmunk.
He’s jabbering away to me like he’s got into a pile of funny-looking powder and is telling me about the zillion different projects I could be working on.
For a while, I listened. I was starting another business every year constantly trying to juggle way to many projects. Meanwhile the one project I worked on consistently for four years was the single most profitable.
You have to stay focused.
Meaningful progress only happens when you can zone in on one area at a time and keep pushing forward. These are the principles I teach in the training alongside my focus planners.
They help banish the chipmunk, so no matter how much he jabbers away, you can make progress.
No headline, no success
You have to nail the title. No matter where you write.
On Twitter or LInked in the headline is the opening sentence. For blogs, the headline is the title. And if you don’t learn how to master it, you won’t get attention.
Check out the Bbow list of power words to help spice up your headlines,
Or even better, check out the Headline toolkit by Derek Highes. That man has mastered catchy headlines.
White space matters
You write on a computer, and people read on their phones.
This can make formatting tricky. What looks nice to you might look like dog doo-doo to the reader who’s reading on a phone.
That’s why white space is undeniably important.
Compared to writing essays at school, digital writing is totally different.
You can easily get away with one sentence paragraphs. But never go beyond three lines paragraphs.
And bullet points to help break it up:
- They stop scrollers
- They are quick to read to keep interest
- And if you order them shortetest to longest they look good
Break it up, make it skimmable. And while you’re at it…
Short and snappy sentences win every time
Short sentences work. They keep the pace quick.
As Seth Godin says, you can have sentences too long. But rarely too short.
A whole article of these might be too brief. But a few short sentences together can help the reader build up momentum so they stick with you through a longer sentence like this one.
See what I mean?
Vary sentence length
Having sentences repeating at the same length is boring.
But for some reason it happens all the time in your first draft.
That’s why you have to go back and edit to vary the length.
Boring right?
Start with a short sentence. Then maybe throw in a longer one. Not too long. And soon you start to dance with your writing. A rhythm appears.
Turn beige content into a dazzling Tango of words that attract readers like a moth to a flame.
Feedback hurts, but you need it
My wife is a trained English teacher. So a few years back, I asked her for feedback on my writing (without the semicolon lectures).
She crushed me.
No, she wasn’t overly harsh, she was honest. And that hurt even more.
But I can’t deny the truth. She made me a better writer by pointing out my mistakes. Without feedback, improving is hard.
But there’s a second type of feedback. Indirect feedback. That’s the feedback of an article performing well, of getting a lot of comments, shares, likes, whatever you’re looking for.
Take the indirect feedback and use it to guide your writing. Figure out what worked and see if you can replicate it.
You need to make it about them
Everything will change once you stop writing for you and start writing for your audience.
They don’t turn up because you have written something.
They turn up because you wrote something that will help them.
Help them better understand themselves through your experience, or learn from what you’re teaching, or be entertained by the story you told.
Writers like you must be selfishly selfless.
You must selfishly write about their opinions and experiences, but you must selflessly do it for other people.
Yes, it’s a paradox. Always ask: what’s in it for the reader?
Just keep publishing
Everything good in life takes longer than you want it to.
It took me 12 months of consistent writing online before I made $100. But after around 22 months, I could quit my job and go full-time.
Most people quit well before the 12-month mark, let alone the 22-month mark. But week in and week out, you have to keep showing up and keep publishing.
I tried three different niches and website styles before I found the winner. It might take you ten tries, or it might take you one.
The only thing for sure is that you will only be successful if you stick with it for the long haul and keep developing your skills as a writer and an entrepreneur.
You need to solve a problem to make money
A business exists when you solve a problem for somebody, and they pay you for it.
That’s it.
If you build it, they won’t come
Writing isn’t a business.
It can be the foundation of a business. But a house isn’t a house when it’s just a big concrete block in the ground.
That’s why writing online alone won’t make you money. You have to learn how to get attention on that writing. Publish where people are so you can build connections, and then you have to monetize.
- Write to get attention,
- Write to build connection
- Write to master monetization
That’s a writing business.
Endlessly publishing articles isn’t a business.
Your favorite platform will change and hurt you
Ask any niche site owner how the last few years have been and you’ll get a glimpse.
Writers used to rely on SEO to build a business. Then, when the Google gods declared war on creators, banishing their traffic to the dungeon dimension, all those niche site owners were burned.
Traffic dropped by up to 90% across the board, and earnings plummeted.
Every platform does this. No matter where you write, you’re sitting on a one-legged stool if you rely 100% on another platform for your business.
Yes, start with one and begin to grow, but have a plan for how to diversify.
Lastly
Just keep writing.
All good things come with time and the more time in the game, the better you’ll get.
Follow these laws, and you will find success.
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