There are a million gurus out there when it comes to writing.
Most of them have no idea. They write for a few weeks then start giving writing advice because they see it’s a popular topic.
Then unsuspecting good fellows read that writing advice, take it onboard, and light their potential on fire.
I’ve made 7 figures writing online, reached 500m+ views, gained 120K email subscribers, and published 5000+ articles over the last 8 years (almost 9). I’m not a guru. I’m a practitioner you can learn from for free.
Give me 4 minutes to debunk all the writing myths and give you a clear path to follow.
This how you legit write online (and crush it):
- No one knows what the hell will go viral. Just hit publish.
- Amateur writers care about copyright and plagiarism of their work. Professional writers know they can’t police the entire internet without sacrificing their precious writing time and youth.
- Write on one platform first. Writing everywhere is like writing nowhere.
- Read what other high-performing writers write on the platform of your choice. Otherwise, you’ll write content that potentially has no audience.
- Study copywriting so you can write headlines that persuade people to read your work. Otherwise, enjoy having no readers.
- There’s no need to have unique ideas. Those who can communicate ideas the best, in a unique way, in their own voice have success.
- The way to stop being self-conscious about writing is to follow your curiosity, as that’ll act as a distraction.
- After you write for long enough, you need a product or service to sell to earn a living. If you don’t own what makes you money then you’re vulnerable to slave masters.
- As you extract the thoughts from your head and write them down, the most magical part is, the process will help you discover new thoughts you didn’t even know you’d have.
- The best writing is where the writer can see beauty in small everyday things most people are too busy to notice.
- It’s now what you have to say but how you say it. Writing consistently is how you refine your voice.
- Give your best writing away for free. You can resell it again as a newsletter subscription. Readers won’t know what was free and what wasn’t. They’ll just remember quality writing.
- Boring writing is full of lengthy descriptions, long preambles, and stories that take forever to get started. Speed up the rate of revelation in your writing to get more people to read until the end (and make money).
- Boring writers recite facts and write “content” for SEO purposes. Real online writing happens when you go out and have life experiences, then come home and write about them.
- The key to online writing is to relate everything back to the reader. The easiest way to do it is with transition subheadings like “this is what it all means for you” or “how this story affects you.”
- Writing all starts to look the same after a while. Pattern interrupts are what keep online readers interested. Use quirky subheadings, pictures, lists, and formatting to stop the page scroll.
- Dan Koe taught me great writers are dopamine dealers. They have a huge aha moment in life and then take the energy and channel it into a piece of writing that does the same for the reader.
- If you want to write a book then start with a blog post. If you can’t nail a 1000-word article that takes an hour to write, you’re unlikely to nail a book that takes years to write. Example: The #1 money book of the last few years, The Psychology of Money, started as a blog post on Motley Fool.
- Entire books don’t remain in people’s minds. Sentences do. Get good at writing great sentences to become memorable.
- A writing session that isn’t scheduled will never happen.
- Writing has to be promoted to get seen. Write a tweet thread then make your article the last tweet. Share your articles in your newsletter. Collaborate with other writers to share your work. If you sit on your ass nothing will happen (applies to life).
- All you need to know about editing is leave the best bits and remove the rest. Your #1 goal is to make your piece of writing shorter.
- Writer’s block is an illusion. Do the research before you write, create headlines and subheadings before you sit down to write, and record yourself talking if your fingers won’t type (cause there’s no talker’s block).
- Writers should get paid for their work. The problem is most don’t show up for free long enough to collect their paycheck. Expect to write for a year for free. Then you’ve done enough experimentation to slowly get paid. But become impatient and too focused on money, and your little empire will collapse because of ego.
