5 Tiny, Simple Writing Tips That Helped Me Hit 10K Followers in 36 Months

It’s tiny, it’s simple, and above all else, it’s actionable.

I wouldn’t have imagined this at the start of the year.

• From 5,500 to 10,000 followers before December 2023.
• Email subscribers shot up by 100% within 12 months.
• Months where I cross $1,500 writing here.
• Gained 3 valuable friends.

All in all, this is a banner year for me.

It proved to me that effort plus deliberate attempts to improve on the go brings unimaginable results.

Here are 5 things I do that got me here.

1* Momentum is key

Firstly, gaining followers is not everything.

Keeping our daily craft going is.

Let’s not forget that we are turning words into digits behind the dollar sign. Words come first. Dollars follow. Followers may come…

Focus on topics that we naturally gravitate to… matters big time.

This is because,

• We can keep writing when the going gets tough.
• Topics we engage with [deeply] allow us to inject life experiences into our words.
• Our innate curiosity leads us to explore the same boring topic from unexpected angles.

Above all else, we don’t mind repeating ourselves [over and over] on a topic we are in love with. Like money. Like love. Like health. Like travel.

Focus on momentum.

Focus on topics that breathe momentum into your writing routine.

That leads to consistency.

Consistency attracts like-minded readers.

They may, they may, become your followers.

2* Fold the topics you love under these 4 categories [Read: Hot categories]

Some topics ooze deadly attraction.

We measure by millions and billions and trillions of eyeballs.

That is where you grow your audience, readership, or viewership impressions.

Here they are.

• Money
• Relationships
• Self-Improvement
• Health and Fitness

These are hot topics because they form the fundamental tenets of our life experiences. We cannot escape them. Like it or not, we engage them.

It is way better to fold the topic we love writing under these categories.

Your readership metrics, subscribers, and follower count will go up.

Like to write about business?

• Focus on increasing revenue. That is the money part.
• Bare your struggles and how you overcome them. That is the self-improvement part.
• Discuss how you manage family time despite never being home. It covers relationships.
• Did you hit the gym for 30 minutes after a 14-hour workday? Share your fitness tips.

Your writing is worthy of attention.

You must distribute it to the online marketplace where the eyeballs are.

The rest will take care of themselves.

3* Study Your Stats Page Diligently

I know, I know.

Many online writing gurus I follow will tell you to ignore your writing stats until the end of the month. I understand why. They want you to keep writing.

They have good intentions.

For me, I think otherwise.

Statistics don’t discourage me. In fact, these numbers,

• Got me curious about reader’s inclinations,
• Allowed me to tweak my headlines with the same article for better results,
• Gave me insights into those topics I write best.

One of the topics I do well in is retirement. It was a surprise to me. I hit the Big 4 one year ago and wanted to find out how others are coping with their retirement.

It started as a passion project on the side.

I took my findings, wrote them into stories, and published them.

My earnings skyrocketed since then.

And then, I analyzed my stats.

I was pleasantly surprised.

So, I continued.

In short, study your stats page diligently. It is a gold mine of information.

It is crazy not to harness it.

4* Turn frequent commentators into friends

Writing online is a highly individual pursuit.

That said, you need a support group.

This group consists of peers who write the same topics you do and share the same struggles you have. Identify them. Befriend them. Take them from online to offline.

My group is small. Only 4 of us. And they write what I write.

I write about business, money, retirement, and investments.

• Matt | Financial Imagineer writes about relationships, money, and investments.
• Denis Gorbunov writes about relationships, money, retirement, and investments.
• Sarina Chiu writes about business, money, retirement, and investments.

We have tremendous overlap in our natural interests.

It is easier for anyone to extract ideas from our conversations and turn them into online articles.

It is also easier for us to consult each other.

“Hey Denis, I like this story of yours. The headline is fantastic, and the story flows from start to end. How is it doing?”

See how we created this rising tide?

I urge you to do the same.

Find your group.

5* Rewrite your best articles

This is the simplest idea I have come across this year.

It is unbelievably effective, too.

In short,

• Go dig into your stats,
• Identify your best-performing articles,
• Rewrite them.

That is it.

You may ask why.

Easy.

Why not double down on your wins?

The close

These are the tiny, simple, and actionable [pieces of] advice I follow to hit 10,000 followers before the end of 2023.

This journey took me 3 years.

But I say this.

Don’t focus too much on growing your followers. You cannot bank them.

Instead, focus on writing better. With time, you earn more.

And then, followers will come.

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Oh, oh, you can buy me a cup of black too! Thank you!