7 Lessons From 12 Months Of Writing (Audience Building & Making Money)

My experiments with Substack, Medium, Quora & Twitter

I’ve tried blogging twice.

And failed twice.

But this time it would be different. I would learn all I could. I would not fail a 3rd time. So I bought 3 courses. Read 9 books. Devoured endless articles promising success.

And started writing (again).

I’ve experimented with Quora, Substack, Medium & Twitter over the last 12 months. I’ve built an audience and started making money. But the best bit is the 7 valuable lessons that helped devise my strategy for the future.

Here’s my journey and what you can learn from it.

Stage 1: Start writing (Substack)

Bored with life and inspired by Ali Abdaal. I started a newsletter to share what I was learning. I included resources and quotes I found useful.

I wrote about anything that interested me:

• Self-improvement
• Wellbeing
• Productivity
• Finance

I promoted my writing on Facebook and Instagram and gathered around 70 subscribers.

I was on my way.

Lesson: Start. You can figure everything out else after you’ve made the first step. Don’t worry if you don’t feel ready. You never will. Just start.

Stage 2: Write where people are (Medium & Quora)

Everything changed when I read The Art and Business of Online Writing (Nicolas Cole). He argues we should write where people are rather than persuade them to visit your site.

I took his advice and expanded to Quora & Medium — publishing the same content as my newsletter. I also improved my writing following his advice about titles and formatting.

Lesson: Study those who have been successful. Take action on their advice.

Stage 3: Increased my writing frequency

It became clear from my reading that growth comes from writing more.

I upgraded my 1 article a week to 4. This worked. My views increased. I passed 100 followers. Became a Medium partner. Got accepted to 4 publications. Earned my 1st $.

The medium was going well. But Quora wasn’t. I was getting 0–10 views. Feeling discouraged I stopped reposting my content there.

Lesson: Focus on one platform. Learn its culture. They are all different. Reposting without understanding is a waste of time.

Stage 4: Found my niche

I was still experimenting with lots of different topics.

But when I looked at the data, I noticed when I wrote about writing. It received 4x the views of my other content.

Writing online is more about being an archaeologist than an architect.

An architect decides in advance what the building will look like and sets out to create it. Archaeologists are explorers. They do a little digging. If they discover nothing they move on. Once they find something they dig deeper and stay there.

Writers can’t decide in advance what their niche is. They need to be explorers. Publish some content and see if it works. If not move on. Once you discover what people want. You stop moving and go deeper. Writing more of what works.

I’d discovered what my audience wanted. So I decided to focus on helping new writers.

Lesson: Write on lots of topics and don’t rush to find your niche. After 6+ months of writing look at your data and see what is working best.

Stage 5: Stopped my Substack Newsletter

With a focus on helping new writers, I stopped my Substack newsletter.

This was a hard decision because it was where I started. But most of my subscribers were not writers. It didn’t seem fair to change the whole focus of the newsletter. (I haven’t given up on newsletters though see stage 7).

That gave me a new problem. I was only writing on Medium. And all my writing was behind a paywall. And I couldn’t reach Medium readers on my Facebook/Instagram. (You can post a Friends link to your article but that still limits their viewing to only that article).

I needed a new way to promote my writing. Welcome to Twitter.

Lesson: If something is not working. Stop. You can’t do everything. Focus to reap rewards.

Stage 6: Expanding to Twitter

I was hesitant about launching on a new platform.

But a lot of Medium writers were promoting Twitter. I had already tried and failed with Quora & Substack. But these experiences made me wiser. I now knew it was crucial to learn a platform’s culture and adapt to it.

I started on Twitter and got a few viral tweets. This grew my audience. I reused my Medium content but adjusted it to suit Twitter

• I took my popular tweets and turned them into short-form medium articles
• I turned Medium articles into Twitter threads
• I tested out ideas with tweets. What worked became an article.

What is exciting about Twitter & Medium is that they are not parallel platforms. Instead they feed each other. And this creates synergy. (Other writers use LinkedIn or Threads for this).

Realising that some platforms can work together is a significant discovery.

Lesson: Choose platforms that can collaborate. Have a clear strategy for how they relate.

…

Quick summary- my approach after 12 months:

1. Niche: focused on helping new writers
2. Medium: 4 articles a week
3. Twitter: 21 tweets & 1 thread

Based on all I’ve learned my next two stages are clear:

Stage 7: Launch a newsletter for new writers

A newsletter offers a lot of benefits:

• deepen the relationship with readers
• opportunity to sell products and services
• not reliant on the ever-changing algorithm

I have a huge amount of content I can use. And can promote the newsletter to my readers on Medium & Twitter.

Once I’ve established this I can move to the final stage:

Stage 8: Sell Digital Products

I have a strong portfolio of 75 articles and 65,000 words. Plus valuable audience data reveals what people want.

This makes creating products to sell the next logical step. My products could be ebooks, templates, or video courses. Most likely a mixture.

My journey has had many twists and turns. But the future is full of possibilities.

Final Lesson: Take the fangs out of failure. Keep learning. Keep moving forward. And you’ll end up somewhere good.

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