Summary

The provided content outlines a guide on transforming writing into a profitable business by building an audience, understanding the transition from traditional work to writing online, producing quality content, analyzing performance data, addressing larger audience problems, and continuously iterating on one's business model.

Abstract

The article emphasizes that earning a living from writing on the internet is attainable by following a series of strategic steps. It begins with the importance of cultivating an audience over time, acknowledging that this process requires patience and resilience in the face of minimal initial feedback. The author underscores the necessity of shifting one's mindset from expecting immediate payment to viewing early work as an investment in future success. Crafting compelling content that resonates with readers by taking them on a transformative journey is another critical step. The author advocates for the use of personal stories that solve problems rather than merely sharing experiences. Collecting and analyzing data from past articles helps in refining the writer's approach and understanding audience preferences. Addressing larger, complex issues faced by the audience paves the way for creating more substantial offerings such as courses or books. The final step involves iterating on the business, building on what works, and adapting to both audience needs and personal goals, with the potential to earn significant income through part-time efforts.

Opinions

Writing can be both an outlet for expression and the foundation of a lucrative business.
The journey from a starving artist to a successful writing entrepreneur is challenging but feasible.
Building an audience is a fundamental but difficult first step that requires a long-term perspective.
Early work should be seen as an investment rather than an immediate source of income.
High-quality, problem-solving content is essential for attracting and retaining readers.
Data analysis is crucial for understanding which articles resonate with the audience and why.
Writers should focus on solving significant problems for their audience to create value-driven products.
Continuous iteration based on audience feedback and personal aspirations is key to growing a writing business.
Earning a substantial income from writing is possible with a strategic approach and dedication to the craft.

How to Turn Your Writing Into a Profitable Business (2 Hours a Day)

It’s doable, it really is

Photo by Vinicius Wiesehofer on Unsplash

When I started writing on the internet, I never thought I’d make a penny.

It was from rock bottom I started writing, I’d given up on the idea that I’d ever build a business, I just wanted an outlet for my thoughts (because they were taking over my mind).

The starving artist is a well-accepted reality for writers, I thought writing was at polar opposite ends to business.

But as I’ve discovered, you can make serious money writing on the internet, the trick is knowing how to make writing a business.

This is how.

Step 1: Build the audience first

Building your audience is step one in creating a business for the long term.

The trouble is, you start that process now and you might not reap the rewards of that reality until a few years down the line.

But building an audience is hard.

Competition is rife and it’s an emotional game. How does it feel to write something to 10 people and get nothing in return? Building your audience person by person for years?

It’s killer if you don’t have the right outlook.

I half think expecting absolutely nothing is the only way to do it. Don’t write because you want to build an empire, write because you have something to say.

Step 2: Understanding the game

It’s hard to go from working a 9-to-5 where you get paid a salary for your work to working for free. That’s what you do in the beginning.

You write, few people see it, and your financial reward is minimal.

You have to switch off the idea that you get paid for your work this year and think of it as an investment in your future. And it’s really hard to do. In the beginning, I couldn’t get my head around it.

But if you wanna win on the internet, it’s all about mindset.

I thought if I wrote a weekly newsletter, for free, giving valuable information to people, everyone would sign up, why wouldn’t they?!

But the truth is, there are hundreds of people doing the same thing, you have to compete in the free market to enter the paid market. You have to make your free stuff so good, people would pay for it and then don’t let them.

It’s internalising that and then believing it, that’s the hard bit.

Step 3: Writing great content

Three years ago, when I started writing, I used to tell my own stories.

I was struggling to understand work, life, and my career. It sent my head into a tailspin. So I wrote about it. But I told instead of solved. And that was a major flaw in my writing.

Every good story is a journey. It’s a journey from where your reader is to where they want to be. In an article or a tweet, it’s a tiny journey:

From unmotivated to motivated
From confused to clear
From lost to found

Each piece of writing is in service of your reader. You act as the guide but they are the hero. You can help them with your stories but it has to be about them.

Step 4: Collect data

I write a lot. Mostly because I adore it. The byproduct of high output is tonnes of data. I have over 1100 articles I’ve written on Medium alone. All of those articles are data points.

Often I’ll go through my articles and understand what has stood out. It’s easy to see articles that have outperformed the norm. It’s my job then to understand why.

I’m thinking:

What about this headline worked?
Was it the way I introduced the concept?
Was it the story I interweaved into the article?

And then, those findings will inform the way I write moving forward. Each time, I’m refining my craft and learning what my audience wants from me.

But also I’m super conscious of what I want to write about. I’ve had articles do incredibly well but I’ve chosen to steer away from writing about that topic because it wasn’t the right topic for me.

Step 5: Solve bigger problems

Once you’ve written a couple of hundred articles, you’ll have enough data to understand the bigger problems your audience needs to solve.

Bigger problems:

Stuff that is much bigger than an article or a tweet.
Things that need explaining in greater detail.

Actively seek out those bigger problems and write them down. How do you find them?

Review your comments section
Look at what questions people ask you daily
Ask yourself what problems you had at that stage

I built my first product when I realized people like me wanted to build an audience on the internet. As I’d been doing that for 2.5 years, I thought I was in a good place to build a course.

So I did and it sold 600 copies in the first 11 months. Solve bigger problems with bigger products.

Step 6: Iterate and build

Between all my income sources on the internet, I’m making $5–10k a month part-time. All from writing. I do that in about 2 hours of work per day.

Pretty wild.

Writing is a great opportunity if you pitch it right. If you promise yourself that you won’t sacrifice short-term thinking for long-term opportunity.

Once you’ve written enough you can shape your business in whichever way you wish. Things get simple when you know your audience, what they want and you know yourself and what you want.

You build stuff, see what works, and iterate from there. Simple. Hard. But simple.

To build your thing without quitting the day job, join 17,500+ creators in the part-time creator club. Get more guides at: The Part-Time Creator Club.