9 Steps To Starting A Profitable Writing Business

ever since i can remember i have always wanted to do what i love for a living and that's what everyone wants right everyone wants that but everyone is screaming at them to do the complete opposite of what they want right so go to school do whatever you know you know what you're told to do when you were a kid and what your parents thought was possible what you thought was possible at the time you already had some preset future for yourself and so that's kind of what i did i started out on that path i went to college and i partied the entire time i learned creative skills on the side i studied all of my interests i was deep into fitness and nutrition and going to the gym with my buddies during high school and i also started online businesses like as much as i possibly could i just tried everything and then when i got to college i uh started to learn to code because i heard that it was lucrative i got sucked down that entire rabbit hole i was listening to coding podcasts i was deep in that coding community and i loved every second of it and so that's what i did on the side i built out coding projects and as my online businesses continued to fail i decided that it was time for me to call it quits because one i had been in college for too long so i dropped out i didn't see that going anywhere for me even though i was like a straight a student in high school and i ended up getting a front-end web developer job at in at a web design agency and that paid 50 55k a year so throughout this entire time i had been i always had a meaningful side project that i wanted to work on from the ages of like 16 to 25 i was always working on something on the side whether it be a coding project or a business or learning a skill or just building something out i did digital art for a long time i just always had something to fill my time and something that i could apply my learnings too and the reason i did this is because it made me happy right and after studying flow and psychology for a bit of time i understand why that is now that's because i had a vision i had a goal and i was able to focus uh my consciousness if you will or i was able to absorb myself be absorbed by the skill that i was learning the goal that i was pursuing and it was intrinsically motivating because that skill had meaning to me or that project had meaning to me it wasn't someone else telling me what project or what skill to learn it was by my choice by my design me creating and living in my own reality is what caused me to continue to be obsessed with and somewhat addicted to those projects because that's how it goes you want to be in flow for a lot of your life that is arguably the key to life is pursuing your own goals and educating yourself to the point of consistently progressing in those goals and this is why i believe so many people are unhappy because you could just pull up a random statistic online about how many people set and actually stick to their own individual goals not what you have been conditioned to want to create for yourself so right now my current projects are my new writing product which you can find in the description and that's kind of what this video is about but it's also getting back in into the gym i've been in the gym the entire time but it hasn't been as fulfilling and so me understanding this and becoming aware of this has made me set a new goal based on performance rather than uh vanity now looks are important but i want to go in and i want to progress on my lifts simply because it's just something i want to do there's that's it and it makes me happy to do that and i'm actually pumped right it's kind of ritualistic to uh get into the flow get in the car go to the gym and then just lift a bunch of heavy so why am i telling you all this is because there is one extremely important skill and that is figuring it out for yourself not doing what people tell you to do and doing what you want from a conscious mind not like a mediocre mind where it's like oh i can do whatever i want you want me to jump off a bridge okay i'll go do that and it's like that's not what you want you don't want to jump off a bridge what do you want what are your desires and what is the either survival mechanism or whatever is pulling you towards those things about is it good or bad do you actually want to do it does it align with your values do you actually have values and now what people are telling you to do is not going to be conducive to what you want and a lot of the time you may have to do it for your survival but at the same time you need to be pursuing a project on your own that will lead to you being you having autonomy and you being able to pursue mastery in the thing that you want to master full time right not for someone else and so another reason for me telling you this is because a lot of what i wanted to do with my life was deemed impossible because the closed mind of many would like to they project their opinions and they want to say the things or they do say the things that may discourage you or may pull you down or may lead you down another path and that is not what you want for yourself and that is not what i want for you so this entire thing means that in order to pursue mastery and autonomy to be able to do what you love full-time you need to learn a skill that will allow you to monetize those things to monetize your interests and your passions and so in this i'm going to present an argument as to why writing is that skill that will help you thrive no matter like no matter whether there's a recession whether whatever we'll we'll dive into it so why writing first the back end of the internet is code the internet runs on code the front end what you see is media right and so if you want to tap into the infinite leverage and possibilities of the internet and being able to connect with anyone then you need to learn one or the other right those are two very extremely broad pathways that you can go down code or media but you have to understand that code has gotten to the point where there are no code tools anyone can build a website anyone can get on social media and really reach anyone in the world if they are smart enough and know how to network so i'm not going to talk about code here even though i was a web developer but media right you have the you can use code or no code tools in order to distribute your media fast and to as many people as possible and that is what captures attention you need attention and you need people in order to get eyes on your products or services if you want to make money outside of a job you need to create a product or a service so whether that be a course a physical product like a bag of coffee if you want to start a coffee brand or a service business so freelancing we're talking about writing here so you could freelance with writing you can freelance with other media based marketing based skills and what blows my mind is that some people don't see the power in this right what used to take a team of web developers to build out a membership platform for let's say a course or even just a community that you build it would take an entire thing and now there's a website that you can log on and build one in less than maybe 10 to 60 minutes right and do not ask me in the comments which one to get go research you have google start using all of this stuff and the thing is is like how does this not fuel you with like the most insane energy of like i can do whatever i want now that i have these tools in the modern world that are on the internet that i can just like literally tap into but instead there's two types of people right there's the people that use the internet for distracting themselves and then there's people that use the internet to build leverage and make an income and spread a positive message and do what they enjoy yes it takes time but that's the main thing that is the main differentiator between abundance and mediocrity right it's literally a flip of a switch of how you use the thing that's in your hand so i talked about how i learned to code but that's not one of my main reasons for learning to code i wanted to freelance with that skill and that meant that i that it was more so marketing than it was code so i was building websites with website builders as opposed to just coding when i did get into freelance right everyone tells you oh you need to learn uh this marketable skill you need to learn e-commerce you need to learn seo you need to learn all of this other and that's what i did but there was a problem there was a reason that i wasn't making any money from these is because i was so obsessed with building the actual business building the website making it look good using my design skills whatever it may be but then when it came to acquiring customers that is when everything failed and that's when i didn't really do anything right you don't have a business if you don't have customers so that once i learned about writing which is what we're talking about and marketing and sales and how they all intertwine then things started to pick up because i understood i need to get my message in front of people and present an argument for my services and promote myself and display my value online if i want access to these opportunities so again why writing and now you have to understand that media what people see on the internet and what catches attention the foundation of media is writing tweets or writing threads are writing newsletters blogs are writing youtube videos are from a written script or at least they do the best from a written script because you can organize the message advertisements online usually writing based tick tocks reels short form video also it's like me reading a tweet from my phone right that's what i do is because the message is more impactful and i will outperform any dude with six pack abs and a poor message with my high impact writing in various mediums whether that be something like a youtube video or even uh what is it like a real or a tick tock but even then i can just screenshot my tweet put it on instagram call myself a writer because that's what i am and outperform and grow to 230 000 followers without posting uh like a picture of my six pack or something like that even though i could probably beat out some people but i just like writing it's more private right it's more private and i can dedicate myself to a craft and delivering a valuable message as opposed to just joining in on the the sausage fest online so since this is a bit different from my other videos because this one is more actionable right some of my other ones are more abstract which i enjoy doing but i want to deliver some more value over the coming weeks months so towards the end of my videos after i give context like that i'm going to go over step by step either process advice or just a framework you can use to actually implement the things that i'm saying into your life and test them and practice for yourself so these are my nine steps for starting a one person writing business and just to i guess give social proof or authority because it's important to show that i know what i'm doing i'm not a writer i don't have an english degree i don't you don't need an english degree i don't think the world wants english degrees writing online they want good authentic and impactful writers which means high energy aka talking about the things you want to talk about and delivering it in your own unique voice like you would be texting a friend that's what social media is this is digital writing as opposed to professional writing or academic writing so i'm throwing a lot of the rules out the window with my writing just because i like to write how i speak and i like to write whether it follows the perfect little writing rules or not i like to write how i want to write and how i think it will deliver the most impact and the most value so i'm just saying here that i average around forty to sixty thousand dollars per month from my writing in about two hours a day of that writing now of course i am also building projects on the side so i do work longer than that but overall if i were to strip away everything except for twitter my newsletter and uh twitter threads i would retain 80 to 90 of my income simply because i don't really promote on other platforms and all of my other platforms like youtube or instagram they're all just based off of what i've already written right as a writer so let's get into the steps right so step one is to choose a topic that you cannot shut up about right and so how do you find these topics well one what are your favorite books what do you enjoy reading what do you get sucked into the other thing is what is your youtube watch history right what are you genuinely interested in that you love learning about and love teaching about right to your friends let's say you learn something and then your friend asks oh what are what's going on in your life and you're like oh well i'm learning about uh i'm learning how to code and i started building this website and it's really cool like have you ever heard about html css and the thing that sucks is that your friends don't really give a about that but there's an audience online that does and they want to hear you talk about it no matter your experience because that's all perspective based it's like oh well i can't get online and say that i'm making forty to sixty thousand dollars a month writing so what can i do well you can talk about it from a different perspective right you can post something as simple as seven things that i learned about impactful writing right and then that is angled from a position that not only helps you build authority but you don't have to fake it and like be try to be this guy that makes a ton of money you just be the guy that is learning brand is what you do so whatever you're doing right now that's how you write right so if you're learning about something then you are writing about how you are learning this specific thing and you're teaching what you are learning so there's a few other ways that was like youtube watch history and your favorite books but your social your favorite social media accounts that aren't meme accounts or aren't they're value creators they create value and they give good advice so step number two is to brainstorm a unique perspective why because novelty catches attention people like new things that's why when you go out in nature and you're like oh wow this is so beautiful it's novelty or when you read a book and you read someone's unique perspective that completely makes sense to you and changes the way you think about it that's one dopamine in your brain that's excitement but it's caused by a novel perspective so how do you come up with a novel perspective i want you to brain dump or write down based on the topic that we wrote down earlier common problems associated with that topic benefits from overcoming those problems and goals common goals associated with that what are you helping people achieve right that's where how-to advice comes in where it's like what goal are you helping them achieve and what problems are standing in the way your personal experiences related to that and now after that what you do is you write it as if you were explaining how to get to that goal to a friend knowing what you do with all of that context where it's like okay well i'm trying to get to this goal but the problem standing in the way is this so how am i going to tell someone how to get there because a problem creates the perspective right everyone has different problems but that's what creates the perspective is pretty much what reality or what angle are you looking at this goal from and achieving this goal from that's a unique perspective so step number three is to write 1000 plus words on the topic so every single piece of online content or at least good content is based around a personal or professional problem so here's how you'll structure your writing that you can use this a thousand words for let's say a newsletter or a blog article or even like an instagram caption or something like that where you have a thousand words it starts with a problem so you explain the problem it's called a lead which comes after a headline so you explain the problem and you paint a picture of the problem and how it's impacting people's lives and then next what you can do is you can either go into straight step-by-step advice on how to overcome that or you can give some context relating to the benefits and why it is important to overcome that problem to persuade people further to actually take action so would go explain the problem give context and the why behind why they should solve that problem and talk about the benefits of overcoming it so that's paragraph two and then paragraph three or section three is step-by-step advice on how to uh do that it's the same thing as this youtube video alright so step four is setting up a blog or a newsletter software so this is mainly for building authority right long form content builds authority more than like a short form tweet or reel or tick tock those are difficult to make sales on and what people use those for is to drive people to their email list and sell once they've built authority with the depth that they provide in their content and holding attention for longer right so i rarely use fancy sales funnels or any of that anymore i use what i call the two hour content ecosystem so what that is is i write a newsletter every week i condense that into a thread i condense the actionable part into a thread which is actually step five of this but i condense that into a twitter thread and i base my tweets off of that post for the week and then i plug my backlog newsletter on the blog to under my tweets so people can read it and not only subscribe to the newsletter there but purchase my products and services that i plug inside of the newsletter so you rarely see me promote on the timeline unless i am promoting like a new product like i am in this video with the two-hour writer so step number five is to repurpose the actionable step-by-step section into a twitter thread that can be turned into an instagram carousel or something else along those lines but that is usually how you grow on social media to start is through actionable step-by-step content to prove your authority and people just love lists and it gets your brain juices flowing when you write a list a day so you can do a list tweet where it's like how to do this step step step step step and then summarize it in one line boom you're you're a tweet writer now so step number six is learning how to actually grow on a platform right because too many people think or think they're too good to actually learn strategies for social media growth when it's it's literally the differentiator between like whether you do what you love for a living or not and so set your ego aside because it's not just posting good content if you aren't growing one your content probably sucks like good content yes is a given but if it's like i you have all of these expectations where it's like oh man i'm this crazy philosopher and i like to write things so clever but nobody likes it it's a problem with them and it's like no dude you have no idea what people want and you have no idea what an impactful message consists of so the main thing is that you have to understand one branding so what makes a good profile what makes a compelling profile and what makes people want to follow you all of this is human nature and human behavior it's psychology it's marketing and then what you also need to learn is how to get eyes on your profile because you can have the best profile and best content out there but if you don't know how to get eyeballs on your profile then you're not going to grow so how do you get eyes on your profile one and the most effective way is people sharing your content with their audience right so this is a retweet this is a story share this is a facebook share this is a youtube share this is a like people sharing your newsletter i don't know but then the so there's multiple ways to do this one is networking with other accounts that are similar to you if you've taken a basic social media growth course you understand the importance of networking and you understand that engagement groups are a thing now i'm not a huge fan of engagement groups but i am a fan of making friends networking with them and actually having someone that you can grow with online sharing strategies sharing each other's posts it's a group of like three to five people that are like your close online friends because your offline friends probably aren't doing this so you need a new friend group to help grow with you so another common way of doing this is commenting on other big accounts posts because they have a large audience so if you post a good comment that delivers value and catches attention this is where you can practice your writing skills then people will click on your profile and if your profile is good they'll follow you so another way is to make your newsletter so good that it just gains traction eventually and people start talking about it and sharing it with their friends and it's the same with the youtube video where you see a long youtube video and someone shares it and they're like damn this is so good and you start building loyal followers from the start and then a a less taboo way than you think of growing is by paying for shares and i'm not talking i'm not talking paid advertisements like facebook ads or instagram booths or twitter boosts or other things like that it's no you're paying it's called influencer marketing it's extremely important to learn in modern times and it's really you pay someone else to share your content right they share it you get your content in front of someone's audience if they like your content then they follow you and you're good to go i don't like shout outs i like just pay someone for shares so number seven is to turn the impactful ideas from your long form content so your newsletters into tweets so my favorite way of writing shorter form like punchy content is uh the ppp framework that i came up with and that i talk about in my new course which is poll perspective punchline so first you pull them in with something that catches attention now this can be so many different things and i would recommend you study like headlines or just how people capture attention or how people lead into the body of their post right where you can use a statistic you can use a shocking fact you can use things like the word you or you can exaggerate a bit where it's like the greatest skill of the 21st century is writing right because people start reading it's like the most the greatest skill okay i'm going to continue writing reading because i want to figure out what that is so you have to understand what catches attention what leads people into the valuable parts of your post so then the unique perspective or just a different way of framing it is good and then after that is a punch line so something that ties it all together so i'll give one example here this is a recent tweet of mine and it says people will spend 10 hours worrying about a task that takes 10 minutes to complete so not only there am i starting with people which people relate with right it's like people on people i'm going to read this people will spend 10 hours and then 10 and 10 are also numbers those catch attention uh with themselves and this is also unique perspective on like worrying about stupid things right so it's spending 10 hours worrying about a task that takes 10 minutes to complete and that's the punch line in itself as well so one sentence can have this in entirety but let's go over a different one right so most people will spend eight hours on someone else's dreams four hours hiding from their own two hours going through the motions 16 hours awake 24 hours of sleep it doesn't have to take 40 years in a retirement plan to realize that a participation trophy isn't fulfilling so you can see this ppp framework spread out a bit more in like longer list style tweets because i have the first line most people will spend which catches attention because it's most people and then a unique perspective on like what people do and i use numbers to hold attention as well and then i wrap it up at the end with it doesn't have to take 40 years in a retirement plan to realize that a participation trophy isn't fulfilling and so this is just one of many ways to start writing shorter form content the best you can do is really to start reading short form content or as with learning anything you have to imitate and then innovate where you imitate someone's tweet right and use it as like a soft structure for your own and of course do not copy it shouldn't have to say that but do not copy or plagiarize people's stuff you just use it as inspiration and take the structure of the tweet and make your own and then once you get used to it and practice and realize like okay this this is working this isn't working then you can start to play around with it and see what works best for you so number eight is developing a system a writing system so you can use other people's writing systems all the time and i actually take pride in this because in the two-hour writer i help you create your own system but the thing with this is that if you use someone else's system or framework that's great right and this is what i want you to do though because um things like systems and absolute advice and like all of that stuff it strips you of your ability to figure things out for yourself self-experiment and come to your own conclusions which is what makes a real expert so my best advice is to research different frameworks and systems for writing or anything this is a universal principle where you research what you want to do you find the different perspectives you create your own you literally write down steps of like okay i'm going to do this with my writing whether it be like the problem the context and the step-by-step advice or like just when you write at your desk am i going to try writing in 30 minute blocks or hour blocks or am i going to write in the morning or at night and you test and you experiment and you see what works best for yourself and then you can eventually package up this system and tell people why it works for you and then number nine the last thing is branch out to other platforms so once you have validated ideas from let's say twitter then you can take those validated ideas that have done well in terms of engagement and have helped you grow and take those two other platforms and just talk start talking about them again because you already know they're going to lead to growth right i grew on instagram 10 times faster than anyone else because i already had validated ideas that i knew would do well as content on instagram or linkedin or youtube or even tick tock in some cases or anything so let's recap on all of this and what you can do with one to two hours of writing a day and considering that you have a product or service that you can sell or you have an idea for one that you can build and fuel with your audience but eventually if you want and you believe in yourself and you have an abundance mindset and you understand that the internet is infinite then you can make a higher monthly salary than uh like one of the world's most highest paid doctors because they have a cap there is no room for improvement for a lot of them so here is a recap first choose a topic that you cannot shut up about two brainstorm a unique perspective that you have three write one thousand plus words in a structured way for sign up for a blog or newsletter platform and post it five turn the actionable part of that newsletter itself into a twitter thread five is learn how to network and grow on the platform six is turn your ideas from the newsletter into individual tweets so you have like a perpetual cycle of content next is develop a system for your writing and then the last one is to branch out to other platforms when you are ready and when you have validated ideas so with all of that my new course the two hour writer is going out soon it is on pre-sale right now depending on when you see this video but if you want the pre-sale discount you can go to 2-hour writer.com check the link in my description uh i go over all of my writing systems from newsletters threads tweets and all of that fun stuff and i teach you the fundamentals of writing in the digital world i even throw in some time management and like productivity stuff in there so all in all if you want to implement what we talked about today and a lot lot more you want to understand the depth behind everything because this is social media this is surface level like i gave you pretty nine pretty in-depth stuff but there's so much more to it it's literally my entire life right that i need to get across to you and show how i structure it and how you can do it yourself so if you're interested in writing being the foundation of media and breaking into this and being able to talk about whatever you want and build an audience then check it out link in the description and i will see you in the next video

2022-08-29 22:59

Other news