The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention

However, the reason why I consider it such a viable and worthwhile career path for writers (regardless of whether your dream is to become a full-time fiction novelist or a best-selling self-help author), is because copywriting teaches you how to sell. Whether we realize it or not, we as writers are “selling” readers our ideas. This entire book is d

OK. 4x per month, now you’re getting somewhere. DAILY? Shoot me an email (cole@nicolascole.com), because I want to invest in YOU.

So, in the game of online writing, it’s not just that volume wins. It’s that timeless volume wins.

The Golden Intersection puts the reader’s wants, needs, questions, and desires as the #1 priority. This article is about how you can learn a certain skill. This story is about how you are feeling falling out of love. This piece is about how you should be thinking about the future of technology. You, you, you.

You are not the main character in your story. The reader is. There is a nuance in what I am saying here.

Write how you speak. Record yourself talking about a topic and then transcribe the recording. Pay close attention to the rhythm of your natural sentences, versus the rhythms you try to use when writing to “sound” more professional in your writing.

Notice again how every single structure relies on a single opening sentence, and always ends with a single conclusion sentence. Pieces that open with two consecutive sentences in the first paragraph are weaker. And pieces that open with three or more sentences in the first paragraph are tiring for the reader.

(Every single sentence you write online, you are fighting for the reader’s attention. If your story “gets better” four paragraphs later, delete your first four paragraphs. You don’t need them.)

Once you’ve created a separate website and publication (which is literally nothing more than a professional-looking Squarespace or Wordpress theme and a bunch of well-written articles from a handful of different authors), you can start plugging your own content into the mix. You can write an answer on Quora. You can copy/paste that answer and publi