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

We are living in an age where sometimes the best path to making a living “doing what you love” is finding creative ways to monetize not necessarily the craft itself, but all the things that surround the craft: how you write, where you write, who you write with and learn from, your knowledge about writing, etc. You might discover you can make far mo

For the rest of the afternoon, and the rest of the week, and ultimately the rest of the month, all I did was read answers on Quora. My feed was filled with a never-ending stream of questions—and attached to them, answers written like short stories. That’s what hooked me. Someone would ask the question, “What’s it like to be a serial entrepreneur?”

Growth hacks, social media strategies, “viral tactics,” none of it can be applied to your writing unless you’re actively writing in the first place. If you are publishing once every two months, or once every six months, then you should not have any expectations for the performance of your writing. Don’t be surprised if nobody follows you.

the entire secret to getting exposure on your writing online is to find as many ways as possible to make your writing resonate both on a broad level and with a specific audience at the same time.

You are perceived differently. When someone reads your writing on your blog, it feels biased and subjective. When someone reads your writing on a social site, it feels more objective and “out in the open.”

Again, the purpose of organizing your introductions using a structure like this is to both verbally and visually tell readers what “type” of writing they’re about to read. A 1/3/1 or 1/5/1 opener = easy to read. A 7-sentence opening paragraph = difficult to read.

(People think “clickbait” refers to the headline style that uses numbers: 7 Things, 6 Ways, 3 Mistakes, etc. It’s not. These headline styles are extremely effective as long as you keep your PROMISE to the reader.

Level 3: Define Your “Style” (Where Do You Sit On The Writing Spectrum?)

If you’re writing about what it feels like to fall out of love, you should also tell the reader about a time you fell out of love.

My personal belief is that the “exclusivity” model is the future for writers in the digital age. We are moving into a world where, because of the internet, we don’t need to be heard by millions of people in order to make an impact. Instead, we can create and discover niche communities that are hyper-specific to our interests—and in some cases, we’r