✍🏻 Art of Online Writing

Discover the art of online writing and how it can lead to personal satisfaction and even monetization. Learn from a personal blog's journey.

😝 (Boring) Personal Story

It’s been 2 years since I created this website to write online but it took me 3 months to publish my 1st article - cout<<"Hello World";

While my blog started small, it has grown thanks to an amazing community of 40+ loyal subscribers. Some stats so far: (I know these are tiny numbers but to me, it's a huge thing)

• 65+ articles published

• 22+ average viewership per article

• 40+ subscribers

• 65% of traffic from LinkedIn

So when I first started this, my close acquainted circle were so sceptical about whether it would take off as the human’s attention span is reducing day by day, and we are so used to consuming content in less than 30 sec. We basically moved from consuming content in newspapers or blogs to watching a 10-sec video on YT Shorts or TikTok.

But hey, have you heard about Nicolas Cole, who makes more than 10,000+ USD just by writing content online? Of course, he has a huge audience base and his writing is not even a comparison to mine.

However, what am I trying to convey here is, that if the market is that large why not give it a shot? Two years ago when I started, I was so sure that I didn’t want to monetize this at any cost (and I stand by it still). I just wanted to make content just for the sake of personal satisfaction and I see this as a way of logging my life. It's not that you can monetize your online content. I could have easily sneaked in Google Ads sense in each of my blogs and could have earned (of course not a huge $). But that’s not the point; I wanted to create a pleasant user experience for my audience reading my blogs. Hopefully, I am on the right path.

📝 What is Online Writing?

It's very easy to define online writing - It is Digital Writing. It is about writing content where there is already an audience existing. For example, writing on LinkedIn (i.e. Social media) about “5 things that you should add in your resume to land a job” is online writing.

Basically, you don’t need to worry about distribution, the social media platform and its algorithm will take care of promoting your content. Then the obvious question to you would be - "Why am I considering this blog as online writing?"

Yes, it’s very debatable but how I see it is - once you have the subscribers (aka audience), you are also basically writing online. It's just that the initial audience acquisition is gonna be different in this case.

So what is NOT online writing - "Legacy Writing", where you write a book and search for publishers to make a deal to publish your article/novel or whatever you have written.

🤨 But why online writing?

The reason why I see online writing works is not just we are living in a digital era but with online writing you get this amazing bonus point - FEEDBACK.

So in legacy writing, you need to spend 12-18 months (ideal case) on writing, find a dealer and wait for your book to be published and only to hear that your book was shitty (or pretty good) after 2-2.5 years. And by the time you receive the feedback you would have already finished another book which you have to rework.

On the contrary with digital writing, you have this instant feedback loop where you get comments on your work which will help you re-iterate the way you write. For example, writing short blogs/threads on Twitter can help you realise what’s working and what’s not. You have analytics on each of the platforms where you can analyse the engagement KPIs. This is the leverage that writers like Enid Blyton or J.K Rowling didn’t have - genuine INSTANT feedback on their work.

🙋🏽‍♂️ How to online write?

I have talked about how to write online in one of my previous blogs.

But I have realised one recent trend - writing a blog alone doesn’t work.

Well, it can work for businesses and organisations who are looking to take advantage of SEO. But if you want to be recognised as a solo writer aka want to build your own personal brand, then the key is to write on social media platforms where there is already an audience to consume content.

💸 Making money?

There is always this conspiracy theory that writers don’t make money. That’s not exactly true. For instance, below are the few ways that I feel one can potentially make money.

• Speechwriter

• Ghostwriter

• Writing on Reddit and Quora

• Brand sponsorship writers - who promote brands on their blogs

• Selling ads on your writing space

• Premiumizing your content

That is the Pro of online writing when you compare it with legacy writing, where you have to suffer looking for publishers, stack rejection letters from them, and you can make a deal only if you are "Famous"

But not everything is bad about the legacy writing. I just highlighted the word "Famous" in the previous phrase cause with online writing you eventually build a fan following and become famous, and publishers approach you to write a book. One such scenario is Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, where the publishers asked to double down on his famous blog.

Let me know what you think about my perspective on writing online. Do you still believe in legacy writing? Would love to have a healthy debate :)