After writing yesterday’s article on the topic of daily writing as practice I went to sleep. Something about the content didn’t resonate with me. If nobody is reading what I write, and I lack the time to market my website to new people, I’ve reached a broken logic situation. This effort in its current iteration may not be the best path forward.
The daily writing and gaining skills part is still valid. Even in a silo of limited readers and 0 feedback I can get smoother with my writing. The problem is I’m not getting anything actionable that indicates what articles are more valuable to people and which ones serve to stroke my own ego.
I need a better platform to publish on. I’ll probably still keep posting the content on my blog so I have a repository somewhere that is under my domain, but I’m not growing like this. I started reading this Nicolas Cole book on how he grew as an online writer, from Quora to big money. Maybe I need to go write in places people can actually follow me.
For 2 months I posted about PDF editors on Quora
I posted every day for about two months in early 2020. I was focused on answering PDF editing questions. I have an absurd amount of knowledge on this topic because of my past life. At the time I was writing a knowledge base and blog content on our PDF editing app.
Here is my content performance in the last 30 days. Keep in mind I haven’t actually written anything on Quora in years. With the exception of plugging Merker Miyagi as a Montreal studio once in 2022.
When I check my lifetime stats:
That’s right. I got over 200’000 views on content I wrote about PDFs on Quora. Now I’m sitting here imagining what would have happened if I’d been answering people on Quora every day for the last 4 years. I’d have received millions of views.
In case you were wondering, my biggest banger got 47’000 views and is about validating when a PDF file was last edited.
I’ve been pumping content into my blog. I will definitely continue to do so. But there is a good chance I need to be posting this content somewhere else. I am not sure what I do is fully LinkedIn friendly, but I need something like that. Then, to advertise my skills as a writer, I will go on something like Quora and just start answering questions every day.
My goal is to make money writing. I enjoyed getting paid to write and I’d like to get paid more to keep writing. To do this I need to put my skills in front of an actual audience. Sitting here in my blog, writing to myself is kind of a waste.
Owning a website is pretty overrated
I only have my site because I have my online store. End of the day I’ve made no sales off my online store because I haven’t optimized it or pushed it properly. I sold 3 buttons the other day in person though.
Everyone made such a stink about the value of owning your own website. They were so adamant that owning your website was the flex. Get all the people to come to your site, and then you get the traffic and you can avoid making middlemen rich. For a few people, with really established fanbases this makes sense.
For most of us, we pay money to Wix and don’t make a lot back. We don’t have established fanbases. Sure, Patreon will take 15% and YouTube/Twitch take fat cuts of the revenue. But you still make money off these folk. For all the whining about Spotify, when I was dropping regularly I made 600 USD that year. Sure it’s not incredible, but I had to spend a good 500$ on my Wix site this year.
Wordpress is free but not exactly fast for someone who doesn’t already know how to set one up.
Once you have a site, you have to convince people to go to your website. You either need to play an SEO game which means your writing is going to suffer. Or you need to play a social media game which is not really about writing. The only time I get views on this blog is when I tap into local drama and controversy. As fun as that may be, it doesn’t actually get me a lot. I did positive feedback for my article praising Montreal snow removal. I was able to post it when it was relevant during FB debate season.
In general I may be better served posting my content somewhere that has an audience looking for new things to follow. While I’ll still keep my website as my portfolio and long term destination, I’ll make more money faster by finding a new home to write on.
Substack is likely the place for me
My understanding is that Substack is where all the cool kids are. From what I can see quickly there are mechanics for people to find your work. There is an algorithm that can recommend you.
My homie Melsie told me she was planning on using it for a Newsletter. Then I got an email from her book store, I assume she started it up. This got me thinking I should look into it. I am ready to take my life to the next level. I need exposure to an audience that can critique what I do, but also is not in the same fishbowl environment I preach to regularly. An audience that I don’t know from music where this entire persona is attached to me.
There is a hubris to thinking you can outperform the system. When you do see the success stories of people who achieve that goal, they often played the game and used loopholes to catapult ahead.
It makes a lot more sense for me to go write in a place where I can read other people’s work. I can comment on their work and get some attention that way. Content is a game of interaction. Instead of wasting my time on Facebook arguing with people about whatever trivialities, I can go engage with content on Substack. Try and get myself to a place where people are willing to pay to subscribe to my content.
I want to write about what I think is interesting every single day without worrying about having to conform to Google. Maybe Substack won’t end up being my forever home. I do think the effort will introduce me to new people and help me get my new audience going. Plus I have a bunch of content I can import over to the site and see how it performs.
Anyway I’m already a bit late to start work. I wanted to get this draft done. This should also be my first Substack post.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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