The first principles of selling online:

1. Increase the number of people who see your product.

2. Increase the percentage of people who see your product that buy it.

3. Increase the percentage of people who buy your product that rave about it.

Writing increases all three.

In January 2020, I started writing online.

What followed was 9 months of lonely, frustrating, and painfully slow growth.

So if you're a beginner, let me save you hundreds of hours and plenty of headache.

If I was starting over again, here's the exact playbook I would follow:

Here's the playbook breakdown:

• Where you should be writing
• How often you should be writing
• 1 thing you shouldn't waste time on
• The single most important thing you should do during your first 9 months (that I completely ignored)

Let's get into it:

First, where you should be writing.

When just starting out, I followed the conventional playbook.

I spent (wasted) hours creating a fancy website to host my fancy new blog.

And that's where I published.

I had to own my platform, right?

Except, there was 1 big problem:

No one knew my blog existed!

I was publishing into the void, spending hours every Sunday morning slaving over a hot keyboard & nitpicking every word.

Then, I would hit publish, waiting for the rush of attention.

Except... crickets.

The internet's crickets of indifference.

And because no one knew my blog existed, there was no feedback loop.

I had *no clue* whether what I was writing was interesting, helpful, or valuable to the reader.

Instead, I was *assuming* I was on the right track.

Newsflash: I wasn't.

Community-driven businesses are the future.

This was one of many takeaways from yesterday's Builders Build with @gregisenberg.

Here are 7 can't-miss lessons on audiences, communities, courses, and the future of business:

People confuse audiences with communities.

An audience is simply a group of people who:

• Follow you
• Listen to you

Building an audience is much easier than building a *community*with that audience.

And to do that, you can use the community test 👇🏼

There are five elements of every strong community:

• Togetherness
• Rituals
• Identity
• Belonging
• Engagement

When building a community, think TRIBE.

And to start, focus on creating rituals and fostering engagement.

There are two types of community products:

• Community-focused products
• Community-enhanced products

Community-focused products are when the product *itself* is the community.

If the community disappears, the product disappears.

This is how most people think of community.

But community-enhanced products are the real gamechanger.

This is when purchasing a product automatically gives you a sense of identity and belonging.

The most successful products will be community-enhanced.

Community-focused: @Clubhouse

Community-enhanced: @lululemon

For 500 days I've written 500 words of Morning Pages.

While they're usually just brain dumps, I'll sometimes reflect on specific questions.

As @tferriss says, if you want better answers, ask better questions.

-My Top 10 Reflection Questions (and where I got them)-

[THREAD]

1. How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?

This is one of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself. I do it routinely on the first Sunday of every month.

From this episode of the @tferriss show with

2. Where am I feeling the Resistance?

Whenever I'm lagging on a project, I ask this question to put the Resistance out into the open.

From The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield (a

3. What would I do to make today horrible?

Using the inversion technique, which I learned about from @JamesClear and wrote about here:

4. Where am I making things more complex than they need to be?

I sometimes overcomplicate things that could be much simpler. But societal forces heavily influence me to do so.

For a deep dive, check out this post from @nateliason

THREAD ON BUILDING A WRITING HABIT:

If it's hard to get yourself to write,

I surveyed 100+ people to identify how they overcome their blockers.

For writing blogs, books, screenplays:

Blocker #1: Procrastination

If you procrastinate occasionally, that’s normal—forgive yourself.

However, if you procrastinate endlessly, that’s a problem.

Procrastination is the result of two reflexes:

• Indulging in immediate rewards like browsing YouTube instead of writing.

• Avoiding work you perceive to be uncomfortable or tedious.

Let's tackle these two blockers.

A. Avoid distractions

Have you noticed how much writing we can get done on airplanes—despite having our knees and shoulders uncomfortably squeezed together for hours?

Why is that?

It's because there's nothing else to do on an airplane.

This reveals a truth about writing: needing a comfy chair, room, or "the right ambience" is a myth.

If you're waiting until your room is the right temperature to begin writing, you're lying to yourself.

Your blocker is not comfort, but rather distractions.

Two strategies:

How to outline articles:

A blend of @david_perell's process and SEO:

1/ David starts with a quote, a vague idea, or a concept that generates curiosity.

2/ Then, he searches inside his note-taking system for extracts and reflections related to the prompt.

These ideas come from his daily knowledge consumption.

3/ He then assembles extracts to create a narrative around a thesis.

An incomplete thesis will make a reader bounce. While the opposite makes them crave more of your content.

4/ Some of us never built a database.

To fix this, type your prompt into Google and examine the search results:

-People also ask
-Google autocomplete
-Image recommendations
-Related searches at the bottom

These will help you structure your post while following SEO practices.

5/ After creating an outline based on his notes, David rewrites sentences, words, and paragraphs from memory.

He adds personal anecdotes, analyzes ideas, and creates his narrative—A process he defines as POP writing.

Flying is accidentally the best ever environment for DEEP work and reflection.

Writers like @rickygervais do their best work on airplanes.

Here's 6 reasons why.

THREAD...

What looks like a bug - can often be a feature.

“A change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points.”

The restrictions we face on airplanes is what makes the experience so liberating.

AIRPLANE FEATURE 1 - HIGH EXIT COSTS

You can't find any escapes.

If you try to escape, you face death.

Negative incentives are built into the system.

"Incentives are a super power." - Charlie Munger

AIRPLANE ADVANTAGE 2 - NO INPUTS

There's no newsfeeds to refresh. No emails to reply to.

It's like knowing your heroin dealer is in a coma.

Boredom is built into the system.

Your monkey mind can't access dopamine - so it starts creating its own.

It is a distraction-free environment:

1. No socialising - You don't know anyone. No small talk.

2. No sound inputs - The engine acts as white noise.

3. No visual inputs - The seating structure means you see barely anybody.

So here is a secret: Not everything I write goes anywhere. I have at least 4 books completely written and edited that never went on submission. I have books that stalled out at 20k. I have docs on my computer with opening paragraphs I don't remember writing. But! 1/

Every now and then an idea sticks with me like that corner of tortilla chip that just won't go down your throat. It happened with SPARROWHAWK, which began as 40k of a YA story, died, and was reborn as a comic, thanks to @christopher_j_r and @boomstudios. And now... 2/

It's happening with THE WILLOWS, a short story that you'll see in @UncannyMagazine next year. This Southern Gothic horror story began as an attempt to sell my next Romance to @AbZurdity after the Blud books in 2014 or so. And she didn't buy it. Guess why? 3/

Turns out, it wasn't a Romance! It was Southern Gothic Horror. Even the bones of it screamed strangeness, not sexiness. I loved the taste of the world, but I hadn't found the right story yet. Tried to write it 2 more times and failed. Until I finally understood what it was. 4/

So I took the 50 pages I'd written and cut half of them, twisting the story around from a gothy Romance inspired by the band the Civil Wars and turned it into a spooky descent into madness. And it looked back at me from the abyss as if to say, DUH. Sometimes... 5/