Helpful writing tips for new bloggers

Discover what it takes to grow a blog into a serious business

I started my blog as a project in my Stanford dorm room. I had no idea that, 12 years later, it would grow into a blog with a million monthly readers. Let alone a multimillion-dollar business.

I learned a lot of lessons along the way on what it takes to turn a blog into a business. I’d love to share them with you in a free guide I created, The Ultimate Guide to Remarkable Content.

Enter your information below for instant access. ↓

[optinform id=1]

Check out today’s question:

“What’s something you’ve learned recently that’s been helpful to your writing and why?”

After writing for 12 years on my blog, I learned a lot of different things about what makes material spread and how you write content that really moves people. I’ll share that with you later.

But first, I reached out to some of my friends who are popular writers and asked them the exact same question. So let’s take a look at their answers.

Mark Manson is an author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He’s been featured on Forbes, CNN, and Time. And he has a simple 2-4-hour rule.

“I used to approach writing the same way most people approach work: Do as much as you can. But what I’ve learned is that I really only have two to four hours of really good content in me each day. An amazing 1,000 words is better than a decent 3,000 words.”
— Mark Manson, markmanson.net

Navid Moazzez is an entrepreneur who shows businesses how to use virtual summits to build a passionate fan base. His process starts before he even types a single word.

“If I do a lot of research, the content will usually end up better because I know exactly what my competitors cover. A great tool for finding the most popular content is BuzzSumo.com. You can even see the influencers who shared the content on social media, and you can do outreach to them to see if they’d be open to sharing what you’ve written as well.”
— Navid Moazzez, navidmoazzez.com

Finally, there’s Kristin Wong — an award-winning writer who you may have seen on Lifehacker, MSN, Mentalfloss, or NBC News. She has an interesting way of thinking about drafts.

 

“The concept of shitty first drafts helped my productivity immensely because it’s the perfect antidote to writer’s block. The blank page is intimidating, and one way to overcome that intimidation is to write a shitty first draft.”
— Kristin Wong, kristinwong.com

Now as for me, I learned that I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. A lot of times, I took some of my older posts, re-edited them, added some new graphics, and put it all back to life. That infused a lot of freshness, and it turned out that a ton of people had never even saw the older posts.

Get the valuable lessons I learned growing IWT to a million monthly readers

I started my blog as a project in my Stanford dorm room. I had no idea that, 12 years later, it would grow into a blog with a million monthly readers.