10 years ago, I did something odd

Hi Reader,

In 2014, I was broke.

I borrowed my wife’s credit card…

And I paid for a domain name: Become a Writer Today

Cut to 2024:

These days, I earn a full-time living from my site, which offers advice to new writers.

It took a few years to reach this point, which wasn’t always easy.

But it was worth it.

Here are 5 lessons from my strange journey to earning a full-time living from writing online.

I hope it’s helpful to anyone serious about creating content for their business:

1/ Don’t Worry What Others Think

Many new content creators worry about what’ll happen if somebody they know, like a friend or family member, reads their article, watches their YouTube video, or sees a post they wrote on social media.

The reality is it’s far harder to capture people’s attention than you think.

If you take creating content seriously, you’ll spend FAR more time convincing people to read, engage with, or share your work.

2/ Consistency Beats Perfectionism

During the first year or two, I published dozens of articles… and the response was crickets.

Finding readers and growing an email list took me quite a long time. Even today, 50% of the content I write or publish doesn’t work out.

But you only need a few hits to justify all that hard work. The other day, I deleted and redirected 20% of the posts on my site because they weren’t generating any meaningful traffic.

3/ Reframe Content as Investment

When my site started attracting some readers, I hit a roadblock.

I faced all these new expenses like email marketing software, web hosting, WordPress themes, etc.

I was progressing but didn’t know if I could afford to pay for these extras.

But then I reframed these expenses as investments in my, at the time, side business.

It didn’t happen overnight, but these investments helped me increase my income, cover the expenses, and, ultimately, pay myself a salary.

4/ Hire

When I started publishing articles and sending out emails to readers each week, I hit another roadblock: typos and grammar mistakes!

Readers started emailing me to complain about them. Not a good look for a writing website. But then, one reader offered to help. It turned out she was an editor looking for work.

I hired Beth, and for three years, she edited almost all the articles and emails for my site. She saved me hours each week.

More recently, I hired writers to produce some of the articles I didn’t know enough about to write.

All of this led to an increase in web traffic… and revenue.

5/ Focus on One Thing

One Friday evening in 2019, I looked around and realized I’d spent the past 80 hours sitting at my desk in my home office.

I was balancing my writing business with a full-time corporate job.

I faced a big choice:

Either sell the business and focus on a career or quit and go work on my own thing.

I picked the latter

Four years later, here I am.

I share all of this because creating the right types of content is the easiest way to grow a business online today.

You don’t have to do it on a WordPress blog like me.

I’ve met and interviewed dozens of writers killing it on Medium, LinkedIn, and even TikTok.

If you want to write online, it’s easier than ever.

All you have to do is start.

Write on,
Bryan Collins

P.S. I’ve opened up a few spots on my coaching program. If you’d like to work with me, reply to this email.