The most important skill of 2023 is writing

Hi guys. sorry about the delay. Just got caught up with a new SaaS I am building(more about this later). It broke my schedule and yes, It was my fault. I didn’t plan it well. But hey, I am here.

Today, We will be talking about “online writing”. Let’s get started.

People are making millions by just writing online. Dan Koe, Dakota Robertson, Justin Welsh, and many more make around 30-100k dollars every month. Isn’t that crazy? And no, these are not professional writers who have written books for years and published them. They are online writers. They (just) write newsletters, blogs, tweets, and posts from their bedroom wearing shorts and make millions from it. They are making more money than most doctors by doing what they love. And How can I forget? They work for 2-3 hours a day. Yes. I know. Isn’t that amazing?

At the end of this blog, you will find my “1000 ideas” notion template which I have been using for the past 6 months to automate my content creation and spend only half an hour a day to post 24 tweets/posts, 3 threads along with this newsletter every week.

And let me tell you something even more crazier. Are you ready? There are still many people who don’t write online. Some don’t even know or care about online writing. The others even if they know how, just don’t want to do it because they rather let their life rot working as an employee getting a salary every month that starts writing and making way more but with consistent effort and time.

Today let’s break down why writing is so valuable, how these people make millions by writing, objections most people have for writing, and like always my solution to give you a simple framework to start your journey into making $1M working 3 hours a day. Let’s goooooo! (if you are already convinced that writing is the most important skill in 2023, skip to 4.)

1. Writing is Everywhere.

Yes, It is. Every piece of content, movie, or song you have ever consumed in your entire life is a by-product of writing.

We have never thought of it because writing is mostly in the backend. But recently, with the internet and social media, we have seen the rise of online content directly in the form of writing. (Newsletters, blogs, posts, tweets, threads, courses.)

But why is it so valuable? It catches attention. Writing has this impact that stays with us, unlike any other media. Most intellectual people have expressed their thoughts in writing. It allows you to pour your soul into a page. It lets people step in your shoes, understand the problem, be convinced that it’s important, and find a solution for it.

And personally, It brings your life to order. It captures the flow of your thoughts which become ideas. And it lets you build upon these ideas. look at it through different lenses, understand it in different ways, and find solutions for the problems.

Every great person I know or heard of has the habit of writing. From CEOs/founders of large companies to philosophers, write every single day. And I can tell you why from my experience.

It helped me store ideas.(I have a marker near my shower to write on walls). and later convert these ideas into products and solutions.

It helped me to zoom in/out of things and understand how little or how large they are.

It helped me process my emotions and find out the otherwise concealed root cause for them.

And It helps me document my life, my journey, build products from what I learn, and eventually make money from them.

2. How to be rich with just writing.

This is how the people I mentioned above make money. no fancy sales funnels, ads, and the other bullshit.

1. Capture the attention of the audience with tweets, threads, and other posts. They hit people with relatable content that they can’t ignore and give solutions for their problems. They add personal experiences and how they solved them to create stories. people love stories. You even see this in my recent content. I spent days convincing you that habits are so important because They changed my life. I gave you many examples of why you need to fix them. Then I started posting solutions for the problem I gave you awareness of. The results?

   reel-like engagement to my IG posts, got more than 4,800 views for a post in X, and added 4 more people to my newsletter.

2. This caused intrigue. But people also need authority. The posts/tweets don’t have the nuance or depth to give a clear look into your mind. They need to get more of your thoughts and understand the way you think. That’s why long-form posts newsletters, and blogs are such cash cows. They solidify people’s trust in you and make them believe in what you are saying.

3. Make easily accessible products that are physical/digital versions of the solutions that you shared. Put 80% value to it. sell it for 20%. The tremendous value that it provides will itself bring more customers. This can be anything from simple notion templates worth $10-$50 to cohorts, mentorships, and courses worth upward to $1000. And the money from social media platforms adds some revenue.

Here is the summary.

1. Create scroll-stopping posts giving solutions to the problems.

2. Prove your authority with long-form posts.

3. drive people to your products with organic marketing.

So you are solving your problems, documenting the solutions so you can easily use them again in your life, and making money from it. If this doesn’t sound like a dream life I don’t know what is.

3. The hard part

Remember that, writing online is simple but not easy. I repeat this many times for different topics. what do I mean by it? The resources, and steps for writing online are easily accessible to everyone. everyone has a social media account, you have abundant resources for inspiration on the internet, and you can also use AI to help you with it but It takes time. It needs consistency. It needs getting out of what you learned so far, looking at things differently, and re-learning from it.

And many people fail here. They don’t make a consistent effort to improve themselves day by day. That’s it. Everything else is so straightforward that there is no way anyone can go wrong.

Life rewards long-term players. You get a salary every month at your work but It takes a lot from you. You don’t have control over how much you make, you spend 8 hours every day working on someone else’s goals, you don’t have the freedom to spend your precious time the way you want and you don’t have the chaos that later brings order to life. You are miserable for the most part of your life.

With entrepreneurship (like writing), You don’t get anything in the beginning. no audience no money, you still need to consistently work towards it. but when you start understanding the game and start enjoying it, you are limited by your own time and effort on how much you can make, you spend more time on things you want to do, and you have your life in control because you know and are used to its entropy, and you can take a trip to vegas on fucking Tuesday (on anyday for that matter) without calling anyone.

4. How to write scroll-stoping content.

I hope I convinced you that writing online is the simplest, smartest, and finest way of making money. Now, let me help you start your journey of making millions if you haven’t already.

4.1 The Source

So, what should I write about? This was the question I asked myself when I started writing. I haven’t really done anything. I have no novel ideas. I know things that most people already know. I don’t have the knowledge that people want to read. and I was utterly wrong. This is a problem every one of us faces.

I want to tell you that you don’t need to create ideas out of thin air. You just need to take an idea, look at it in a different way, from a different perspective, and post your thoughts. You don’t know that there are many things that you consider obvious but are unknown to many other people. It can be the article you read, a movie you watched, a tip, an idea you have that most people don’t agree with, or recommendations. Here is an example from my personal experience.

I didn’t try chatGpt for a month after it was released. When I did, I used it to help my friend with her resume and interview prep. I uploaded the relevant experience she has and the job description and asked ChatGPT to create a resume from it. I also asked it to get questions that the interviewer might ask and many other things that help with job search. And at the same time, I was writing my first online post. I was looking for ideas and for a second I thought I could share how chatGPT can be used to create a resume and speed up the interview process. But I told myself that everyone else knows that already. Turns out, most don’t.

A few months later I saw an Instagram post about how ChatGPT can be used to help you with your job search and It was blowing up. When I looked into comments I felt so bad. Most people's comments were somewhere along the lines of “I didn’t know ChatGPT could do that!”. Bruh! People are dumb.

 To create more you need to consume more. Read books, listen to podcasts, and scroll social media but unlike everyone else do it with curiosity. Ask yourself “How did this post go viral? How did he come up with this idea? Can I do something like this? How do I do something like this?” And reach out to these people. It turns out most people, no matter how many followers they have, would be happy to help you when you ask genuine questions. Look at everything in your life like a creator and you will find ideas to make content.

4.2 Action

I wouldn’t recommend going all in like I did in the beginning. I made Instagram reels, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, and podcasts. Instead pick a platform, one format of content, and focus on that. I would suggest X as it is a writing platform. If you want to make content focused more on education, you can post on LinkedIn too. And a newsletter using Beehiiv, mailchip, or substack.

Here’s my content bucket. feel free to use it. On weekends, I write around 1000 words on some ideas. Will make some minor changes to it and post it as a newsletter. Pick up short lines, and phrases from it and post them as tweets and single-page posts. condense the whole newsletter into a thread on X, or a carousel post on Instagram. This gives me 1 newsletter, 1-2 threads, and more than 15-20 posts. You can do even more. Convert the good-performing posts to reels. record a video with the newsletter as a script. strip the audio and make it a podcast.

4.3 Consistency

As we discussed in point 3, this takes time. And it’s even harder in the beginning. People don’t value your content because you don’t have followers. And that makes it even harder to add more followers. It is so discouraging. And motivation can only take you so far. You need discipline. A content schedule that tells you what needs to be done. I made it even easier. I make and schedule the whole content for the week on the weekend. I took the Adobe Express subscription which is $10. It lets me schedule my content on X, Instagram, and Linkedin. I consume content the whole week and note it down in my notion genius idea bank. work more on them on the weekend.

“But the algorithm keeps changing. I need to keep track of it. We need to add hashtags in the comments. How can I make content that is pushed by the algorithm every time”. I say “fuck the algorithm”. You left your 9-5 to work the way to want. so don’t make the algorithm your new boss. Make content that is algorithm-proof. that is ever-green. That doesn’t need an algorithm to grab people’s attention.

“Easy for you to say. How can I do it”. I am going to teach you that.

5. Bonus: Say it with me “Fuck the Algorithm”

There are 8 intrinsic desires for every human that they can’t control no matter how composed they seem. They are called Life-force 8 introduced in the book Cashvertising. These are the core of every human emotion and we crave these throughout our life. If you allude to one or more of these in your content, It will hit them hard. They can’t forget it. They come back to you looking for it. Do these enough, and they will follow you.

Here is the notion template that takes advantage of life force and forces you to use your creativity to make thousands of posts from one topic. The first 50 buyers get it at $1. Then I am going to bump it to $10.