You want to be a content creator. You’re sure you can be great. You’ve seen enough success porn to know all you need to do is work hard and one day you’ll make it. You’ll have the life of your dreams and live happily ever after.

Sorry, it’s time to burst your bubble.

The reality is different. I’ve grown exponentially in the last year myself and outearn my old-day job so some would think I’ve made it. They don’t see the challenges I face and how much thought goes into what I do.

Yet Ali Abdaal is a couple of years ahead of me. He’s become one of those semi-mythical beasts. A millionaire content creator. Surely Ali has made it? He must not worry about anything at all.

Wrong. He recently posted a life update and it warmed my heart to see how many of his problems I could relate to. If you dream of making it big, you must understand the realities of what this actually means.

Some of the dilemmas you face now will stay with you for years to come. You shouldn’t feel shame for being unsure as even Ali Abdaal is too.

#1 Medium to long term planning

I never thought I’d still be writing 2 years after I started. It was a new year’s resolution. As 80% of these fail, I would have been impressed if I wrote more than five pieces.

I kept going until one day I reached a tipping point. The excitement of a fresh hobby had faded. Focusing on putting out content every week became a chore. I realized I was running on a hamster wheel.

Ali’s early goal was to post two YouTube videos a week. Weekly targets create constant pressure but take you away from the big picture. It takes a certain type of person to be happy being a content mill and it’s not me. It’s not Ali either.

He’s now working on a mix of different projects, some with longer cycles than others like writing a book. He’s launching new products where he can build something long-term rather than the temporary nature of most content. You should think about doing the same to keep the passion going.

#2 What do you want from life

This planning fits into the bigger question of what’s the point of it all?

In normal careers, you follow a clear ladder of progression. You aim for the next promotion whilst trying to balance everything else on the side. In content creation, the appeal of more followers and views fades fast. The intensity of high from my first 5k followers was much greater than when I gained 50k.

We’re sold the idea becoming a content creator means freedom but how many of us live the way we dream about?

Ali has all the resources to live the way he wants but still wonders why he doesn’t live that way. Make sure you always think about how content creation fits into your wider goals for life. Some of you will want to become famous. Others would rather keep their privacy.

Know what you want so you don’t sleepwalk into a life you hate.

#3 Organizational design

Many side hustlers have unrealistic expectations of what life as a full-time content creator is like. It’s not all sunshine. Administration gremlins eat away at your day but you can’t shake them. I’m sorry to ruin your fantasy if you thought you can sit there and be creative all day.

Ali has an immense machine powered by 20 employees supporting him. You can’t reach such a scale alone unless you hate your sleep, your friends, your family, and your mental health. I don’t advise trying. I have three people working for me because I value my time.

Yet none of us know the best way to run this type of organization. It comforts me to know even Ali struggles with whether he’s managing things in the right way. Before you quit your job to become a content creator, make sure you understand it means becoming an entrepreneur too.

#4 Trying to make good content

Here’s a confession, I have tuned out of Ali’s content in recent times. He was flirting with clickbait too much and I felt it was inauthentic. I worry people will do the same to me.

Ali won me back in this video though. I was impressed he admitted he stresses about the same things I do. The temptation to get lost in the numbers can be too much sometimes and you forget what makes you worth listening to in the first place. He actually deleted the videos which I had rolled my eyes at. Top marks.

None of us are perfect and we’ll all make mistakes by following the bright lights. The simple solution is asking yourself the same question Ali asks himself:

“Am I proud of this?”

#5 Experimenting with different platforms

Newbies wonder if they are starting on the right platform.

Experts wonder if their platform is dying.

It’s funny how every platform has its own doomsayers. They shout loudly and tell everyone else the game is up! They do this for months without leaving the “dead” platform. It causes unnecessary panic for everyone in their radius.

I’m entering the YouTube world now. Ali is wondering if he should focus on TikTok instead. He doesn’t want to make TikTok content but he is scared of being left behind.

Stable times are the exception, not the rule. There will never be an extended period where you feel 100% confident you’re doing the right thing. You must accept this and back yourself to adapt if it comes to it. Panic without action is exhausting.

#6 Having a niche vs not having one

I’m sure you’ve gone through this same battle. Many people are firmly in one camp or the other in public but in private, we all doubt our decisions.

Ali knows his productivity and finance-related content make him the most money. From a business perspective, he should focus on this niche. The problem is he prefers making content about a variety of topics. Does he choose money or fulfillment?

Like everyone else, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

My niche is now looking at how ambitious people can find balance. I feel like this will be a lifelong mission for me and I can maintain it for a long time. I hope my passion intersects with long-term income but only time will tell.

What I do know is I will never make content that is driven only by dollar bills.

#7 Day job

The ultimate decision for content creators is whether to take it full time. Most people would quit their day jobs instantly if they were bringing in $27k a week. Not Ali. He works as a qualified doctor for one day a week even though he doesn’t enjoy it.

The “doctor” label brings him respect. He’s embarrassed to call himself a content creator or a YouTuber despite his success. I can relate as I procrastinated updating my LinkedIn as long as I could. I’m still useless at telling people what I do.

People will always need doctors but there’s a tiny chance his content could get canceled. This negligible risk stops him from fully committing because he feels it gives him a backup.

It’s your personal decision to be full-time or a side-hustler but don’t let our people’s judgments keep you in a job you don’t like. Life’s too short. The skills you learn from being your own boss are highly marketable and I’m sure Ali could easily make several times his doctor salary even without a personal brand now.

#8 Time for yourself

The curse of the content creator is reaching an income target but being too insecure to take your foot off the gas.

You’d be surprised how stressed out the top writers I know are despite them easily being in the top 0.01%. It’s as if they lose perspective of how much they really need. I can spot the irrationality in others but sometimes I can’t stop myself from acting in the exact same way.

Ali knows his business doesn’t need to grow at an “exponential rate” yet struggles with accepting this. He still feels guilty when he’s having fun but he understands the importance of changing his mindset.

Wake up if you are neglecting yourself right now because of loyalty to the hustle. Mental health isn’t something you should focus on only when you have hit a certain number of views or followers. Build it into your routine now and I hope you’ll be much happier because of it.

At Entrepreneur’s Handbook, we believe writing can be the gateway to success for budding startup founders. A writing skill can help you reach millions of people, including potential investors and customers.

It was through the written word that our founder got on the radar of Hopin and helped it become the fastest-growing European startup ever.

Medium has launched a new writing competition that gives you even more reason to start typing. There are four prompts with a prize of $10k each and a grand overall prize of $50,000. The judges include Natalie Portman!

$50,000 is the kind of money that could bootstrap your startup to the next level. The prestige of winning with such esteemed judges would do your brand a world of good.

The four prompts are below. We’d love to see your work in these areas with an entrepreneurial twist:

• Reentry —Quitting your job. (tag: mwcreentry)
• Death — A company going under. (tag: mwcdeath)
• Work — Starting or joining a business. (tag: mwcwork)
• Space — Company culture or what it’s like to work at your company. (tag: mwcspace)

The full details are in the post below including all the terms and conditions. Here’s a hint: the work tag has been used the least times so far so that’s the one you have the best chance of winning!

Remember to tag your story with the relevant tag above.

Best wishes.

It’s easy for creators to develop narcissistic traits when they begin to see success online. It’s a truth not said often enough but I can see it in myself.

The rational side of our brain can’t accept we might have no idea why we did well. It must explain it somehow even if what we believe is nothing to do with our rise. Exceptions are ignored and fans are used to feed the ego. This can lead to overconfidence in the superiority of our way of doing things.

This is nonsense.

Everyone you follow is another imperfect human and we’re working things out too. There are some basics most people should follow but when it gets complex then there are few things that are always true for everyone.

Here are five common opinions pushed as facts.

#1 You need to want to change the world

If you believe a creator’s marketing in the age of personal branding, you might decide they deserve a Nobel Prize.

There’s an obvious incentive for people to paint themselves as if they are heroes and the money doesn’t matter to them at all. Some people convince themselves they are guided by selflessness even when they check their stats every 5 minutes.

Becoming a content creator isn’t like running for President. You don’t need to prove to everyone you’re doing it for reasons they find admirable. You must make sure people can find value in what you do to keep them coming back though.

I have many reasons for doing what I do but the main one is I enjoy being creative and coming up with new ideas. The money feels good too and you shouldn’t consider me a saint for doing something I love.

#2 You need to master language

“Write to express not to impress.” —

Ali Mese

This quote by Ali changed the way I thought about writing and it applies to any form of creation. Do you think the top YouTubers look up words to sound smart in their videos?

I used to use complex sentence structures and show off my vast vocabulary. Yet this made it harder for readers to understand what the actual ideas were. Quality is determined by whether readers resonate with your words not by how many 5-syllable words you use.

I believe this is why so few of the top writers I know are English Literature Majors because they have more to unlearn than the rest of us.

If the obscure rules were what mattered, I’d be dead in the water. I’m a native English speaker and until my younger sister corrected me, I used to randomly guess whether to use “a” or “an” until well into my adult life!

There’s a sweet spot where the complexity is just right. You don’t feel like you’re reading something aimed at children but it doesn’t hurt your head. The fun is working out how to hit it.

#3 You need years of experience

Many people who have been creating for years will tell you it takes years of hard work to be successful. Convenient isn’t it?

It reminds me of when I taught karate. There were benchmarks of when people should aim to earn their new colored belt but in reality, it varied greatly. We aren’t all built the same so it makes sense for us to have different paths.

Here are just some of the factors:

• Storytelling ability —All content creation is storytelling at its heart. If you’ve been captivating your friends and family for your whole life, your transition to online will be far easier. The power to engage people in real life is overlooked when people think about the digital world.
• Timing — Some people start creating when there’s a gold rush or a particular event that elevates them faster. For example, someone who was an expert in infectious diseases would have been able to grow an audience much faster if they began last year than if they began 10 years ago.
• Hours in the day — A creator who has only an hour a week to work on their craft will take much longer to grow on average than someone who can spend hours every day.
• Energy levels — If you’re chronically burnt out and exhausted, it will be much harder for you to put enthusiasm into your content.

This doesn’t mean you should expect to take off on day one but instead let your own journey unfold. No one knows how well you’ll do or when your highs and lows will come. It’s scary but also part of the fun.

#4 You need to be vulnerable

I once had someone write a comment on a YouTube interview of me saying how they feel like they know me because they’ve read so many of my stories.

They don’t.

I have so many interests and vulnerabilities I have never written about because I simply don’t want to. With any creator, you only get a tiny insight into their lives because like anyone else, they have a right to privacy.

Being relatable helps in building an audience but it doesn’t mean you need to tell everyone your deepest and darkest secrets. People are seeking all kinds of content and I know creators who have huge followings but have been vague about their personal lives the entire time.

It’s ok to pick and choose what you are comfortable sharing with the world. Don’t ever feel pressured into sharing a story when you’re not ready because someone tells you it’s the only way to grow.

I know sometimes everything feels overwhelming when you’re in the early days of content creation. I read the same myths when I started and it took me a while to realize I didn’t have to listen to what others told me I needed to do.

Despite the growth I’ve seen, I still have imposter syndrome. I hope reading these points has made you feel more confident in yourself especially if you felt you weren’t living up to standards you’d read about.

Remember to have fun with whatever you’re doing!

I started creating content in January 2020 and 15 months later, I quit my job after accumulating millions of views. It’s been an exciting and sometimes terrifying journey and I’ve learned many things along the way.

But that’s enough about me for now.

Let’s focus on you. Here are 10 tips you can start using today.

#1 Find a voice checker

Almost everything possible online has already been done. The main way we can stand out is through our personality but it’s harder than it sounds.

People were too kind when they complimented me on my writer’s voice when I started. I gained loyal fans but I had no idea what I was doing.

My little sister is the secret sauce as she reads everything I write before I publish. She knows me better than any of my readers and has no problem with calling me out if I sound fake or it seems like I’m trying to be someone else. This means my writing actually sounds like me.

Find someone to do this for you and you’ll gain followers who resonate with who you are. It must be someone who knows you from before you created content. Someone who knows you not your persona.

Message your chosen person today.

#2 Stop finding causation in randomness

When most people tell me about how they have taken a data-driven approach to their content, I smile and nod at their sample size of 5. I paid far more attention when 

Tim Denning

 with a sample size of thousands of articles talked about his findings on a call.

Most people don’t have a large enough data set to make meaningful conclusions.

There are a million and one factors why one piece of content did well and another didn’t. On one day, it was cold and rainy so people spent more time online. On another day, the latest Brigerton series was released and everyone was binge-watching.

You have to go with your gut in most cases about what is higher quality. Stop obsessing over tiny swings in data and put your energy into being creative instead.

I check my stats once a month. Pick how often you will check yours today and stick to it.

#3 Talk to non-creators

I see other people post on Instagram how their real friends don’t support them as much as their online friends.

I’m sorry but I don’t expect any of my friends to read my content because I don’t visit my doctor friends and clap after they treat each patient.

Most of your audience won’t be in the same world of work as you. It’s critically important to get out of this bubble and connect with others in completely different fields. Don’t lose sight of the rest of the world.

I went out for dinner with some friends at the weekend and we talked about my writing for maybe 10 minutes. The rest of the time we were laughing and joking about I can’t even remember what. I need this to keep me fresh and stop me from creating unrelatable content that no one wants to read.

Reach out to a friend today and try to not talk about your side hustle or work at all. There’s way more to life.

#4 Generate if-then plans

My mind loves being creative but it’s less keen on actually doing the work.

I have way too many ideas and it pulls me all over the place. It’s exhausting and stops me from getting things done. I’ll spend hours investigating some new thing I could potentially do then never actually do it.

The way I manage this is through if-then plans. I ban myself from chasing a shiny object until I’ve met some other criteria.

For example, I’d love to start a podcast one day but I certainly don’t have the time. If I can consistently write 3–4 articles per week then I’ll start a podcast. Until then I don’t spend time worrying about it.

This helps you build quality in one area first before moving on.

Get a piece of paper and write down some of your if-then plans today. Make sure you stick to them!

#5 Create a blacklist

Going one step further, create a list of what you’ll never do. As soon as you join any online community you’ll be flooded with things you could do even though realistically you know you never will.

Expel these distractions from your brain by writing them down on your blacklist. Maybe you never want to create content about money or sexual relationships or maybe you want to avoid creating TikTok or Instagram reels.

Whatever it is just write them down today and feel lighter afterward. The internal strain of being in forty-seven places at once isn’t worth it.

#6 Consume what you don’t like

There’s a tendency for people to pick a few others who they like and follow them religiously. It’s a great way to learn by dissecting what works for them.

The path less traveled is also studying those with who you disagree. The ones where you’re wondering how anyone wants to follow them. Just because you don’t like them, it doesn’t mean you can’t learn valuable lessons.

This helps to teach you about the wider audience beyond your bubble. It challenges your beliefs of what works and makes you more resilient in the long run.

You’ve probably already got someone in your mind who is where you want to be but you don’t like their content. Check them out today.

#7 Bring your external skills

I believe it took me 28 years to become an overnight success as a writer.

All the skills I gained at work and the life experiences I went through formed who I am and the way I connect with people.

I find it strange when people start a new venture online and act as if they’ve never done anything else before. Don’t try to grow as one of many on a production line, you’ll get lost in the crowd.

Instead, try to work out how what you’ve done before can help you in what you’re doing now. It’s likely your competition can’t do something else as well as you can so why wouldn’t you use your advantage?

Take a piece of paper today and draw a line down the middle. On the left, write down a skill and on the right write down how this could help you create great content.

#8 Have a different colored brain buddy

My friend 

Nabil Alouani

 has an odd way of looking at the world but it’s rubbing off on me.

He often talks about the colors of the brain using Herrmann profiles:

• Blue = analytical
• Yellow = intuitive
• Green = organized
• Red = emotional

The easiest way to work out which one you are is to ask your friends because we always self-identify as what we’d like to be rather than what we are.

Now find someone at a similar stage of their journey who you respect and has a different colored brain. They will give you insights you wouldn’t see yourself and add an extra dimension to your end product!

Send the message to your new buddy today.

#9 Do a complete re-do

Whatever your field, if you’ve been doing it for a while, you should be improving all the time. Going back to your earlier content should make you cringe.

Many podcasters sound wooden in their first few podcasts.
Many YouTubers look like they used a potato to record their first few videos.
Many writers have terrible flow in their first few stories.

This is ok and it is normal. Rather than avoiding your old work, you can use it as an exercise to flex your creativity muscles and see how far you’ve come.

Pick something you’ve made and makes you embarrassed and remake the entire thing.

Comparing what you’ve done between versions increases your awareness of the techniques you’ve subconsciously learned so you can apply them more mindfully in the future.

You can do this today.

#10 Have a ‘Why I do this’ list

Some of you are here purely for the money and I’m not going to judge you. As long as you understand your fans aren’t following you to get you rich but for what you offer them.

Proving this value can be difficult and take a long time. If you’re in it only for the money, you’ll find it even more stressful. I know as I quit my job, I feel so much pressure for each story I write to do well. It’s a horrible feeling and blocks my creative process.

So write down a list of the other things that motivate you. For me, it’s the fun of working out how to craft messages, the friends I’ve made in the online world, and the amazement that I can reach people with my words and find value in it.

These things keep me going on a tough day and pushing through. I would have given up a long time ago if not for them. I don’t want you to give up if you love what you’re doing. Just remind yourself that you do.

Get your pen and notepad out and write down what your reasons are today. Stick them up somewhere you can see.

It’s easy to forget where you began but luckily every week I write down 10 things I’m grateful for.

A year and a half ago, I wrote down:

“$0.98 first-ever article!!!”

I’d have laughed in your face if you told me I would write a title someday like the one you clicked on. I’d have laughed even harder if you tried to convince me I would quit my job to pursue writing.

Yet here I am.

I had already read hundreds of side hustle porn articles like many of you. I never believed I could do it myself because I knew I was nothing special. My writing was only meant to be a little habit to make sense of the mayhem of my mind.

I’d love to tell you I had a master plan and executed it to perfection but I would be lying through my fingers. I made mistakes and learned along the way but here are the three crucial lessons that allowed me to thrive.

#1 Use your competitive advantages

Most online advice about side hustling seems to assume the reader jumped out of the womb with a keyboard in hand.Everyone reading this has unique skills they have built from their day job and the other areas of their lives. These are what can make you stand out from the crowd rather than trying to clone those already in your niche.My day job as a technology consultant is challenging and I have to constantly adapt to be effective at what I do. It would be senseless to forget these skills are transferable and not use them to grow my side hustles. I’ve got no doubt my professional background has helped me:

• UX skills mean I can create my own unique imagery.
• Consultancy skills mean I can explain complicated ideas in a simple way.
• Networking skills mean I can create long-lasting relationships.
• Presentation skills mean I can jump on interviews and podcasts without nerves.
• Technical skills mean I can handle all my accounts with ease.

Stop treating your side hustle as an alien life force. There’s probably far more overlap with the expertise you already have than you think.

What you can do today:What you can do today:

Grab a piece of paper and split it down the middle.

On the left side write down the different skills you’ve gained from your day job. They can be specific technical skills or soft skills. On the right side, write down how you could apply this to whatever you’re trying to achieve.

You don’t have to have a high-flying corporate job for this to be relevant. I like Jon Brosio’s example of working as a waiter at a fancy restaurant. Through his experience, he gained the skills to talk to business people with confidence and he’s used this to win clients of his own.

#2 Take the T-Shaped path

There are a million ways to make money online but you can’t do them all at once.

I have terrible shiny object syndrome where I get distracted by anything and everything. Many creative people share my problem and it stops them from reaching their potential.

I made the mistake of trying to diversify too early. My mind became scrambled by trying to learn too many different things at once and I wasn’t seeing results anywhere. I have over a dozen subscriptions I took out for various shiny objects that I canceled within months.

Then I focused on this platform. If you google me you’ll see I have 34,000 followers here but less than a thousand on Instagram, Twitter, and Quora. By abandoning these other accounts for a while, I built authority and credibility here.

My self-confidence has grown because of this and I no longer need to chase so desperately. Proving myself in one space has meant opportunities for other side hustles and collaborations have come to me. I have my solid foundation to take on the rest of the internet.

Don’t rush through the early stages, take your time to pick one thing you want to pursue and learn as much as you can about it. It’s far better to be great at one thing than mediocre in 10.

Success on one path will open up the other doors for you.

What you can do today:

Choose one place to focus your efforts on and build a reputation for quality. Whenever a sparkly new object comes into your eye line, set yourself a challenge before you investigate it.

If-then plans are great for this. Right now, I will wait until I can write 3 articles a week easily before carving out an in-depth Instagram strategy.

If you are a YouTuber, you may decide to wait until you are regularly creating two videos a week before spending hours trying to grow your Twitter following.

#3 Find reasons beyond money

This isn’t a lecture about needing to want to change the world. You’re starting a side hustle not creating a campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet the cold reality is most creative side hustles won’t make you rich overnight. If you’re only motivated by money, you’ll get bored quickly and give up. If you need stability, it might be better to focus on more guaranteed work.

I’m an abnormal story because I got lucky right at the start as my second ever article earned me over $2000. I became delusional and thought I had things all worked out. I didn’t and it took nearly 6 months for lightning to strike again.

If I only cared about money, I’d have given up and would never have seen my income grow to where it is today. It was the other non-monetary aspects giving me joy and encouraging me to continue:

I made friends from all over the world.
I geeked out on learning about my craft.
Structuring my thoughts was like free therapy.

These kept me going and because I had a day job, I didn’t need to worry about needing to pay my bills. My writing was a hobby that could earn me income rather than a shortcut to being rich.

Even now, my side hustle income is volatile. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had multiple mini-heart attacks as algorithms change and expected income disappears. It’s stressful and few have any real security, even those at the top of their powers. I’m under no illusion it will become easy when I make the move to being full-time.

It’s a myth at the heart of hustle culture. If you hate your side hustle and are only doing it for the money, how is it any different from working for a boss you hate? Pick your poison carefully.

What you can do today:

Write down your reasons for picking a particular side hustle.

If it’s only Bob says I can earn $100k a week from this then it’s probably too good to be true. Look at the worst-case scenario for income and decide whether your other reasons are enough to keep you going.

What to take with you and me being emotional

As I make the transition from side hustle to a full-time creator, I’m terrified. I’ve come a long way from being excited by $0.98 yet in many ways I’m still the same person.

The mental models I used here to grow my income whilst having a job will need to adapt when I am free. I hope to bring the same thought process despite all the extra pressure that will come. Who knows, I may hate my new lifestyle and return to my side hustle ways.

The three key lessons from my side hustle journey:

• Use your competitive advantages — Don’t copy the people at the top, use your complimentary skills
• Take the T-shaped path — Get good at one thing first and see opportunities in other areas open up.
• Find reasons beyond money — Creative side hustles are unreliable, you need to find joy in what you’re doing to stick it out through the barren periods.

If you’re a regular reader, thank you, you’re a big part of the reason I’ve been able to change my life.

The writer in front of me was talented, charming, and loaded with potential. Yet without realizing it she had put herself in a box:

“My dream is to give advice to other South Asian women.”

It sounds noble but it was partly driven by insecurity because she didn’t think people from other backgrounds would even consider listening to her. This was deflating as she couldn’t see her words had value to people from any background.

I see this behavior across the whole spectrum of creators, from writers to Instagram influencers to YouTubers. Their content deserves to be loved by a wide audience but they pigeonhole themselves based on some aspect of their identity. It’s completely different from niching based on the content you deliver.

Whatever your background is, why shouldn’t people from other backgrounds learn from you? I say we need to change this attitude and dream big. Your thoughts have value beyond the boxes society puts you in. If no one like you has done it before then become the first.

Stop using qualifiers

Ashley Summer, the CEO of Quilt, triggered a LinkedIn meltdown by posting a picture of herself with “I am a female founder” underneath. Except she crossed out the female part because why should she need to differentiate herself from simply being a founder? A man doesn’t need to put “male founder” so why should she?

I think we should be free to claim the core word regardless of our background and not have to add a qualifier. It shouldn’t only be a white man who can call himself a writer/vlogger/podcaster/creator without needing to qualify. I’m a writer full stop, not a “South Asian writer” and I don’t believe many white men would argue with me.

There are many fantastic creators raising awareness for community-specific issues and making an impact. For them, it makes sense to use qualifiers as the targeting is important. Yet from others, I see “as an X” constantly when it has less relevance.

“As a millennial, I’ve struggled with my confidence.”
“As a woman, I’ve struggled with my confidence.”
“As a gay man, I’ve struggled with my confidence.”
“As an Indian, I’ve struggled with my confidence.”
“As a <insert something here>, I’ve struggled with my confidence.”

The identity here is less important than the shared experience many can relate to about confidence issues. The advice shared afterward could usually apply to the other groups of people too so we shouldn’t use words to give the illusion it won’t.

Now there is an exception where the identity has a clear impact on the narrative and this should ideally be backed up by a story or by facts. Without this, it’s left to the reader to fill the reader to guess why it’s important and they are unlikely to have the same context as you do.

False easy mode

It’s not unreasonable to think there are people who will follow you based on your identity alone. Psychologists have shown we tend to like people who share certain qualities with us through affinity bias.

The problem is there are almost always more people outside your box than inside. Creators can emphasize their identity despite it being irrelevant to their content and experience rapid initial momentum. Then eventually they plateau as the booster effect runs out but they are stuck thinking only one type of person wants to follow them.

The funny thing is you don’t need to force it for the affinity bias to work. People can take one look at my profile picture and name and decide to follow me if my Indian heritage drives their decision-making. They don’t need me to put “South Asian” in my bio because it’s obvious.

It would serve to alienate more than include unless it’s a key part of what your content is.

Everyone in life can teach us something

I’ve been to nearly 50 countries and can confidently say everyone can teach me something. I’ve learned from people of all genders, races, and any other way you could choose to split society.

If you were to list out the heroes who inspire you, I’m sure you’d find some variety too. Take comfort in knowing if you can admire the ideas of people outside of your box then so can others.

My preconceived notions about other people’s willingness to listen have been constantly proven wrong. I’m a millennial from London but am amazed to see I have readers from across the globe and people much older than me. It’s not because I’m special but because there are so many people who care only about the content.

Give people the chance to show you they can be open-minded too and aim for platforms you think are too big for you.

Collaborate with people outside your box

I was listening to a discussion by South Asian influencers about how they are struggling to break through to the mainstream. Their solution was they should collaborate with other South Asians more and raise each other up. This sounds great but why limit your options?

I see this reinforced cycle where people only reach out to other people with similar fanbases and then wonder why they can’t grow as fast. If you worry people from only one background will relate to you, a surefire way to dig a deeper trench is to only associate with those people.

I have a newsletter called Write Your Future with 3 other writers. It’s two women and two men. We all live in different countries. Two of us aren’t caucasian. We’re in effect endorsing each other and gaining fans from different walks of life. To me, this is a collaboration done right.

If you have the skill, you might be pleasantly surprised to see how many people want to work with you that you thought never would.

You can’t speak for your entire group

When you tie your identity in with all your content, it’s easy to sound like you are a spokesperson for everyone like you.

It frustrates me when someone claims to speak on behalf of all people of South Asian ethnicity. As if there aren’t nearly 2 billion of us with hundreds of different cultures and a universe-wide spectrum of personalities. I don’t speak for all people who look like me and I’m sure many will disagree with the points I make in my stories.

I have more in common with my white colleagues than someone of the same age who has lived their whole life in poverty in the slums of Mumbai. We’re complex multi-dimensional beings and focusing on one aspect so rigidly ignores all the other influences our lives.

I’m glad I’m not the voice of all South Asians, it would be an unbearable pressure and I’d be deluded to think I could even begin to accurately portray the diversity in their lives.

Preach to the unconverted

I understand why people put themselves into boxes. As recent protests by soccer players in the UK show, discrimination is still rampant online. I can’t blame anyone for taking steps to carve out a safer space for themselves.

I could have joined this writing platform, seen there was no one with a significant following who looked like me, and decided I didn’t have a chance. I could have boxed myself off thinking only brown-skinned people would ever listen to me.

I didn’t and I’ve seen many other people come after me and grow their following too. For many readers, it wasn’t they would never follow someone like me, they just hadn’t found someone yet.

If someone has a subconscious bias that people like me have less value to offer in their content then I want them to my name pop up even more. I want to challenge their beliefs and I will not hide. Neither should you.

Flying front kick. Parry. Dummy jab in front of the eyes. Hook kick to the side of the head. Front leg sweep on the way down. Victory.

The crowd was stunned but my instructor shot me a glare. This wasn’t the defense-first approach I had been drilled with but I saw my opening and took it. I broke half of his rules but the audience loved it and wanted more.

After all, why is Karate a martial art if you can’t be creative every now and then?

Too many good creators online are more worried about disapproval from above than boring their audience. There are many people who can learn the basics and doing only this makes you incredibly predictable.

If your content can be reproduced easily by others following the same rules then it is likely bland and soulless. Nobody dreams of creating that. There’s nothing wrong with following the rules but don’t forget to have some fun too. Your audience will appreciate it!

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” — Pablo Picasso

Learn from the right people

One of the biggest problems at the start is you don’t know what you don’t know. This means you can fall victim to anyone who preaches how to be successful online despite having no idea what they are talking about.

Bad advice repeated by different people often enough is easily mistaken for good advice. Put some fancy formatting on it and call it a secret then voila. You’ve got to protect yourself from this.

On any social platform, the easiest way is to look at relative follower counts. You can probably ignore anyone with less than a hundred Instagram followers who is claiming to know how to grow fast. My mum has more followers and isn’t yet claiming to be an Instagram guru.

If someone doesn’t have this social proof, look at testimonials and whether other people have taken their advice and reached their goals. This is possible as many great coaches were poor in their own careers; soccer fans will know of Sir Alex Ferguson as a prime example.

Listen to these people and learn their rules.

Separate the rules from the laws

Once you’ve identified the right people to listen to, split their advice into rules or laws.

The difference between them is rules can be broken sometimes but laws should always be followed. You can decide which is which by comparing with the other people you’ve deemed trustworthy. It’s only a law if they all do it, otherwise, it’s just a rule.

A law might be don’t post racist content on YouTube. It would lead to your account being banned and its game over. Yet post a video every day is only a rule because while many vloggers do this, there are strong examples of people who don’t.

We don’t want to break the laws, only the rules at the perfect time.

Play teacher’s pet

The audacious combination I threw at my opponent would have been useless if I tried it as a beginner. I first needed to spend time building up my skillset so I could pull off the more daring tricks.

Don’t skip this step.

You’ll be found out quickly if you only break the common rules because you aren’t talented enough to implement them. Earn the right to be arrogant enough to dismiss the lessons of those who’ve paved the path for you.

Sure, there are anomalies who can do whatever they want and people love them from day one but don’t bank on being one of them.

The key is not getting stuck being the teacher’s pet.

Context is king

This is the most difficult part and it’s why many people struggle to make an impact. Anyone can memorize a bunch of rules but fewer can understand why they should be followed.

The Hemingway school of writing suggests you should never use words like “that”. They make a sentence longer unnecessarily. The argument makes sense from a purist point of view but clashes with other more important considerations.

I use “that” if it’s the best way to make an idea flow. Maybe I want the point to be made slightly slower to allow the reader to digest it. If I stripped out every inefficiency from my writing, it would lose my voice and feel less like a conversation. To me, that would be a bigger mistake. (Did you see what I did there?)

For whatever you choose to follow, understand what impact it has on your end audience. What they will think is always a greater concern than what the traditionalists say.

If you struggle to explain why following a rule will benefit your audience then why are you doing it?

Don’t stop listening but maybe stop doing

I still ask for feedback on all my writing and try to understand why someone has made the comment they have. Yet at my current stage, I can’t defer my opinion to other people’s every time.

I’m carving out my style and my way of doing things and if someone’s advice feels like it would make my work inorganic, I happily ignore it. Of course, if I want to use their audience then I must play by their rules or choose to go elsewhere.

On any platform, you’ll see the people at the top have different styles and their own voices. PewDiePie was locked in a battle with T Series for the most YouTube followers but it wouldn’t have made much sense for them to obey each other’s content rules.

They are different and different is good. Different is interesting!

At some point, you need to take the training wheels off and believe in yourself. If you’ve trained right, why not make that today?

I’ve accidentally lied in every writing interview I’ve ever given.

“Did you write from a young age? Was it something you’ve always enjoyed?”

“No, I tried a WordPress blog a few years ago but no one read it!”

The truth is something came a decade before the failed WordPress blog but I wiped it from my memory. I was too embarrassed to ever tell anyone but I suppose it’s time I came clean.

I was “Backcracker_uk” on the discussion boards for Smackdown on IGN with over 5000 posts and comments. Thankfully, they’ve archived their forums so there’s no evidence.

Yes, it’s a stupid name but I was 13 years old in my defense. In hindsight, I’m amazed at how obsessed I was with blogging back then. I spent hundreds of hours writing posts for free just for the praise of random strangers on the internet. These were the days before social media so I had to waste my time somehow.

I didn’t realize the skills I learned would help me earn tens of thousands of dollars in my first year trying a new side hustle. I avoided many of the basic errors so many others make because subconsciously I reused the same approach I used all those years ago.

The websites people write on might keep changing but you can use the fundamentals from a dweeby younger version of me to give yourself a headstart.

Lurk (in a non-creepy way)

Engagement metrics have become an obsession for many online businesses and it’s easy to forget most people consume silently. You’ll have no idea who the majority of people who read your articles or watch your videos are. Only a small percentage of people will leave a comment or press the like button.

I was one of these lurkers for months on the Smackdown boards. I didn’t care about the contributors as I only wanted the content. Over time I started recognizing names and seeing how the social ecosystem on the platform worked. I became engrossed in this little world.

By the time I finally decided to write my own post, I knew how to structure and format my articles like the forum veterans. My work drew attention because I had picked up what types of titles and images people loved. I understood readers because I had been one myself for so long.

My approach to blogging as an adult was exactly the same. I read articles online for six months before posting my own so I skipped the mediocre phase. One of my first articles went viral with over 100,000 views. Lurking has benefits.

If you want to be successful online, stop expecting people to spoon-feed you. All the information is out there if you choose to find it. If you want to shortcut then pay experts for their time but please don’t take the entitled route of cold messaging people for free advice.

Eyes on the key stats

Every week on the IGN forum, there was a community update with a bunch of boring sections but I read every week to check the leaderboard.

The rankings were based on a quality metric of the number of posts a user had done and the number of followers they had. These were the only two statistics it was possible to access on IGN but they provided a great proxy. It was very active for an internet forum in the mid-2000s and over 100 people were listed.

I made it to fourth on the list at my peak and while I don’t mention it on my resume, at the time it felt like a huge achievement. I intentionally targetted this quality metric while I was blogging. I wanted everything I posted to add value and resonate with people.

Even today, this is the number I pay most attention to in my writing. I don’t want to churn out sub-par content in the hope something takes off. I’m measured and generally only post once or twice a week. I’ve achieved more than I could have imagined with 25k Medium followers without even reaching 100 posts.

In the long run, quality over quantity always wins out.

The community thread

I had no intentions of talking to random strangers on the internet, I was taught about stranger danger at school!

Yet consistently posting high quality and rising up the leaderboard triggered the IGN community’s curiosity. The rumor mill believed I was actually a user who had mysteriously stopped posting months ago after being active daily. They considered it unlikely a new user could understand their tiny corner of the internet so quickly.

The persistent messaging led me to begin posting in the community thread where anything off-topic was discussed. I used the fake name “Aamir” because I was still cautious but soon relaxed as I found I had lots in common with the other users. Their feedback helped me grow but more importantly made me enjoy the forums more and spend even more time there.

As an adult, I again had no plans to engage in the writing community. Why would I try to make friends with people who I’d never meet in real life? Yet the same thing happened and within a few months, I made close digital friends. There’s no way I would have the results I have without their support and I would have become bored and given up a long time ago.

The lesson is to produce quality first and let people come to you. Give people valuable content then they’ll want to connect with you.

Remember what really matters

As a kid going to school, I had many other priorities asides from blogging; school, homework, friends, sports, and all the other normal teenage stuff. It meant sometimes I didn’t have the time to post as high quality as I wanted to.

I was in a competition where two bloggers would be given the same topic and whoever wrote the better post would progress to the next round. I was into the semi-finals but behind on my homework. The pressure meant I made a fatal mistake and paraphrased someone else’s content.

The community noticed and did not hide their outrage. I was branded a cheat and all my previous posts were called into question. They believed I should have forfeited rather than cheat and it was hard to disagree with their logic. My carefully crafted image for quality was gone overnight. I was lost.

I’m glad I did what I did because it forced me to confront the unhealthiness of my obsession with the Smackdown boards. I left the forum and never looked back.

The same pressures creep into my mind now as an online entrepreneur. It’s harder in the short term to focus on high quality instead of just trying to copy other people’s work. Other creators will even tell you to steal other people’s titles and ideas.

The drama from half my life ago means I know better now and won’t repeat the same mistake. Growth is important to me but never more than my integrity. If you’re the same as me then learn from my mistakes.

I’m sick of most advice about Medium.

I started 2020 as a complete beginner and read a ton of bad advice that I was too inexperienced to ignore. Despite what people say, top writer tags claps, and read ratios are noise and don’t mean anything so stop chasing them. While we are at it, stop beating yourself up about writing every day, I averaged 1.5 articles per week.

Out of the 78 articles I wrote in 2020, 67% have at least 1000 views, 17% over 10,000 views, and 6% over 100,000. When I strip out my first few months where I had no idea what I was doing, those ratios increase significantly. I am also the co-editor of Entrepreneur’s Handbook, one of the largest publications on Medium with 187k followers.

Most importantly, Medium has opened up a whole new world to me and I’ve made incredible friends all over the globe.

I certainly don’t know everything but I’m not a one-hit-wonder or a no-hit-wonder. My success is recent so I can relate to the confusion of new writers. It’s difficult to know who to trust when there’s so much poor advice out there.

I’ll share insights from my journey and while you can’t just replicate it, I hope it inspires you to believe you can make it.

First, be a reader

I read for 6 months on Medium before even considering writing my first article. This was purely for fun as a consumer but I was studying subconsciously. I knew as a reader what formats and headlines captured my attention.

I became a fan of publications like Better Marketing because the stories entertained me not because I was profit-driven. This dramatically shortened my learning curve because I already understood Medium by the time my fingers started smashing the keyboard.

Reading elsewhere and thinking you understand what Medium readers want is like watching Hollywood films and thinking you can direct a Bollywood film. Don’t rush into writing because you saw Bob made $5, do it when you at least understand the basics.

Become an editor and be edited

I got lucky early on and one of my articles went viral but it took me 4 months to have another article take off. I exhausted what I could learn from reading articles and this got me to an “ok” level. Yet the difference between “ok” and “good” is vast (though the difference between “good” and “great” is much larger).

I started joining Facebook groups and found people were asking basic questions. I’d strongly advise you to read up yourself first and be self-sufficient before asking everyone else for help. Medium has its own guides and search function, use them. Even though I was a novice myself I found I could answer a lot of the queries and built up a rapport with the community.

I became a moderator of Medium Dreamers and started giving feedback to other writers. This helped my writing immeasurably as I realized what mistakes other people were making and started avoiding them in my own work. I made relationships with other writers who were happy to guide me.

You don’t need to become a moderator or publication editor to practice this. Go to a publication you like and look at the stories that didn’t do well and see if you can spot ways to improve them. Other people are much more willing to help you if you’ve shown the ability to help yourself.

Don’t feel entitled to other people’s attention

None of us have a fundamental right for anyone to read our articles. None of us. Readers don’t owe us anything, we owe them the precious minutes of their life they spend with our ideas.

I started with an attitude of a few hundred views a month would be amazing but then my expectations skyrocketed. The delusions of grandeur arrived in style but I started seeing results again once I shifted back to a beginner’s mind.

I was rejected a lot by editors early on and would whinge about other articles they let in. I was wrong. It’s like watching gymnastics at the Olympics without the commentary and void of any knowledge about gymnastics. Could you pick the winners? It’s obvious if someone falls over but who has a clue between the Cheng and the Produnova?

People send me messages on social media about how they have an urgent request and they need my time. Weirdly it’s about how to make more money on Medium not how to save a life. They are promptly blocked.

Every time I connected with a writer I admired, they already knew who I was and this should be your aim. Engage with people and help them out without any expectations. I know it’s hard to believe but writers have entire lives outside of Medium and making you money isn’t their biggest priority. Being respectful is underrated.

If you don’t have ideas, don’t write

The question I am most baffled by is when people ask me for ideas to write about. Why exactly are you trying to write if you have nothing to say?

Keep track of all the ideas you have throughout the day. I easily have over 100 headlines I want to write about and this keeps growing. I cut ideas off the list all the time as they seem way less exciting than when I originally came up with them. Yet the list never stops growing. When you’re curious about the world, you can never run out of ideas.

Too many people write about topics that they have no credibility or interest in because they think it will do well. Ask yourself, would you want to read a story by someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about? Save people from torture. The internet is full of junk already so don’t add to it.

You won’t mistake any of my work as being crafted from the hands of Shakespeare but I try to add a twist to everything I put out there. I look at multiple sides of the argument before coming up with my take. Any listicle I write has at least 2 or 3 extra points that didn’t make the final draft because they weren’t as strong.

If you’re always writing the article that excites you most out of over 100 headlines you have, it’s far more likely to be valuable.

Now I could dive into specific writing techniques to make your writing more engaging but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the stuff above mastered. Try to fix the high-level attitudes first and then worry about the more marginal techniques.

1. Read, read then read some more.
2. Engage with others once you’ve learned everything you can self-teach.
3. Earn people’s attention, don’t expect it.
4. Only write if you have value to add.

This might sound a little tough love and it’s intentional. I want to snap you out of following all the misinformation out there. I’ve teamed up with 3 of the top writers in 2020 (Michael Thompson, Sinem Gunel, and Zulie Rane) to bring you premium advice including monthly roundtables. Take in quality inputs and you’re sure to improve your outputs.

With only 5.7% of writers earning over $100 in June, I can comfortably say I’m in the top 1% of writers. This doesn’t make me extraordinary, I’m nowhere close to the people earning $30k per month yet I am a realistic story for people to follow.

I’m going to walk you through all of my money based statistics so you have a benchmark to compare to. I don’t have a long history of blogging nor do I write about anything related to my day job, so I was a blank slate. If I can do it, you can too.

I’m a sucker for statistics and tend to overanalyze to find trends that aren’t there. There are many misconceptions about Medium and I hope my numbers and charts can clear some of them up.

Individual Stories

I went viral very early. There was one story before the $2,400 one but I deleted it, so it’s outside this analysis. Yet the overwhelming majority of my stories have earned under $25 with only four others above $100. One story has earned over half my income and three stories combined make up over 75%. I thought one viral article would give me a license to print money and I was wrong.

What you can see here is the more stories I wrote, my average earnings per story kept going down. This idea of needing to publish a huge amount of stories may get more absolute money but most stories will be duds. This is true even for the best writers on Medium. Unless your name is Nick Wignall of course.

If you’re going to write on Medium, be prepared for a lot of failures and keep getting back up. You must learn from each article to break out of the rut and know your limits. Some writers have written hundreds of articles before making any real money and I’d have given up long before.

P.S. In a crazy turn of events I have had two more articles breach $1000 in July so I’m no longer a one-hit wonder!

Monthly Income

My monthly income has been eerily consistent through coincidence. Four months were around $500 and two were just over $1000. What I want to show here is Medium earnings are not always upward trending. After doubling my money in February, I was convinced I would be in the $5k per month club by the end of my six months. You may notice a pattern as I was wrong again.

As you’ll see later the composition of my earnings changed a lot over the period. There are wild swings in income so please don’t have one $1k month and quit your day job. There will never be a case of writing ten articles a month and earn the same amount each month.

This is true even for the people at the top of the pile, they only earn what they do by creating more viral articles. When luck doesn’t go their way, their income can halve easily.

When Stories Earn Money

The great thing about evergreen content is readers can find its way after it was published. Here you see my stories written in January earned the bulk of my income until April. Only in January and April did stories written that month make the largest part of my income.

Cut out the belief stories have to go big straight away to make money. I’ve learned Medium works in mysterious ways and you can suddenly get a boost from a story months after it was published. If I were to quit Medium today, I might have a random $1,000 appear in my Stripe because an old article going viral. The more good content you have, the greater the chances one will pick up. Be patient and play the long game.

Curation

I think this graph depicts my Medium journey well. I started on a high with a curation then had a streak of six articles without being curated. This is when I was getting agitated as a lot of new writers do. But then I recovered and now my curation rate sits pretty above 70% including two ineligible articles about Medium.

My famine of curation forced my writing to improve. If you’re a new writer and can’t get curated, have a long hard look at your writing before jumping on social media to complain. Up your game as this has a large effect on a story’s success.

As we can see here, curated articles average far more than the uncurated ones: $130.70 vs $21.16. Even excluding the viral article, curated articles average over $50. The distribution gives you a chance to reach a much wider paying audience within Medium which makes the difference. Uncurated articles can go viral off-platform and bring you external views but these aren’t as valuable. I have an article with 8k external views and it brought it only $20.

Primary Curation Tag

Curation matters but does the tag itself matter? My sample size isn’t huge for each topic here but my biggest hits have both been curated in Lifestyle. My single articles with Philosophy and Education tags have also done well and writing maintains a decent average. Most other topics haven’t even beaten zero tags.

It makes sense for some topics to have larger audiences than others on Medium but this is difficult to work out with any confidence. One of the money articles has since crossed $1,000 and would move it’s average up to second comfortably.

I would suggest writing about what you are passionate about rather than trying to game the system. Each topic could have a hit and you’ll likely find the more lucrative topics are also the most competitive. If you would have never written about Lifestyle until you saw this post then your writing will reflect this.

Curation Number of Tags

When I started on social media groups, I saw people boasting about the number of curation tags their articles received. I did the same myself but it’s only vanity. I’ve got a story with 12 curation tags and it didn’t even make $5.

From the chart, it looks like two is the magic number but be cautious. My two biggest hits have two tags but I have several others with this number that didn’t do so well. You can’t read anything into how many tags except there isn’t a direct relationship where more tags equal more money.

The number of tags is completely out of your control. Any tags are better than not being curated. If I repeat this in the future, I expect all of the curated articles I’ve written to continue to bring in small amounts of income whereas the uncurated ones stagnate.

Publications

The next debate is the effect of publications. From these charts, we can see I average the highest with The Ascent, Mind Cafe, and Better Marketing. Don’t be too quick to conclude getting into these publications will make you rich overnight.

The $2,400 article was originally self-published then housed in a small publication before moving to The Ascent. This is where it made most of its money demonstrating the power of curation. Yes, publications open your article up to more readers but many stories in these big publications fail too. We can see my stories in The Startup barely moved.

I see the true power of publications in the identification of quality. The people who run publications know their stuff. If you write a story that passes their standards, the story is likely to do well anyway. Some editors will tweak your headline or make small changes they believe will help your story. Feel free to question them but trust their knowledge too. (Full disclosure: I’m a Co-editor of Entrepreneur’s Handbook).

Article Length

Finally, let’s look at how a story’s length affects its income. There’s no big secret here and you can see at no length have I had more than one hit story. The two biggest stories are seven and eight minutes long but none of the other stories of this length crossed $50.

My only two stories longer than ten minutes have both done well but they were both about Medium with deep analysis. The read time on both was under three minutes so the extra depth of the articles didn’t make a big difference to the earnings. I’ve had longer average read times on five-minute articles.

I now aim to err on being too short in my articles rather than being too long. Over six months on Medium, I’ve become accustomed to seeing a long article and scanning through it in less than a minute. If you write a story that is long make sure it justifies the reader’s time.

What You Should Take With You

I hope by seeing data laid out like this you can see the uselessness of trying to analyze every little trend. Most of the takeaways are about reducing your expectations except for curation. Curation matters.

• Expect most stories to fail. Most stories won’t make the big bucks so lower your expectations.
• Stay humble if you do well. You can have a big month and find it hard to replicate again.
• Be patient after publishing. Stories can earn most of their money way after they were published.
• Write quality in Medium’s style. Curation is the only factor which seems to strongly affect income, I would make this my priority as a new writer.
• Don’t hunt for more tags. Curation matters but no evidence more tags mean more income.
• Submit to publications. But the quality of your story and curation matters more.
• Don’t obsess over length. No length guarantees a hit.