Hello lovely subscriber of #TheWriteWay community
Welcome to our third AMA — the monthly “Ask Me Anything” that we host first as a Twitter Space.
Like the first two AMAs, this one was also so well-received that we had to extend the AMA to 90 minutes.
If you missed this month’s Space, head over and listen to the recording today.
We’ll host a Space every month on the last Friday of that month, so definitely join us, and set your calendars accordingly.
This post is a cleaned-out transcript of everything we discussed on #TheWriteWay AMA on Twitter on Friday, 24th May 2022.
1. “Is it still a good time to start writing online?”
And on Medium we see writers talking about a dip in earnings and that platforms have become saturated. What do you think about it?
Shivendra:
You know, I think that when I started writing online on a medium, I had the same thought. That you know the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the next best time is now, right? So I think I take that sort of approach and you know, writers.
Usually, I see many of them wasting a lot of time thinking if this is the right time to start or not. And then a few months down the line they keep on thinking and they never seriously.
Whereas if they jump with all their energy in the 1st place within a few months they can create a lot of opportunities for themselves. And we also have to realize that you know platforms are going to keep coming and keep going.
A certain platform being saturated doesn’t mean that there is no opportunity in general in the whole online writing space.
So while let’s say about Medium, even if you start writing on medium and feel that you know your growth is slower than many of the writers who may have started earlier, then you just have to be a little creative.
You know, maybe dabble with other platforms, think about your own email list, newsletter, etc. But you know this. The fact that you’re too late shouldn’t hold you back.
I wish I could give more practical advice, but this really is it.
Anangsha
I totally agree. With heavier, you know like I have been hearing this before I even started writing on Medium that you know it is too late to start on medium and not just medium like you hear about every platform that you know.
LinkedIn is saturated. Twitter is saturated. You can’t start now as a writer. See, the people who want to do it — they will do it and the people who don’t want to do it will make excuses.
So The thing is, you know it might be too late, but if you can start today, it’s still better than starting one year later. So there is no point in delaying even if a platform is 100% saturated, there is still an opportunity for new writers to shine. I’ve seen it happen all the time on Medium like new writers, they just join and they get so many views even on LinkedIn on every other platform. So the fact that it’s too late is a myth unless the platform actually is dying or closing down.
Other than that, it’s never, ever too late to start on any writing platform. That is my take on it.
Neeramitra:
It comes down to the cliche — they’re cliche for a reason, right?
Platforms will always be saturated. There will always be people complaining. But that doesn’t mean opportunity has dried up on Medium. Readers are going up by their day, and there are more changes happening. There are old people leaving the platform, so that creates pockets of new opportunities for new folks.
Also, every few years, if you notice the crop of the new top writers, right, it keeps changing.
There’s always an opportunity, and that isn’t even a question.
2. “How Do You Break Into the Super User Category of A Platform?”
Neeramitra:
The actual question was a tad different, but I phrased it this way so that it’s better understandable. I picked this term off a recent tweet by Tim Denning.
There are some writers right who are, let’s say, devoted to a single platform and they get so damn good at it that they don’t even need to diversify anymore. That doesn’t mean you know you don’t have to do it, but the point is they are the ones who seem to be killing it always, being at the top, and so on.
While I’m no top of the top writer, I consistently hover in the top 5 of multiple Topics on Medium so I can give my 2 cents here.
If you want to level up in a game, you can’t just be focusing on your character, right? Along with ramping him up and stuff, you still have to look for loopholes and shortcuts, and strategies. That’s where gaming YouTubers and the community comes into the picture. This is very similar.
The thing is success on Medium especially or in general in life has been repeated so many times — that there’s no need for you to reinvent the wheel.
You only have to observe what the actually successful ones are doing. And for writers, the advice I would give us for this.
Go through every I call it mindful consumption. Let’s say you’re reading an article. The intention has to be key. What went on in the writer's head when he was writing it? What made him phrase a certain thing this way? And even if there is a successful article you want to question it completely like what made it succeed when others didn’t? And what exactly was it?
And once you do this more and more and turn it into a habit right after a point, you see patterns that most others don’t seem to notice, and then you will start sort of setting the trends in a way there will be a certain headline that you will come up with and people will start copying it, and so on.
So for that you just have to observe a lot, read through, read through the work of writers you admire, see the common elements and keep experimenting, and so on. And you want to treat it like a game if not every day, right? You have to check your stats. At least, let’s say once a week or month.
You want to treat it as a game where you’re constantly leveling up.
Shivendra:
Yeah, I totally agree with that because also you know this is in one of our last AMAs. Someone asked me what I would do differently and this was one of the things because as many of you may know, I’m super enthusiastic about the process right about not caring as much about the results that I’m achieving. But at the same time, to balance that, as Neeramitra was saying, it’s very important.
Just go through your stats and also keep on consuming other content and sort of studying it not being.
Don’t be critical of yourself when you read successful writers. Don’t think “Ohh, this writer is so much better than me and I can. I can never write this way” and so on and so forth. But see what are these certain elements that are making their piece successful repeatedly because they also have figured out something that you might not have figured out. So in the later years or the later part of my writing journey, when I started paying attention to these things, you know I could stream them into my writing.
It helped me decide what to write about because I clearly saw through my analytics through my stats that certain topics were doing much better with no more effort on my own, and that if I just keep writing on those topics, I’ll get more readership and I’ll get more views. They are not very difficult to capture, but you just need to keep your eyes and ears open to catch these trends.
Anangsha:
Like what both of them said, I also 100% agree that you know, if you check your stats every day, maybe you might get overboard, especially at the beginning. So if you are at the very beginning of your career, maybe just focus on building a habit and publishing every day or at least every alternate day. And later on when you have established your writing habit and you want to make it big, then it’s very important to look at your stats.
Reverse-engineer what success is on that platform and then apply it to your idea. Yeah, that’s a very effective tip and I think it will follow on every platform, not just medium, but every platform out there.
3. “Do You Write an Article and Then Submit It to A Publication, or Do You Write with A Publication in Mind?”
Shivendra
Wonderful question, that someone asked me recently and the answer to that was it depends on what your goal is. So if your goal is sorry, it depends on where you are at with the publication. I would say so if you’re submitting the first time to a publication, you have to put extra effort to get noticed because if you think from the mind of an editor, they’re not getting paid to do this job.
They are essentially investing their free time — to go through hundreds of applicants. So, even if they see the slightest mistake in your article, you will come across as a lazy writer to them, right? If your topic doesn’t match that publication. If your style. If you’re formatting anything that isn’t in line with that publication, then the editor is simply going to think that you know this person did not take enough care to craft his articles to go towards submission guidelines. So why should I invest time in reading his piece further?
So when you are submitting the first time or the first few times to a publication, be extra cautious that you know you are writing specifically for that publication, and that your topic, the choice of topic, your formatting, everything is in line, and I’ve seen in my experience that once you get an established foot with the publication, maybe you also make friends with the editor over a period of a couple of months.
Then you can afford to push the boundaries a little — write something that originally the publication may not have accepted, but since you have established a reputation with the editor, you can. Gently, you know, suggest to them that this topic that you have written about. Can you know if they may like to publish that, so then it becomes easier?
Then you can write about what you want to write about and then submit it to a publication that is even closely related to that topic.
But when you’re just starting out, you just have to, I would say write for the publication. Have that publication in mind and then come up with the topic instead of going the other way round.
Because if you do that then it becomes the link between the publication and your article becomes too difficult to you know, forge.
Neeramitra
As Shivendra said, writers already have a hard job and you don’t want to make it harder — the more rejections they have to sift through, the more of a pain it is for them.
But also now, especially when you’re a small writer, right? For example, one of the publications that’s been performing amazingly for me recently is Better Humans.
And I’ll admit that every article I write for Better Humans is keeping better humans in mind. The reason is simple. The audience I’m writing for better ones has a following of, I think 400k which is on mine is around 8000, right?
It’s 50 times a difference. So I can’t, you know, write anything I want and expect it to just blow up.
Depending on the publication size vs yours, it’s better to tune your own style and formatting and everything and adhere to whatever has been proven to do well in the publication.
And it’s a win-win situation, right? You stand to gain more followers and since your articles do well, the publication editors are happy.
Then there will be loath to reject your articles in the future, even the ones which have more of your style and everything. This is how you build a good relationship with the publication and the better the relationship with editors, the better it is.
You can have your article scheduled by them. You can have certain changes made. You can discuss changes made rather than just the most. Editors will just make changes and not allow you to change anything but this kind of flexibility. You get t
On the other side, if your following is, say, much larger than the publications right, then I think there’s scope for using your own style more. I do this with Wholistique which has a following of around 4000. Since mine is more. I tend to stick to my own style and it tends to work well there.
Shivendra (Again):
I think just to add to what Neeramitra was saying, this just opened my mind and as I look back on my experience, it’s true as I gained those thousands of followers, there was hardly any publication that had more followers than I had, you know. And most of the big publications a few months ago were shut down when Medium stopped paying them, so hardly any of them was left.
So I had that kind of flexibility where the editors would just pay heed to what I was trying to say and what new topics I wanted to talk about.
4. “What Do You Do Once You Reach a Plateau or A Saturation Level?”
“And no new idea sounds interesting enough to write an article on basically a version of writer’s block?”
Anangsha:
This is actually an excellent question and this is something that I have also felt several times in my career as well. And I think as a writer it is quite possible that you might reach a stage where you have a lot of ideas written in front of you, but none of them feel exciting enough and you don’t feel lacking anymore. But you know what’s the worst part is if you actually take a very long break. And if you actually don’t write for like 2–3 months.
And then when you come back, the writing process will become a lot harder. So you know, even if you feel you have nothing to write about, it’s important that you write about something else. So what I do is when I reach that stage where none of my ideas feel interesting enough.
I try and take a topic that’s completely different from what I usually write about South. This usually helps if I write a poem or something. Or a fictional story, so you know, I don’t. If I take a break from the style of writing or the topic of, then I feel enthusiastic about it again because I can just let my creativity flow freely, right? I don’t have to think about the audience. I don’t have to think about anybody. You can call them breaks if I write what I want to write. Or you can call them detours. These are basically like writer self-care for me, so you know.
This is like I just write for myself and I maybe I don’t even publish, but I just make sure they keep up the habit, so there is one story. Actually, there’s a story of Stephen King, so everyone knows that Stephen King is a very prolific writer. He has written so many big novels and he’s so popular in the writing sphere, so there was once a time in his life when Stephen King survived an accident and his hand was broken so he couldn’t write. So when he was in the hospital, he couldn’t write for 14 days. Then when he got back home, he actually found it difficult to write because he got such a big break in writing.
So you know if Stephen King who has like written so many books, if he can just feel rusty after just 14 days of not writing, you can imagine how hard it would be for writers who are just starting out so you know it’s very important to not let a big break come in your writing. If you don’t feel like it, you can think of some.
Your topic you don’t have to pressure yourself to, you know, produce content that you know will perform some days. You can write for yourself, but the important part is to keep writing even on your bad days.
Neeramitra:
Ohh I mean I have an excellent point to add here. I totally agree with what Anangsha said. Writing is one such form of art where momentum is king.
Have momentum and you don’t want to break it no matter what happens. There are days when the way I do it is I balance it in a one-to-one way.
It’s like for every commercial article so to say right? Which I know is geared towards performing well, there’s one passion article right which has a weak title and you know maybe the content is something that won’t resonate with many people.
But that doesn’t matter since I’m writing it for myself, so the entire point with that is, once I’m done with the article, I’m, you know it’s a way for me to counterbalance the sort of fun that gets leached out by writing boring articles which might do well. Even so, you don’t want to lose what got you into writing.
Also, there might be days when you just cannot write at all, even on those days. I encourage you to just journal or brainstorm ideas. Or let’s say you respond to other writers' articles. These exercises will keep the writing habit going.
Shivendra:
Both of you have mentioned excellent points and it’s very important as the saying to balance.
You don’t want to feel that you’re writing just for the money or just for the readers who want to read. Do you also want to write what inspires you? So for the days when you feel you have little to write about, just write about anything that inspires you, really. And just, you know, jump off-topic and don’t be afraid to.
Go out of the box, really. If you’ve been writing, let’s say about self-improvement and pick a completely different niche, you know, write poetry or whatever comes to your mind.
Just keep writing.
5. “How to Sell Your Products And/or Services Through an Email List? And How to Build an Email List?”
Neeramitra:
So let’s say you have a post on how to be more productive and it goes viral in a Twitter thread, right? The last tweet could be, Did you enjoy reading this? If yes, then you can join my email list where I share more tips XYZ. That’s one way to go about it.
The other way is to offer something for free. That way when they come to actually download the product right, you’ll have a. You will capture their email and you’ll continue sending them emails that way.
And that is tip number one. Have a strong CTA. It has to be something that is irresistible enough for the user to click on. Lead magnets work well this way. Offering something for free and getting their email — since they’ve already consumed your content in a way they’ll be more inclined towards, you know, buying or anything in the future as well.
The second thing is starting from day one. Most people say that I don’t even have followers now. Why should I bother building an email list? I made the same mistake and it can cost you some of your most loyal. This thing email is subscribers, right? If someone’s a follower who has stuck around since the beginning, it only makes sense that they would. They are more loyal than the ones who started following you later on. So you want your earliest followers to be captured as well.
Be memorable. People get tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of emails every single day. So what is it about your email or about you that makes them remember you? You send an email once in every blue moon.
After a point, they won’t even remember why they signed up in the 1st place and they’ll just unsubscribe. That’s just what it is and you can’t even blame them, right?
Show up every single day. As I say, familiarity build breeds likability, so the more emails you send, the more you keep checking it and you know it could. It could be an email of just a greeting or a thank you note or anything, but do you want to keep popping up in their inboxes now and then so that they don’t forget you.
Anangsha:
Those are amazing tips near Neeramitra. I think you have covered the basics of what people need to do to build a business with the newsletter. So one thing I would like to you know add here is that at the beginning when you just start a newsletter you might not know what you want to write about or how you want your newsletter to be, so it is alright to experiment in the beginning. And it’s also very important to have a relationship with your readers.
So at the end of every newsletter, you should actually prompt the readers to reply and their replies will help you design this newsletter better so you will know your audience. And once you know your audience, you will know what their pain points are and then you can help them with whatever they’re struggling with in life. So basically to sell something, you have to be likable, right? And how can you be likable? You can be likable when you provide actual solutions to real problems that people have.
And this you can do by building a relationship with your readers, asking them to reply, and tweaking every email you send according to the replies so you can make more of the people who are subscribing to you happy. So yeah, this is my extra tip.
Neeramitra (Again):
Ohh now I need to butt in again, adding to what Anangsha said that’s a precious point. I don’t know how I missed that.
But adding to the same, I did the same thing right. Initially, I didn’t know what emails to collect or what. What to collect them for and I started a newsletter. Now it has around 1000 subscribers and I don’t know what to do with the email list. I just send them an occasional post but apart from that, it’s a dead email. But I think that is inevitable. You can’t end up predicting what does well or what you want to do with an email list.
So, but again, here the important point is, it’s crucial to recognize that you know, look past the sunk cost. Most people say that “Ohh, I have 1000 subscribers here. I don’t want to ditch this email list. I’ll continue building the same and maybe something will come out of it.” That will be an expensive decision. If there might be times when you have to migrate your emails from one to another and you know there will be changes and stuff.
But if you are in this for the long term, you’ll be building the list over years and years, and losing 1000 subscribers won’t really matter if you’re in it for the long game.
Shivendra:
To reiterate the point again, drawing on my experience and I was just interesting as you guys were speaking. One thing was, you know, in the starting when I was selling people through my email list, I thought you know it’s going to be like a funnel. It’s going to be very simple. You know 100 people on the landing page. 20 people click. You know 10 people add to cart and five people cheque out and then I make 1000 bucks.
That’s not the case because I learned that I often have to converse one on one with a lot of people on my email list, maybe even talk to them on Twitter, and then they convert. Actually, within those conversations you know, so it’s not often, and maybe it’s because I was selling more of a high ticket product, but it’s rare that people are converting right off my email list without ever having a conversation with me. In almost all the cases, the people who bought from me.
Are the ones who I have I have talked to, uh, personally at some point or the other and that just made me realize that?
You know people are not buying your product necessarily, especially when you are a creator. Of course, the product matters, but what they’re buying into is the belief that you as a person can solve their problem. And if they believe you can solve their problem, then they’ll be willing to pay $10 or even $1000.
So that was what I learned, and that was also what Neeramitra and Anangsha were explaining.
Neeramitra (Again):
I totally agree with what Shivendra is saying. I think it comes down to the ticket size, right? The higher the ticket size, the deeper the funnel would have to be. I hate using the word funnel because it’s what you know sales gurus use.
You never want to look at it as a funnel. Think of it as you have something of value to offer. There’s someone who seeks value from you and it’s a. It’s a nice fit for both of you. Like a key that fits into your lock, right? So yeah, each purchase matters.
There will be somewhere you send it to a small segment and you get a lot of sales and others where you send it to a large segment of your audience, but you get barely any sales and there will be some emails where you expect to get a lot of unsubscribes and there you get none. And so on. This kind of stuff keeps happening.
Moving on to the last question for today.
6. “How Do You Land Freelance Writing Gigs and Clients Through Writing on Medium?”
Anangsha:
Alright, so this is actually valid for any platform, not just Medium. This can be applied to LinkedIn and any other platform where you can write content. So basically, if first, when you’re writing, you will reach a stage when or you might reach a stage when you feel you know. “Yes, I need to know what next. What’s the next step in my writing journey”, and if you feel that freelance writing is something that you want to try, you want to write for clients, then this is a method I have used to get clients.
So basically you have to figure out what are some topics that you really enjoy writing about and this you won’t know at the beginning of your career after you publish. Maybe 100th posts only. Then you realize that yeah, these are the topics that I really enjoy writing about. So you have to keep writing high-quality posts on your profile and publish them so.
This is the first step. Obviously, you know, write what you really want to write and keep publishing. This is the first step. The second step is that if you are open to freelance writing gigs, make it known somewhere in your profile bio or somewhere in your about section, or maybe even at the end of the article that you know you are a writer who writes about these topics and you are open to gigs. So maybe you can leave your email address, so the key here is t
That way when you publish something and if it goes viral, then obviously the people who want to pay for articles like this will also be the ones who are consuming articles like this, right?
So when somebody a potential client, if they see your article, then obviously they will want to DMU and then get started with the gig. This is again a game of chance and it’s not 100% guaranteed to work.
Another way you can do this is that when you are writing articles and when you get a lot of views on some particular article or articles, then what you can do is you can actually look up companies or brands in your niche who have a blog that requires articles precisely like you. It’s not very difficult to search for whatever the title of your article is. You can just take the title, copy it, and paste it on Google. Then you will get similar articles like yours.
You will see lots of similar articles written so you can just check out what companies or what websites these articles have been published on because chances are that the people who already published the articles. They also need more similar articles like this. So if you reach out to these people and if you pitch to them that hey, I am a writer on Medium or LinkedIn and I get like these many views on each article. I think I would be a great fit for your blog so that way you can also cold.
It’s not just cold emailing, it is also like you know; I call it intelligent pitching because you are doing the research; you are doing the groundwork and you are only reaching out to companies who you know want to hire similar writers like you. And if you write your pitch in a superb way and if you send links to all your published articles and all the stats of all your articles, then there is very little chance that the person or the other end will say no, especially if they’re on the hunt.
So the thing here is you know you are building a portfolio online on medium when you’re publishing, and you’re using that portfolio as the place where you kick start your writing career. So this is the exact step that I used at the beginning of my career to pitch to clients, and it worked for me. It has also worked for so many other writers who asked me for freelancing tips, and I think this will work for you as well. All you need to do is.
Start writing first, and once you write really well, start pitching. So yeah, that is my tip.
Neeramitra:
I don’t do freelancing, but I think I can add a few points because I’ve received freelance offers directly. Without ever pitching.
So Anangsha’s basically says the Queen of freelance writing, so there isn’t much I can add here, but the point is if you have if you build an online presence right and you stick through to a style people who are looking for someone who writes that will naturally find you.
Let’s say there’s an article that blows up and there’s a busy CEO looking for someone who resonates with your writing style right. He would naturally reach out to you. That is how you land these big-ticket writing items. Also, I’m not sure if I’m quoting it correctly, but I think Sean Kernan landed a $75,000 ghost reading contract through Medium itself without ever pitching.
Anangsha (Again):
And actually Medium is a great place to do it, because Medium has a huge global readership and your articles don’t die. Like you know, if you write on LinkedIn, nobody can find that LinkedIn post by searching on Google.
But Medium has a great domain authority, and if you write something really good, maybe if somebody searches that topic on Google, then your article will come up. So these are some really amazing benefits of Medium. First is the long life of the articles.
The second is the easy searchability and the third is that you know that I have seen that people who blog or people who write have huge respect for articles on Medium. Like people in the freelance writing world automatically assume that you know if you’re writing on medium means you must be writing really high-quality articles. So that also works in your favor.
Shivendra:
Yeah, that’s true. You know, somehow when I receive offers to write, the people think that if I’m writing on medium, I’m some kind of a big shot writer.
And you know, I had a hard time understanding why, but now I understand based on Anangsha’s explanation. And I realize that it’s pretty common.
Neeramitra (Again):
Yeah, I mean that pretty much wraps up all the questions we had.
Closing Thoughts
I hope you had as much fun reading them as we had while answering them and curating this post.
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Neeramitra Reddy