<\/h2>\n
Let me save you some time. Here are the 5 most surprising lessons I learned:<\/p>\n
1. The world owes you nothing<\/h2>\n
The cold, unfeeling universe does not give two shits about you or your writing.<\/p>\n
Anyone can walk into a bookstore and pick from Shakespeare, Pratchett, JK Rowling and a million more. Tell me (a) is your writing more deserving of attention and (b) how would anyone even know?<\/p>\n
This may sound dispiriting, and it\u2019s meant to. We live at the centre of our own private universes, which can fool us into thinking the world responds to our<\/i> merits, as we<\/i> see them. If you believe this, you\u2019re in for a lifetime of tear-stained keyboards.<\/p>\n
If you acknowledge the truth, you can arm yourself accordingly.<\/p>\n
2. Give people a reason to care<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\n
You are in competition with every other distraction on the Internet. Your beautifully written sonnet must joust for attention against Miley Cyrus with a kitten.<\/p>\n
If you want an audience, don\u2019t write for yourself. Forget yourself<\/i>. Start with:<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you\u2019re writing for casual bloggers. It\u2019s not hard to think of things that casual bloggers might struggle with (\u201cHow to win your first thousand followers\u201d), find entertaining (\u201cMy blog cost me my job, wife and kids\u201d) or inspiring (\u201cHow my blog got me a date with Natalie Portman\u201d). Start there.<\/p>\n Brilliant intellectuals can appreciate content on a purely intellectual basis. For everyone else, there\u2019s urgent news, sex, themselves, gossip and sex. These emotions can be conveyed in a headline. Your headline is where you will win or lose most of your audience. A title in a tweet is judged and dismissed by 99% of your audience before they see another word; ensure yours punches them in their emotional face.<\/p>\n Editing is a superpower which can turn charcoal into diamonds. Most people seem content to shovel coal.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t mistake editing for proof reading. Editing is where you take your work apart in a blender, rearrange, rewrite and rethink everything. Everything<\/i>. At a minimum, you must edit for:<\/p>\n I personally spend 2-3x as much time editing as writing. It makes all the difference.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re searching for an audience, it doesn\u2019t take long to realise that the famous get most of the attention. The mistake is to assume this dooms you to failure. You just need to become slightly more famous.<\/p>\n It\u2019s slowest at the start, which is where most people give up. My writing did nothing for 4 months; later that year I had 4 million views. Write continuously, and test everything you can think of. Think of it like tuning a radio<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n To win in the long term, your platform must efficiently convert readers into followers<\/i>. Forget likes and tweets; followers are what you\u2019re after. Best of all, start a mailing list – it’s more work, but you’ll have far higher engagement than you’ll ever get from Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n If you write something and it doesn\u2019t clearly encourage people to follow you, you\u2019re playing the wrong game.<\/p>\n Some writers may find all of this a bit dirty. Well, yes. Unfortunately, it\u2019s also how people work<\/i>. You must appeal to their nature before you can win them over with your writing. Otherwise, no-one will even know what wonders they\u2019re even missing.<\/p>\n Good luck.<\/p>\n More from me <\/i><\/a><\/span>\u00a0 .\u00a0 <\/i>Follow on Facebook <\/i><\/a><\/span>\u00a0 .\u00a0 <\/i>Follow on Twitter<\/i><\/a><\/span> Answer by Oliver Emberton: In my first year of blogging I was read over 4 million times, mostly through a cunning strategy I call \u201cscrewing everything up and learning\u201d. Let me save you some time. Here are the 5 most surprising lessons I learned: 1. The world owes you nothing The cold, unfeeling universe does…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knowledge","category-life-stuff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4KGvB-ai","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":648,"url":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/2014\/11\/whats-an-expert-i-sincerely-want-to-know\/","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":0},"title":"What’s An Expert? I Sincerely Want To Know.","author":"Abhinav","date":"November 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Post by James Altucher: On Quora someone asked, \"should answers be categorized by expert \/ non-expert?\" My response: There is no such thing as an expert. First, a couple of anecdotes. In 1799, George Washington caught a cold. He was coughing and he had a fever. This was considered an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Quora Post"","block_context":{"text":"Quora Post","link":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/category\/quora-post\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":750,"url":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/2015\/03\/what-are-bullied-children-like-as-adults\/","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":1},"title":"What are bullied children like as adults?","author":"Abhinav","date":"March 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Answer by Oliver Emberton: We\u2019re kicking the ass of the world which bullied us. At one point as a child, I was dragged to a river where my head was pinned underwater. In the brief seconds when I was let up for air, all I could hear was the crowd\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Quora Post"","block_context":{"text":"Quora Post","link":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/category\/quora-post\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":711,"url":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/2015\/02\/what-are-some-trippy-thought-experiments\/","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":2},"title":"What are some trippy thought experiments?","author":"Abhinav","date":"February 19, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Answer by Jim Stone: You enter a library, . . . . . . take a book off the shelf, and notice that it\u2019s filled with seemingly random strings of characters. You take another book off the shelf. Same thing. You examine a few more books and notice that all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Quora Post"","block_context":{"text":"Quora Post","link":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/category\/quora-post\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":748,"url":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/2015\/03\/what-is-the-one-word-that-will-make-you-rich\/","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":3},"title":"What is the one word that will make you rich?","author":"Abhinav","date":"March 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Answer by Eric Lauritzen: No. Say no to anyone or anything that will waste your time. Say no to anyone who is negative. Say no to all the vampires who want to suck you dry and dump their shit on you. Say no to anyone who wants you to work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Quora Post"","block_context":{"text":"Quora Post","link":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/category\/quora-post\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":854,"url":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/2015\/11\/what-should-one-do-in-their-20s-to-avoid-regrets-in-their-30s-and-40s\/","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":4},"title":"What should one do in their 20s to avoid regrets in their 30s and 40s?","author":"Abhinav","date":"November 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Answer by Dirk Hooper:I've given this question a lot of thought, so I'm grateful to have the opportunity to answer it... and have the chance to compose my ideas on the subject.I think there are things that I could have done in my 20s that would have put me light\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life stuff"","block_context":{"text":"Life stuff","link":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/category\/life-stuff\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1290,"url":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/2017\/01\/how-do-iitians-get-a-package-of-almost-1-crore-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":5},"title":"How do IITians get a package of almost 1 crore?","author":"Abhinav","date":"January 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"How do IITians get a package of almost 1 crore? by Aman Goel Answer by Aman Goel: They don\u2019t. 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In the range of 60\u201390 lakhs per annum The purchasing power\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knowledge"","block_context":{"text":"Knowledge","link":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/category\/knowledge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":641,"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abhinavkr.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
3. Hook emotionally<\/h2>\n
\nYou know when you feel compelled to click on a link? You don\u2019t have time to think<\/i> about it. Hooks are entirely emotional:<\/p>\n\n
4. Edit as much as you write<\/h2>\n
\n
5. Build a platform<\/h2>\n
<\/h2>\n
\n
\nWhat are Oliver Emberton’s tips for running a blog?<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"