I Earned $5,795.00 From One Blog Post Using a Simple Strategy I See Few Writers Sharing.
It’s a breeze to replicate.
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I’m getting a ton of requests to share more writing strategy content. Excuse the pretty click baity title on this one but I can promise you the article delivers. Steal as much of it as you can and please also give it a share if it brings you any value. I hope you’re enjoying your weekend wherever you are in the world.
Recently, I wrote a blog that went to Valhalla.
When it lit the touch paper, I thought my laptop was about to explode with the constant stream of notifications.
It felt like bliss.
A blog that had taken me four solid days to research and write generated 426k views and 311k reads and earned me, to date, $5,795.00, and it’s still earning.
I won’t give you any goofy pearls of wisdom, but pick apart a few details on what made it a smash hit.
When I stripped away the fluff to the bare bones, these were the core things that made it what it was.
Hook the reader with a big idea.
Build momentum with a story.
Back it with data & research.
Give the reader a pay-off.
I’ll brag a little, too; it was well-written, but there’s no reason anyone couldn’t replicate it.
I have never had so much love and hate from strangers online, which was a baptism by fire for a relatively new writer.
People tracked me down on Twitter to say things about my post like, “You’re a joke”, “Wow, very thought-provoking, thanks for sharing”, or “This might be the single worst thing I’ve ever read”, lol.
I’ve learned it pays not to sit on the fence. Pick a side — it doesn’t matter how controversial or how many of your readers unfollow you — the real ones will respect your honesty.
If you’re a budding writer struggling to find a niche or trying to get that first story out, lean into stories about people you’re interested in and share their journeys with a sprinkle of your experience.
You’ll see why it’s effective.
Let’s dive in.
Readers lost their minds.
The title of my blog was “The World’s 123rd Richest Person Says If You Understand the Standford Experiment, You’ll Become Wealthy”.Most of you here probably first heard of me through this one piece.
The blog’s main theme was on Ray Dalio, one of the best hedge fund managers in the world, probably ever to exist.
According to Forbes, he was the world’s 123rd richest person at the time of writing. I follow Dalio on Instagram, where he shares sound bites of advice.
He did a short one-minute video on delaying gratification with money and how, if you do that, you’ll have a different conversation with yourself to the person who spends it immediately.
Ray Dalio — Source
“When you save, the next natural question you ask yourself is, where should I hold, and where should I keep this money? When it comes to money, and you don’t spend it for instant gratification, it means you’ve got savings. The next thing that comes at you is, what do I do with my savings?”
It was a simple concept, but Dalio referenced an old but well-known research study called the Standford Marshmallow Experiment. As a writer, it allowed me to combine two ideas: Dalio’s thoughts and the experiment.
The basic premise of the experiment involves researchers offering a group of kids one marshmallow, or they could wait 15 minutes and receive two.
After studying the children as they grew up, researchers concluded that the kids who could delay gratification, i.e. not eat that first Marshmallow, had better life outcomes measured by education, health, income and other life outcomes.
The internet went into a meltdown between Dalio’s comment, the study’s legitimacy, and another group in the middle who lacked common sense.
Actual comments:
“the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. “delayed gratification” isn’t an option for most non-billionaires.”
“People can’t starve themselves and their children or, become homeless, because they want to save and invest.”
“You don’t have to be smart, work hard, delay gratification, or any of those things. Just be the kid of wealthy parents and pay politicians to help protect your wealth.”
“Very interesting article! I knew the comments were going to be rough. However, delayed gratification is a good lesson for everyone independent of their expenses and income!”
The comments were polarising.
People argued in the replies, which gave me some respite; it was like breaking up a fight in the schoolyard and absolutely chaos. Lol.
Here’s the juicy stuff.
Get the most crucial part of the Heros journey right, and you’ll be onto a winner.
The most common stories that capture our imagination are people struggling through adversity and reaching triumph.
They don’t need to be spine-tingling to capture your imagination, but something that resonates with readers has a struggle or some controversy at the start.
Howard Shultz, the man who founded Starbucks, whom I’ve also written about, often says, “The more uninspiring your origins, the more likely you are to use your imagination and invent worlds where everything seems possible.”
He was speaking from the entrepreneur's lens.
It’s my job as a writer to find that uninspiring origin story because people resonate with it, making it inspiring to read. I spent an entire day researching and trawling through hours of video footage, searching for Ray Dalio’s starting point.
I went in search of adversity and controversy and found both.
In a video, it popped up. Dalio started his hedge fund, now the largest in the world, from his two-bedroom apartment after getting sacked for punching his boss in the face at a rowdy works party. Brilliant.
I didn’t stop there; I took the reader further right to the start.
I found another video of Dalio talking about when he was 12 and caddying on a golf course for hedge fund managers. While listening in on conversations, he became more financially literate. He even made his first investment. Here’s an excerpt from the blog.
“Dalio listened to the conversations and sometimes even got invited to dinners. It resulted in him making his first-ever investment in Northeast Airlines for $300, which tripled in price after the airline merged with another company. Adjusted for inflation, $300 was the equivalent in purchasing power to about $2,978.01 today. It was 1961, and he was 12 years old”.
There was enough adversity, controversy, and triumph to tell a compelling story that wasn’t as well known.
Knowing to search for unusual, refreshing, thought-provoking, unexpected things in a person’s origin story makes it easier to spot when you’re in a YouTube K-hole.
When your Eureka moment happens, like it did for me, and you pick up a little nugget of information that’s lesser known, it’ll sing to your soul.
Grab it with both hands because it’s gold dust.
Reflecting on the famous hedge fund manager’s story, It’s the part people highlighted the most, and every time I think of Dalio, I think of him as a caddy.
High-concept ideas.
I read a blog recently which went straight to the heart of why my post on Dalio had done as well as it did. Sometimes, it’s hard to understand why something has done well, but this explains it perfectly.
The idea needs to be a “high-concept”.
“The world’s 123rd richest person says if you understand the Stanford experiment, you’ll become wealthy” is a high concept.
Who the heck is he? Why’s he telling me to become wealthy? What experiment is he telling me about? What’s the strategy?
There are too many questions that need answering.
The high-concept idea is more important than your writing, so searching for thought-provoking, unusual and refreshing views is essential.
Alex Mathers, who’s one of the most followed people on Medium, says
“When writers see their writing isn’t connecting, most people believe the solution lies in writing better. But this isn’t quite right. It has less to do with your writing and more with the idea. Yes, there are many variables at play in good writing, but a strong idea sits at the top of the hierarchy. Particularly an idea that is unexpected”.
Mather’s view is like the Royal seal of approval. But there are others, and it’s almost the unspoken rule, like a magician’s code for writers: “Don’t share this stuff, or we’re f**ked”.
Take Sam Parr, the founder of The Hustle, who sold his newsletter for over $20 million. After interviewing Pandora’s founder, his most viral blog ever was “How Pandora’s Founder Convinced 50 Early Employees To Work 2 Years Without Pay”.
People lost their minds.
It had nothing to do with the company’s product. If I may say so, the writing wasn’t Hemingway or Dostoevsky either; it was plain as a dry biscuit.
The idea and Parr’s blog post took off like one of Elon’s rockets. It was a magical formula that generated millions of views.
The pay-off.
Ray Dalio suggested that delayed gratification is the most significant indicator of financial success. When your savings are building up in your bank account, you’d have a completely different conversation with yourself.
However, at no point does he tell you what you should do.
As a blogger, I had taken the reader on a journey with a big idea and a compelling hook. The reader needed a pay-off. Or, as one of my favourite writers, Ayo, says, “WIIFM”. That means “What’s In It For Me” from the reader’s perspective. What do they get out of it? What’s their takeaway here?
I applied Dalio’s concept of delayed gratification to modern-day examples using the average salary in America. Using a calculator, I showed what would have happened if you had made a negligible investment in the stock market with money if you had saved.
It worked like a wizard’s potion because the read ratio and minutes of read time were as high as a kite. Here’s a snippet of my “WIIFM” for the reader.
“If you live in America, the average take-home salary is $3200 after tax. You’d have earned significant returns if you invested half, so $1600, into a growth stock for just one month and left it there for ten years. If you had invested in Amazon, for example, you would have enjoyed returns of 740% and made just under $12000 in profit.
There are countless companies where we use their products and services daily that have grown like this, even after market corrections.
You should decide your best strategy and have a different conversation with yourself”.
Final Thoughts.
There’s a lot of writing advice and many parts of my writing I could have featured here, but this is a simple strategy I hear very few people talking about.
Find a high-concept idea.
Search for the thought-provoking hook (put hours into this if need be).
Build the story’s narrative, which is easy if it’s someone else’s story.
Make sure there is a pay-off for the reader. You can write about many interesting stories, but there needs to be a “WIIFM” from the reader’s point of view.
I’ve had blogs come close to this, but this one is the goat of all goats. Virality, by definition, is unpredictable.
I plan to keep putting myself in the shop window by following these fundamentals.
You’re free to try the same.
Happy hunting.
Very nice article which outlines a means to grab the reader. Thank you
Good