Doing Content Right

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I also encourage you to treat this book less like a novel and more like a textbook… a resource that you sit and study with.
So remember, your goal in building a newsletter or blog is not to write articles or send emails. It is to create things that people love and find value in. Never forget that.
But here’s what the world will always have room for: • The new, should it be relevant • The old, should it be even just 1% better
People write because they have an opinion on something and a blog allows them to share their thoughts. But you must remember that each of these are still opinions about what you think people should care about. These are not truths. And realistically, not everyone has high quality opinions.
So, even if the supply of overall content is high, there is still a disparity of excellent content. As Andrew Chen says, “There’s always room for high-quality thoughts/opinions.”
With all this said, freedom to participate does not mean that everyone should participate. Just as not everyone was equipped to create a paper or radio station before, not everyone should create a blog or newsletter, just because they can. It’s a long and arduous journey that you should only embark on if you’re willing to have a long-term approach and more importantly, if you have a differentiator.
The most obvious way to differentiate is to be higher quality. I should note that with content, people often confuse quality with length. High-quality does not mean longer. It means more effectively satisfying the reader’s needs.
Remember, if your product—in this case, content—is not better in some way, none of the other stuff will matter.
As Harry Dry put it, who has succeeded in an extremely competitive space with Marketing Examples, “I never paid much attention to the space being crowded. I just believed I would be the best.”
Anything that you’ve spent an above average time learning about can be translated into information that is going to be valuable to the average person.
That’s what a personal monopoly is: a differentiator, whether it be a skill, an experience, or an understanding that only you (or few people) can do.
As Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, says, “You don’t become interesting by copying interesting people. You become interesting by following your own interests, going deeper down the rabbit hole than anyone else, and surfacing something new for the rest of us.”
idea ikigai”. It’s a simple concept, where you ask yourself, “What is something that I can uniquely contribute?” that is at the intersection of (1) interesting, (2) doesn’t exist in its exact form, and (3) that you have unique exposure to.
Building a publication is just like building a company and the biggest risk is that you—the founder—gives up. So instead of trying to identify what you think other people may care about, start with your obsessions and then work backwards.
As Harry put it, “People spend a lot of time searching for great ideas. I think that’s a waste of time. There’s loads of great ideas. You want to find the best idea for you— the idea that fits your unique skill set and circumstances best.”
Once it’s been done, it’s no longer unique.
It’s important to understand that “niche” in this case does not mean small. When people hear the word “niche”, they think the topic is niche. Niche topics are topics that have small audiences. But for these purposes, I’m referring to niche value or niche positioning to denote a specialized or differentiated segment. In other words, your “corner” of the internet.
Niche is targeted, not small. For example, Costco does not serve a small consumer base, but their value prop is specialized. Another example is the number of personal development bloggers out there. Each targets a massive market, but with their own spin, like James Clear who focuses on habits.
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, once said: “Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.”
Don’t write just to “make money”. Write to solve problems. Money should always be a byproduct of your creations, not the original intent.
You don’t have time to be creating content that doesn’t serve a purpose.
The best way to create a high K-factor is to solve problems for your audience. Said another way: be an aspirin, not a vitamin.
for people to start newsletters without publishing an adjacent blog. I’d like to make a quick case that you need both.
Setting these both up gives you the best of both worlds: direct and consistent access to your audience (via the newsletter), but also access to growth mechanisms that you can only get through evergreen content (via your blog).
Since the beginning, I chose to always focus on quality and only release articles I was truly proud of. I would not pump out an article just to “hit a publish date”, unless it was “ready” (AKA: it became an article that I would want to read). Quality over quantity, always.
according to Wolfram Alpha. Approximately 30 get 3000+ pageviews/day and only around 80 get 1000+ pageviews/day. On the very top end, only six get 10k+ pageviews/day (equivalent to 300k pageviews/ month), while the most successful gets 29,500 pageviews/month (equivalent to 885,000 pageviews/month).
No matter how good content is, if you don’t invest in getting it in front of people, no one will see it. In reality, the writing to distribution ratio should be more like 50:50.
So remember: it’s better to write 10 top 1% articles than infinite average articles. Do whatever it takes to bring your articles into that top 1%.
Morning Brew’s founder has said that their list is made up of people that came from ~60% paid acquisition (they’ve spent over $1m), 25% referrals, and 15% direct to their website, with almost none coming from SEO.
As Perell has since said, “The fastest way to get free marketing for your business is to share your strategy and tell people what you’re working on.”