I am not too fussed about myself, although I used to be. I fell for the personal brand trash that is hurled at innocent

The more metaphors and fancy words you use, the more you limit who can consume your writing. If readers feel dumb when they read your work, they won’t come back to feel dumb again.,As a web developer myself, I always appreciate when websites go above and beyond being purely functional, and add a touch of fun andmagic. A parallax background, a cool animation or page transition, or some other cute Easter egg I wasn’t expecting to find — you know it when you see it. It’s the kind of thing that makes you smile and think: “Cool!”.,Universities are going bankrupt. You can scoop up their students and sell education that actually has a real-world use, rather than the mostly resume fluffing garbage universities have been selling for years and putting people in a lifetime of debt to pay for.,Payment software like PayPal to be able to accept alternative currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, so the value you capture is stored and protected against inflation for digital products you sell.,Professional writers also fall for the trap of Patreon-like platforms. Patreon is like putting a dog bowl in front of your writing, as though you’re homeless in the street, and asking for donations. Don’t beg readers for money with Patreon — or ask people to give you money for a coffee.,One of my favorite platforms is a financial media company called Nugget’s News. At face value, it looks as though it is just Alex Saunders. Behind the scenes, he has 26 employees, most of whom are researchers. As a content creator, he is now earning over 7-figures after being in the Youtube game for less than 5 years.,Readers love it when you say less. What this really means is you respect the reader by curating things they find helpful. Unprofessional writers are list creators. They add lists to many of their articles so the reader can save time looking for helpful tips, tools, and techniques.,Huge paragraphs cause readers to click away. I have A/B tested this technique to death. Readers hate long paragraphs because they’re mostly reading on a tiny phone screen. Let readers have the chance to read your work and perhaps become a customer by giving them shorter paragraphs.,An unprofessional writer who makes money is likable. Why? Because they focus on the reader and how they can help them, rather than trying to impress people with ‘writer status.’,If Hemingway were still alive, then he’d be learning about Substack. There are many tools unprofessional writers use, and they’re not writing tools — they’re money-making tools.,By getting over myself, I could focus on the business aspect of writing. This time I bought back, and it allowed me to learn about all the tools a writer has to earn a living. Get over yourself as a writer to make money.,The biggest problem with professional writers is very few people like them. Their obsession with being professional isn’t understood by a reader, so people just switch off. The more readers switch off, the more they start to double down on how writing must be professional.,Unprofessional writers naturally say what they think. They don’t think about the ramifications. They don’t try and predict ten years into the future. They don’t think about writing as a career that involves future job interviews.,Say less and curate ideas and thoughts for readers. A paid newsletter is careful curation. A paid blog post is careful curation. An online course is the careful curation of lessons to teach and not teach.,An online course is a different medium that a percentage of readers are crying out for, so they can become entrenched in everything you know about a topic and have you as their tour guide.