How To Become A Top Medium Writer (And How Much $$$ You Could Make In The Process) With Tim Denning

All right, why don't we go for it?

All right, let's dig in because I got a bunch of stuff that I want to cover. So let's see. First out, for those who don't know, Tim is probably the most read, if not one of the top five most read writers on Medium right now and has been for quite a while. Tim, you lapped me a long time ago and I've. I've thoroughly enjoyed watching, watching your rise to. Rise to fame on Medium. But there's a ton of stuff that I want to dig into. But I guess just as a real quick kind of nutshell so that everyone has context. Maybe just do a 30 second how long you've been writing online for how long you've been writing on Medium for maybe a couple fun, interesting stats for people. And, and also my first big question is, like, how you feel about Medium today? Like, why you're still writing there as much as you are.

Okay, so a little bit about me from Australia. Been writing on the Internet for eight years, over half a billion views. I focus on Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, a little bit of substack, Run the newsletter on ConvertKit. Absolutely obsessed. You know, every single thing. I don't work a job anymore. This is all I do 24 7. So I'm in there, like right now I'm studying newsletters. So I'm going deep into like, how do we reinvent the newsletter model big into web 3. So big crypto guy. Same with Cole. Think Dickey as well. Yeah. Obviously made a ton of money out of doing this. Like, it's actually very lucrative if you really focus on it. I run a little kind of online business off to the side where I do a little bit of this as well. What else is there to know? I don't like talking about followers too much because I only care about email list. I don't care about followers. Yeah, man, I'm the real deal. I'm here. This is what I do.

That's right. Honestly, I want to emphasize that, Tim, you are the real deal. I give you a lot of credit. Um, I can confidently say since I started on QUORA Back in 2014, I've. I've gone through and watched a lot of cycles. You know, I remember all the writers I came up with in Quora and then I remember the early writers I came up with Medium and then I remember the writers I connected with. Cause I wrote, wrote on Ink and then now on Twitter. Like there's always these cycles every two years and a lot of the people Drop off. Like, you'll see a lot of writers that go from. They start and then they achieve some sort of reach or they start building an audience or they kind of become known for something. They capitalize on it for like a year and then they're done and they're burned. They're burned out and they just. They stop. So I give you a lot of props because you've been at it for a long, long time. Which begs the question, again, for me, this is my. This is the big place I want to start, is why you are still pouring as much time, energy, attention as you are into Medium. Because for me, I kind of gave up on that platform about a year and a half ago. So tell the people we're going to.

Get deep into this call because there's a lot under the hood that you can't see that I'm very lucky enough to know. And once you know that, you'll think about Medium totally different. And actually, I think you'll think about social media different. So why do I still publish on Medium? I'm lucky to have a decent audience on there. So for me, it's really worth it because of that audience. One thing I have changed, though, is that it's now a republishing platform. It's not where I publish first, so everything goes to my own website first. Then I use Canaloquial links to then republish to Medium. I do that because I just. I want, like, my website to be the home and a lot of beginner, sort of intermediate writers. That probably doesn't make sense, but when you get to the top of your game, you kind of do want to own as much of what you do as possible. Why do I still publish there? I'm trying to think what else? I mean, obviously they pay you to write there. The money, I still think is good. It has obviously changed over the years, though, and we'll maybe dive a bit deeper into some of that in the next questions that you've got for me. I also like the audience, so not all audiences are equal. For example, I've written a few things on Core over the years, and I just find the quality of the users there is not as good as Medium, where you're typically getting, you know, people from the us they're fairly well educated, they've got a technology background normally. So, yes, it may not be the biggest audience on the Internet, but it's, in my opinion, one of the smartest audiences. So that's just yet another reason why I love the platform. I Also, I think in terms of the writing experience, it's got, like, the best publisher. It's pretty minimalist in its design. It's easy to use. Like a lot of the other ones I've tried. It's just, you know, it takes a while. Even Twitter took me a long time to kind of get the hang of, and I just find Medium continue. I go back there because I can just get things out really quick, and it's the place where I actually write. So some people write in Google Docs or in other platforms. I prefer to write in Medium because I just find that whatever I write there, I can kind of copy and paste all over the Internet and it just works. But if I. If I generate my draft in another platform and copy and paste, it doesn't always keep all the formatting. So, yeah, that's. They're the top reasons.

So this is interesting because one of the things we talk a lot about in shift 30 is obviously using social platforms to figure out what's resonating with people. You have to go through that learning process first. And you. I think we originally connected years ago because you very much aligned with that same process perspective. I remember we talked about it, and we both were very like, hey, let's utilize the fact that these platforms have, you know, millions or hundreds of millions of people, and let's learn what was the tipping point for you where you decided, okay, I've. I know who my reader is. I validated what it is they're interested in. I've built this huge library of content. Now, why are you prioritizing your site first and then treating social as republishing? What's the value for you?

Yeah, man. All right, so this is where we sort of dig into Medium, right? So if we look at where Medium's at right now, this is the biggest misconception. Medium in its current iteration. And you got to remember, software is currently changing in versions, right? So in this version, Medium is not a social media platform anymore. That got removed heavily in March 2020 when Covid started, and they realized, as did LinkedIn and Twitter, they've all done some variation of this. They. First of all, they removed the viral loop for Medium. That's why you'll see now there's nothing that hits, like, 20,000 claps anymore. It's just not possible. In fact, if anything, I see, like, a ceiling. Like, when it gets to a certain level, it just stops. I don't know if it's human. Not sure. But Medium, in its current form is a publication with editors, it's not a social media platform. My prediction of the future of Medium is that will change. But I've been saying that since March 2020 and it hasn't come true yet. But I just think it's kind of logical that that's where they'll go back to. But when you're writing in a publication that makes things totally different, you have not a lot of control. So they're very big on the clickbait headline thing. In fact, recently, in the last couple of months, they've gone hard on that again. I've always said I think it's a stupid rule. Clickbait for me is what the literary snobs use to shame us online writers. And that's what we do, because our category is online writing. And we tell normal people that traditional writing is stupid because it is not interested in getting a book deal with gatekeepers, not interested in essays with headings that say on writing. Yeah, you sound smart, but no one's going to read that because when I jump online, you're not taking money from me, but you're taking my time to read your work. So the headline better be bloody good, otherwise I'm not going to read it because I don't have the time. And so unfortunately, like Medium, you know, a lot of the heads of and stuff, they're of that old world of like Forbes and publications and we know what the best headline is. And the challenge I have with that is just those headlines don't work and I have so much data that shows it just doesn't. And if you look at like the popular list of what they recommend, you can see they're recommending all this stuff with bad headlines. And even with all that extra boost, it doesn't get any engagement because no one's going to read it. So, you know, that's kind of where it's at at the moment. When they took that viral loop out, it was to try and protect people from misinformation around vaccines and stuff. But what it's ended up doing is it's kind of blocked, like whole topics on the platform. The one that they've recently gone hard at, which is annoying for me, is personal finance. They just don't really allow that topic on their platform anymore.

Really.

It's like, wow, why would we do that? But it's again, because it's human controlled. It's not controlled by the algorithm. I mean, there's obviously there's some. But like, if I was to put it in a percentage terms, I feel like in the current iteration, it's like 80% is human control. Maybe 20% is the algorithm going. Yeah, if that got X amount of claps and X amount of comments, you know, that can have some more reach in the algorithm. But yeah, they've talked about a lot publicly, I think it'll change. But in the current iteration, you're writing on a publication. So that change is what led me to go, all right, I need to get some control back again. I need to diversify. I don't like this. There's nothing I can do about it. I don't own the platform. I don't think they're like, evil. They're not trying to do it on purpose. I actually think they ended up in this iteration just by complete accident, like trying to do the right thing. And then they just, they went a little bit too far in one direction. Um, so that's why people like yourself colored of not publishing on there. Cause you're probably there and you're not. You're wondering why things are not taking off or like, it doesn't work how it used to. And while your follow account doesn't make that much of a difference, it helps a little bit. But again, in percentage terms, for me, it's 10% maybe.

Yeah. I have, I have 90,000 followers on Medium and my average views per piece is like a hundred.

Like, how does 59,000 and I get pieces that get 100 views? It's like, how's that logical?

That's crazy. So, okay, so just for context then, because I think this is a really important point, because the whole rationale and why people are so. Are so interested in writing on Medium is it is the only platform that I know of where there is no gatekeeper. Anyone can write and publish there. And yet it is the Spotify model of. And you can get paid to write. And I remember when I was 18 years old, 19 years old, and I was like, all I did was Google around, like, how do I get paid to write? And it was so confusing for me. And I think the draw to Medium is that it seems so simple, right? I write and then I can make money. And so for context and feel free to be as transparent as you want, can we share with people what does an absolute all star make on Medium? And also what is required in order to earn that? And then what is an average writer making on Medium and what does that require?

Yeah, so the beautiful thing about this question is maybe so far these conversations sound a bit negative for Medium, but it's actually not. It's difficult for Medium for the top 1% of creators right now, which is like Cole, Sean Kern and Dickie, these types of people. Right. But for the other 99%, this is the best time ever. So for beginner and intermediate, it's great. And what does that mean in dollar terms? It means the top performers. I don't have all the data, but I would estimate around $10,000 per month is like the max now. And again, in the glory days of medium, say 2019, I was thinking, like, you were cold. It was going to be like the millionaire YouTubers. That was what was going to happen on me.

That's what I thought was going to happen. Yeah.

It didn't happen. And again, it's because there's human intervention. They're probably looking at the numbers and they're going, I don't want anyone making a million bucks on this platform. That's just my guess. And so they potentially divide the reach. I don't know how they do it, but in terms of the beginners, I've followed a lot of the writers that I love that have come up in, say, the last six months. And these guys tend to get traction really quick. And they make between about one and $5,000 a month. So that's not bad money. But that's probably not quit your job kind of money. So that's the range again, if you're a bad writer and you pay no attention and you ignore all the online writing rules that Cole teaches in his book the Art of Business and Writing, if you ignore all of that, then you'll make no more than $100.

And what, from a volume perspective is required in order to make 1000 bucks a month? 2000 bucks? How often are these writers rating and publishing?

Yeah, typically twice a week. And it's about quality over quantity. I've seen some writers that are publishing like 20 things a week. They're not making more money. That doesn't get you more. You just need to show up enough that the algorithm kind of knows you and you're there. Which I think is twice a week. But yeah, it's gotta be high quality. And it's funny too. Cause the ones that get high quality, they make a lot more money than the guys that publish a lot. It's really obvious.

Interesting. So, yeah, so then that, you know, just to echo that for everyone here, you know, the pro con then is wherever you spend your time, is it more lucrative for you to write two really high quality pieces per week? And can you do that? That even is high output for a lot of people and say that nets you one or two grand, or can you get a better return on your time elsewhere? And for me, one of the things I advocate for a lot is can you monetize with services? Can, you know, you can make a way more as a freelancer, ghostwriter than you can writing on Medium? You know, can you monetize with products? You know, can you create a digital product? Can you build up an email list? You want to launch a course? There are other ways where you're not getting paid directly for your writing in the same way that you are on Medium, but you can make a lot more money. What's your feeling on that, Tim?

Yeah, I'm big on this, and I've got a bit of a catchphrase I use, which is what I hate about Medium is when they introduce monetization, it made writers lazy. They started getting entitled because now the bridge between your content and how you make money is basically closed. So in the old world, when we were writing, we would have to write on a WordPress website, use a call to action, get them to an email list, and there was a fair bit of, like, entrepreneurial creativity. Take that person into a product and get them to spend. Now that gap was closed with Medium. This, what I call lazy platform. Money has kind of. It's ruined a few writers. They've got. It's become like a drug. And that's why I've tried to stay away from that as much as possible. Any money I make on Medium is just, like, invested in software and stuff. I don't. I don't even acknowledge it. It's almost like a gift to charity because I know that it can stop at any moment. So I just don't focus on it at all. I don't even look at the dashboard. I'm not following all the graphs. I don't care. It's not relevant. So that's the downside of a call, is that, like, people are getting this money and it's because it's easy money. They're getting addicted to it. And we don't want you to do that. We want you to be entrepreneurial. We want you to sell books, courses. I had a joke with a guy on Twitter the other day, right? He's got a hundred thousand plus followers, and I'm talking to him about monetization, and he's like, tim, I don't get why people find this really hard. Why are you all trying to build massive audiences? He said, I know people that have like a hundred Followers. And he's like, all they have is two clients a month that pay them $5,000 each and that's $120,000 a year that that allows them to quit their job. He's like, you don't even need to build an audience. I don't know. You tell me you can't find two people in your LinkedIn connections to pay five grand a month for a service. Like, that's why.

Yeah, I mean people are just, they're, they're spending too much time reading audience building and gumroad ebooks on how to grow on Twitter. When there's stuff on crafting offers and creating things that people actually want to buy, I think they're, they're hooked on Twitter notifications when I think a lot of people have instead switched to stripe notifications.

Right.

That's the indicator of, of things that you're creating something that people actually find valuable other than just kind of refreshing your, your notification feed. But. So I just dug around your website a little bit and looked at a couple posts you had looking at your publishing cadence. Can you talk us through your. You said you're on ConvertKit? We're on ConvertKit as well. I'm interested to see how you think about someone coming into your ecosystem onto your email list. What are the entry points? How do you go about? Do you have a consistent newsletter, a evergreen newsletter, Any kind of free email courses?

Kind of.

How does someone learn from you and buy from you via email?

Yeah. So one thing I do different is I'm not big into like personal branding and I like things to be not fancy. So like I run an online school. But you can't Google it. It's not listed anywhere. That's only for people in the email list. So people. There's a lot of different ways people get into that email list. Remember, it's eight years old. So like literally I'd say there's probably at least 30 landing pages connected to that in some shape or form. So I usually like to use ebooks. I have a bunch of different free email courses in terms of paid courses. I'm just about to launch my seventh, so that's like one key way that I monetize that's different to a lot of people. I have a business partner, he's based in Tennessee in America. So he's like a really good copywriter. He manages the email list for me because he's just better at it. So I don't know like the automation that he's running, although I know it's not too fancy. One of our philosophies is that we hate with emails. Like, a lot of people send too many sales emails. In fact, my biggest criticism of newsletters, you go in and like, you just get bombarded with asks all day long. So my philosophy is I don't like to ask people to do things very often, but when I do, it's normally like, here's a book, here's a course, whatever it is. And so our sort of sales philosophy is that we don't send sales emails. We send blog posts with call to actions at the bottom. Because if it works on medium and it works on other platforms, why wouldn't it work for selling a product? What I don't want to do is send emails like, you know, in four hours this product is closing or, you know, enrollment open. We don't really like doing that because I know personally when I see those emails, it just feels like an ad and I just delete them. So what I'd rather do is like start with a story and then at the end maybe I say enrollment is open after the story, but I don't put it in the subject line. So it's just a different philosophy. And my background, like, I spent over 10 years working in banking in sales. And so I think a lot about the psychology of like, how people interact and even with writing. Like, there's a famous book, the Psychology of Money, and I'm thinking like, I might write the follow up, which is the psychology of writing. Because once you understand the psychology, then you write totally different. So, yeah, back to your question on the email list. So I've got about 50,000 on there. I actually had about 10,000 more, which I scrubbed off because they were just inactive and it was bringing down my open rates and deliverability. I love ConvertKit. I do find it a little bit difficult to use, but if you're running a business, I do think it's the best option. Like, I wouldn't run a business on a sub stack or I used to be a mailchimp. I got banned for life. I don't know why. So that's how I ended up on ConvertKit. They said in their terms and conditions that they don't allow anything about making money online. That's one of their banned categories. So I suspect that I walked over that tripwire and they wouldn't even negotiate this. Like, go away. I'm like, okay, cool. And ConvertKit is quite expensive as well, so it's not for like the beginner creator. I think if you're Been doing a long time. It's definitely a good investment. The newsletter platform that I'm watching very closely is called Beehive. So my friend Jack Raines is on there. You know, I've seen their roadmap of what they're doing. I think they're going to be a real contender for Substack and they, I think will probably build some automation like ConvertKit. So that's one to keep your eyes out for. It's a monthly subscription. It's very affordable compared to ConvertKit. But yeah. So how do people get to that email list was another thing he asked. They get there from Medium. I use Call to actions on LinkedIn and Twitter and they also get there from my personal website. There's a bunch of different ways. So I just try to make it easy for people. I don't bombard them. It's one email a week. I'm a little bit lazy. I tend to repost the best thing that I did for that week as the email. And I know that's probably not best practice, but I find a lot of people miss like what I'm doing cause there's so much of it. So I'd rather just take the thing that has the most amount of data and make that the newsletter for the week. I'll normally include the most popular tweet as well and then just a call to action of like, do something at the bottom, but very basic, like follow on Twitter or if I've released a book or whatever. It might be something light on the bottom, but I don't really sell anything in the newsletter. I try and keep that to a minimum because I just don't want to overwhelm people.

So it's one email a week. Anyone who comes in any of your entry points jumps onto the live newsletter.

They do, yeah. They also, depending on the entry point, there is some automation and it's pretty good. Like the emails that have been written, which my business partner wrote, they're very entertaining. So I get a lot of feedback from people like, oh my God, that was the best like welcome email I've ever had type stuff. And that's not my spartan. It's. That's just if you're a copywriter, you can do that. I'm not very good. So I recommend everyone do that, like have a really entertaining open sequence for people that join because it just means that they're more likely to open your newsletter.

Interesting. So what are some of the. I mean, it's interesting that you talk about topics that Medium has throttled but what are some of the topics that you've found to be or to have the most viral potential? Like, do you ever sit down and go, I know that when I hit publish on this thing, it's gonna get read by a lot of people and like, what, what's your mental toolkit for? If I, if I want to attract a lot of attention, what are, what are the ingredients in that viral stew?

You're going to hate the answer call. But all right, here goes. So medium's most popular topics now are not what they used to be, unfortunately. And they're ones that I don't write about. So the most popular, I wrote them down. So I don't forget politics, racism, feminism. You're writing one of those men, you're going mega, mega viral. If you write, you know, in a democratic way, I. E. A Biden direction, you're going to go even more viral. If you write in the Trump direction, you're probably going to get throttled. That's just the harsh truth. Right?

That's fascinating. Yeah, man.

If you mentioned some people definitely get throttled. If you mentioned Republican, maybe not. But it is very Democratic, the platform.

That's really interesting because I remember, I mean, what was it two years ago? I mean, personal development. If you wrote anything that even sneezed in the direction of personal development, you were going to go viral and you crushed that. I thought I was crushing it at the time. You were doing like 3x whatever I was doing and you just ran with personal development. So how much do you pay attention to those trends? And when you notice a category that's really hot, do you think about catering to it or do you just go, ah, all right, that's not really my thing.

I'm getting a bit exhausted because the medium categories that tend to go well are just not things I'm interested in. And I don't want to write about things not interested just for the sake of views. It doesn't make sense. You know the other categories that still do well but just not the same of those other three is, you know, self help still does well on the platform, but not like Benjamin Hardy, kind of violent.

He had, he had a moment there.

Yeah, he really tapped into something. Travel does really well. That's a new up and comer. So writing about your experiences, going to different countries, that works. Productivity always does okay. Similar to self help, anything about the economy tends to do okay. Again, if you touch too much into like make money online in this current iteration, it appears like that's not great. Crypto does really well on the platform, so that's what I'm leaning into. They're now heavily promoting Crypto a lot more. So I write a fair bit in that. History does really well, and marketing does really well. And that's, again, one of the downsides. Like, you know, it is limited a little bit on Medium with the categories you can write about. Like, you can't do poetry. You know, you're probably not going to write about space travel. Like, there's a lot of things that just don't really make sense for Medium. So you really have to make sure you're writing in one of the correct topics and that you're not accidentally falling on one of those traps that could get you throttled of, like, talking about Trump. Or I can guarantee you right now, if you write an article that says, I made $11,000 on Twitter last month, like, that's going to get blocked. Right.

Wow. So this is really interesting. So I'd love to. I'm going to share my screen here. This is something I've been wanting to ask you for a. Because I haven't seen any other Medium writers do this, and I love this strategy. So little tactical thing for everyone here. And Tim, I just saw this. You're. Are you going to be a dad?

Yeah, man. November.

Oh, my gosh. Huge congrats.

Thanks.

Huge congrats. That's incredible. Everyone's having kids now. Not me. Okay, so here's this top thing, this pinned thing. I've been watching you do this for a couple months. I'm fascinated by it. So can you explain to people what you're doing here, what the strategy is, how it works, why you're choosing to pin it?

Yeah. One thing that's annoyed me, Cole, which I've had conversations with Medium about directly, is that they moved to some of the social media features off their platform. So if you look on these articles here, and not that long ago, about a year ago, there used to be the number of claps written next to the article. So I could look at someone's page and I would know, like, what's their best thing? Because, again, the psychology is, if I don't know you, I just want to get to your best piece of work so that I can either fall in love or not. And because that got taken away, they also used to have a popular list that would, literally, just based on the algorithm, it would show you whatever had the most views on the platform at that time. And they got rid of that as well. So I was like, how does Anyone find the best content if you take that away? So I ended up just making this myself and going, I just want to make it easy for the reader to figure out what's going well right now and what's the most popular stuff I've ever published on the platform. And so there it is. And it generates a lot of traffic. It sends people to my email list. You'll see, like, a lot of writers on Medium have copied that strategy, which is cool. I don't mind. And I recommend everybody do that if you're going to write there. Just make life easy for the reader. And it's also the pin post. And another thing I see people do is they pin, like 20 posts in a row. And then the problem is, I don't know, in your feed, like, what's the newest thing that you've written? So again, you're making my life hard as a reader. So I'm a bit like a software developer. They think about user experience, I think about reader experience. And like, how do I make their life easy otherwise they're not going to waste their time on my work if it's complicated.

So just to make this super tactical for people. So is this. Did you do this the first time? And are you just editing? Are you just updating this page? You're not like, reposting a new thing every time, right?

No. So that's another thing Medium added. They added a duplicate content rule. So on LinkedIn, for example, a lot of people you're not allowed to. On Medium, I got busted. And in fact, I know people that have been banned for this. They are incredibly strict on that rule. Yeah, I had an article yesterday that I accidentally unlisted and I went to relist it and obviously it got no traction and I was like, oh, I could just publish it again. I can't, because they have machine learning that can see if something is duplicate. And so to answer your question, the ideal way to do this would be to publish it new every week so that it gets picked up, but you're not allowed to. So only all I can do is edit it, which does unfortunately limit the reach of people seeing it. But there's nothing I can do.

So you're really just treating this as it's a pinned asset and all you're doing is going through and updating this link and then maybe over time, if a piece enters your top four, top five, you're going to put it here, correct?

Yeah, but you'll see on my own personal website, because this pissed me off so much, I Actually had the developer build a whole thing that lets people see, like, what's new, what's the most popular, and then show me the archive. And that was an issue I had. When you go to build your own personal website as a writer, all the WordPress templates, they're not built for bloggers. So I couldn't find a single blog template that had all that kind of built into the blog. So again, I had to get something custom coded. And that's why I'm very negative about, like, WordPress templates and using Squarespace and a lot of these website tools because they don't have these features. And it's. You may as well just build it yourself.

Yep. Tim, I've got a quick, funny story for you on the duplicate content rule is, like, two or three years ago, uh, when their pay, their paid program really started ramping up, I was like, I've got an idea. So I took my top 200 Quora answers and I would start from the top and just. I posted them all the first time. And I was growing so quickly that I did. Once I was finished, I was like, I'm just going to do it again. And so I started back from the beginning and I did it three times in a row. So I had three copies of everything. So I had 600 pieces on Medium, and Medium paid me for all of it. You know, they're paying me just thousands and thousands of dollars every month for all of the content. And then I got an email one day from them being like, we see all this duplicate content. You have 24 hours to remove all the duplicates. So I had to stay up for like, seven hours and delete all of the pieces that I had published for, like, two years. Oh, no.

Well, I did the same thing, Cole. So I saw you doing it, so then I started doing it. But you did it early in the game, so you didn't get busted. I did it when they had, like, one day left of patience. And I had a couple. I'm not joking. I had a couple made like $10,000 just doing that. Right?

Yeah, I know.

And then. And then they, like, go back, delete them all. So I did, But I was late to that gravy train, so at least you got to milk it.

So this, this is the problem I have with Medium is how much they change all the time. You know, they're constantly changing the rules. Dickie, what were you going to say?

I was looking at a couple of.

Your tweets and I saw one that you said the only Writing platforms worth building on right now are Twitter, Substack and LinkedIn. So can you break down? And we. So Cole and I are writing actively on Twitter and LinkedIn. We don't have a substack, but we have a newsletter in ConvertKit. What's your take on Substack? Writing on that versus when people join your email list or on ConvertKit? What if they're on both? And then after that, let's talk LinkedIn strategy. But let's start first with Substack.

Yeah. So Substack's a good one. I am. My prediction is that they'll end up in the Medium direction. And then my prediction for Medium is they'll probably end up in the Substack direction and Medium. Make no secret they're watching Substack like a hawk. Like, that's their inspiration for everything. Right. And so the reason why I'm focused on Substack is a few people have missed the boat here because they're thinking that Substack is just going to be a newsletter platform and that, well, if I'm already publishing a ConvertKit newsletter, then why would I need a substack? Now? I do a substack substack separately because my prediction is that it will get Discoverability and it will get a newsfeed. And it's pretty clear already they've launched an app. I've been talking. Yeah, they're going to do it. I've been talking to a few writers. They're telling me now that, you know, 10% of their traffic is starting to organically come from substack. I think that number is going to get higher. So I want to make sure I'm on the platform. I've got some exposure on there, so that if my prediction is right, then I can then lean into that a lot more. So I think they'll have a newsfeed. I can't say who, but I had a secret conversation about a week ago, and this person spoke to the top 10 writers on substack in terms of earnings, and basically a lot of them are starting to think about leaving. And so I said to him, well, why is that? And he said, because as they become more like Medium and they start to push that Substack brand out to the front, these writers don't want their work sort of helping to promote other writers. Now, I think that's a little bit of a scarcity mindset. At the same time, I respect, like, you know, I respect why they think that. And so they're starting to think about moving off. None of them have yet, but they're all having conversations about where do we go outside of Substack. And so I think there's a bit of a changing of the guard. And so that's why I'm really interested in Substack. But to me, it's not a finished product yet. Like, it's still, unfortunately, bring your own audience. So if you don't have an audience, you're not really going to start on Substack. But I think that is going to change. And so my strategy is I think Twitter is the best traffic generator right now. So if you've got a great Twitter account and you've got a great substack, those two link together beautifully. And then if you're using those two, then potentially if Substack does make the pivot, which it looks like they will, you're going to be in a great space because you're going to have two of the kind of best platforms for online writers. So that's kind of how I'm thinking about it. I'm not charging for my substack because one thing that people don't understand is once you charge a subscription for a newsletter, it's no longer shareable. Because if I forward you a newsletter and then you get a paywall, the friction is way too high. You're not going to read that, you're just going to delete it. So if it's free, it's more shareable. And then now I'm thinking like, well, then how else could I monetize it? And I think the best option is probably ads, but not ads in terms of like Facebook ads or the, you know, Google sense or any of the old models. I think there are new ad models that are coming that are highly personalized, much more congruent with your own brand. So instead of just serving up random ads to newsletter subscribers, you're serving up ads that you care about and that they care about. So it doesn't really feel like an ad. So, for example, if I had a crypto newsletter and I promoted crypto.com in my newsletter, that's very organic for me because I've got friends that work there. I'm a big user of their app. I really love the product. Like, when I talk about it, I go sort of red in the face. That's not really an ad to me. And people that read my crypto stuff, they know how much I love crypto.com. so it's moving away from the serve stuff. People hate low quality content over to the I could actually write some really high quality content about Crypto.com and have it not feel like an ad. So I predict that one of these newsletter platforms is going to create Google AdSense. But for newsletters, that's my prediction.

Beehives kind of signaled that they're thinking in that direction, which will be interesting. But yeah, just to crystallize what you were saying, I mean, the pro con opportunity is as Substack's ecosystem grows, what you give up in terms of percentage, you have to pay substack, was it 20%? It's pretty high.

10% plus 3% stripe fees.

Okay, yeah, the 10%'s the base. You pay that. But in theory, the ecosystem helps you grow. And for most writers, most. The reality is most writers don't want to learn the distribution or business side, they just want to learn the writing side. So that's why there's this draw to, well, what's the platform that allows me to make money medium or allows me to distribute Substack in a way that I don't have to worry about it. You're doing it for me. So I'm giving up 10% so that you do it for me. The challenge though is it's a, it's usually not as easy as you think, and B, the more control that you have, you know, if you decide, okay, I'm not going to do this on Substack, I'm going to go and like in chip 30, we run all of our email lists through ConvertKit. Little bit more work, you know, a little bit more of a learning curve, but much more ownership. And that's, that's the trade off that every, every writer and every creator has to decide, you know, how much, how.

Much ownership you feel like if you're running a business, that's ConvertKit, but if you're running a newsletter and the newsletter is starting to become a publication and that newsletter platform all the way, then maybe, then maybe those two things separate. Right now they're still glued together, but my prediction is that they will separate.

Yeah.

So, Dickie, do you want to do. We want to do LinkedIn next?

Yeah, let's do LinkedIn. What's your, what's your take on how long you've been writing there? What, what's worked, what hasn't worked compared to Twitter? Cause I know you're relatively new to Twitter versus LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, ConvertKit, et cetera. So why don't we talk about maybe what you've found worked on LinkedIn and then we'll Finish up and just jam on Twitter. Strategy.

Sure. So LinkedIn is another amazing platform. I think it's underrated by a lot of people. The first thing is the organic reach on that platform is still stupidly high, and most people don't get it. But the reason why they don't access that organic reach is because they don't understand LinkedIn psychology and LinkedIn language. You can't just copy and paste stuff from other platforms and put it on there. Why? Because when I'm on LinkedIn as a user, my boss is over my shoulder. So what am I trying to do when my boss is looking at me, what I'm doing online? I want to look smart. I want to look innovative. I don't want to be engaging with content that has the F word in it. I don't want to be engaging in politics because that could get rocky. I don't want to do anything that's going to piss off the customers that I serve. So I'm very careful. That's why LinkedIn, a lot of people joke on Twitter about how it's a little bit cringy. It's cringy because that's workplace culture, right? Going to a workplace, you know, you don't walk around sort of like, being crazy and swearing and like whistling at the opposite sex. You don't do that in the workplace because it'll get you in trouble. Well, that's why it doesn't happen on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is. It's one of my favorite platforms for that reason. But also, if you're running a business, a lot of people are missing this key thing, right. Which I'm going to share. The quality of a LinkedIn user is not the same as any other platform. For starters, the average salary is six figures and above, right? So you're dealing with fairly wealthy customers, which means when you sell a product, I've found in my own business, they don't blink at the price. They don't haggle on the price. They're happy to spend two grand on a valuable product. They love online learning because they want to reinvest in their education. A couple other things are missed. If I invest in my education, that goes on my tax return, which means all of a sudden, I don't care about the price. Or if I invest in my education, I can get my employer to pay it, which means it's free, Right? So when I'm selling on that platform, if you're selling as a business owner, it's the best platform because everyone's there. And they're talking about business. And then when you sell on the platform, if you try and do that on Twitter, it can get a little bit like salesy. But on LinkedIn there's no such thing as salesy because everyone's there for business. So getting sold to is just part of the ecosystem. It's built into the psychology of the user LinkedIn has. Their business model is different too. So the reason why they escaped all the Facebook drama and all the Twitter drama during all the COVID stuff was because their business model is they charge users to use the platform a monthly subscription, which I think it's like more than 50% of users pay that subscription. So they're not reliant on ads, which means that they're free to use their platform a lot differently. And they're not artificially messing with the newsfeed as much to promote ads, because they don't have to. It's not their core business. It's just an add on to what they do. And so when you understand that, you realize that's why they're very separate to every other platform. The hard part on LinkedIn is you've got to get people from LinkedIn to your email list. So there's a couple of ways I do it. One is the first comment in any piece of content. And I normally recommend that everyone does the 3000 character text only post. If you're a writer, don't do the LinkedIn articles because they were kind of deprioritized like three, four years ago. No one does that anymore. So you put the comment there. You can put a comment in the featured section of your LinkedIn profile. You'll need to have LinkedIn Creator Mode on. You might want to Google, it's pretty easy to turn on. But if you turn that on, you'll get a featured section. And the mistake people make here is they put their best piece of LinkedIn content. No, no, no, you don't put that. You put your landing page to either a book, a newsletter or a course in your featured section. And that's how you collect email subscribers on your profile. And then hot off the press, two days ago, LinkedIn launched another great feature which is in your profile, they now let you have a clickable bio link. It's only for people that have creator mode turned on. So now at the top of your headline, you can have a clickable link that hopefully will lead to your email list as well. So they're the three ways that you actually get people off LinkedIn into your email list and I'm not joking. I've had days recently where I'm getting 400 email subscribers in one day off. One little link.

Real quick, let's. Let's just show people. Exactly. Because this was a very recent realization for both Dickie and I. We both just started using LinkedIn and so we kind of went through these steps. So you turn on creator mode.

Yep.

Here. Which I don't know that any of us actually knows what that means other than I think it signals to LinkedIn like I'm trying.

It switches you from connect only to follow. So you can follow someone as a creator.

Yeah, it does a bunch of things. What LinkedIn did is they realized that they were treating creators very badly. And a lot of this is the thing that annoys me about a lot of other platforms. They don't respect the creator and they don't have what I call creator churn. So, you know, like when we talk about subscriptions, we talk about monthly churn, about how many people are coming off. Well, the same applies to creators. There is a churn of creators on these platforms. And if you don't trade them, right. What do they do? They just churn and they go to a better platform. And that's what happens all the time. So LinkedIn realized this. They created an entire team that just looks after creators and they basically came up with this mode. It's not just follow, it's also you get access to creator only features. So right now there's LinkedIn Live and there's LinkedIn newsletters and you have to have creator mode turned on to access those. The LinkedIn bio link that I mentioned, that's another one that you can only get through there. And there are more coming. They've got clubhouse for LinkedIn, which is audio rooms, very similar to Twitter spaces, that's in beta at the moment. And you can also access that via creator mode. Um, so the bottom line is if you're an online writer, you should have that mode turned on, otherwise you're missing a big opportunity.

That's awesome. I did not know that.

Yeah. And if you go cool. If you go up to edit, this is new. So click next. Yeah, there. And then scroll down. You can add a website link now.

Oh, wow.

So I just put our 13,000 word ultimate guide there.

Right. So there you go.

And then you can also customize the text. So it's not even the link. I just put download the guide or something. But that's brand new feature and very cool.

Oh, check that out.

Yeah, that's awesome.

See we're all learning every day.

Okay, so the other thing, Cole, that relates to this is they released in LinkedIn newsletters. Now I, I've been having conversations with them and I'm a dreamer, right? I said to them, you realize that there's going to come a day where you social media platforms are going to have to give us the email addresses, right? And they starting to realize that that's going to have to happen. No promises, but I say at least give me the email addresses for the people that sign up for my LinkedIn newsletter. So we're not there yet, but many people don't know that medium. Now, you can access the email addresses of anyone that turns on notifications. I'm not going to take credit for it, but I'm going to say that I hassled them for many years and said, you've got to give us the email addresses. I didn't get all the email addresses, but what I did get for us is we get some of the email addresses. And so I'm working on LinkedIn to try and get the same to say like, we want the email addresses so we can have direct access. But what I want to say, Cole, for you, this applies directly for you is set up a LinkedIn newsletter. But there's one trick that I stuffed up. But if you don't stuff it up, this will lead to really good growth. So when you create a newsletter, you get a one time chance that LinkedIn will notify every one of your followers and connections that, hey, Cole's just started a newsletter. It's called ship 30 for 30. Click this button to subscribe to it and you only get that chance once. And so if I was launching a LinkedIn newsletter, I would be way more strategic and I would take a piece of writing that is data backed. Because Cole, you and I are data backed, right? And Dickie as well. So what do I have data on that I know is going to blow up that will do really well on LinkedIn? And I would make that the first thing that I publish in my LinkedIn newsletter and then I would blast that out during a peak time. So in America it's like 4am My time. I don't know what that is in American time, but that's like when everyone's active on the platform, I would publish it, then I'd do it during the middle of the week, so probably like a Thursday American time somewhere around there and I would just let that piece blow up. Now when I did it, I wasn't as strategic, but I got 120,000 LinkedIn newsletter subscribers in a few days. Wow. So that's like a massive unlock. Now, the downside is, yes, you get the subscribers, you don't get their email address, but you can notify them every time you publish that newsletter. And then for you guys, that newsletter is then how you funnel people into your email list.

Hmm. That is a little sniper rifle. That's interesting.

So it's almost worth it to wait on that until you have a bigger audience.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too.

Potentially. Yes. I learned another little trick. So when you do the LinkedIn newsletter, a lot of people doing ship 30 for 30, they're big into Twitter. And so a little unlock is that you can. You'll see this one on my profile. You can write a headline, and then you can write one paragraph, and then you can write, click this tweet to read the entire thread. And that's basically how you get people from LinkedIn into a Twitter thread. I did this last week. I got 200 email subscribers in one day. If you look at the post that doesn't have a lot of engagement on it, it kind of looks like it flopped. And that's. That's fine. But on the back end, I got loads of engagement on Twitter and on my email list. So that's another hack to get people from LinkedIn. So if you go to show all activity and then go to articles.

Oh, so this was a LinkedIn article, not a post.

So it's an article within a newsletter. The terminology is really confusing. And it's. If you scroll down with the palm trees, you click that, you'll see an example. So not a lot of engagement, but if you just click. Yeah, click into the article 13 ideas and then scroll down, you'll see the strategy firsthand. There's one paragraph. Click the tweet.

I think that's probably a little bit different than putting a link in a LinkedIn post, because they deprioritize links in regular posts, if I understand correctly, they.

Do, but luckily they don't do it on LinkedIn articles.

That makes sense.

Hmm.

Yeah.

So. So if you want to do it, the way that we. We've been doing it, is you make your post and then the link you put as a comment in response to your post. Yep.

One hack I've learned here, Cole, is again, I'm not a copywriter, but what I've learned with these links you put in the comment is if it ties directly back to the post, it'll get a much higher conversion Rate. So if you write a post about, like, career burnout, and then the call to action is join ship 30 for 30 to get rid of career burnout. Like, that's something that a lot of people don't do. They just put a random on my newsletter. And if you're lazy like that, you won't get the same conversion rate. So that's another way to kind of get. Get things up.

Yep, that's a great point. And then here's the featured section you were talking about. So you want to add assets so you can add links to these assets.

Oh, where people stuff this up. If you look at mine, it's very different. Right. So you've got three. Ideally, you just want to have one because all you're trying to do is get people from there to your email list. People make the mistake of, like, putting their best content, but if you look at mine, it's one link and all it does is take you to the email list.

Oh, I see.

Don't know how. Yeah, yeah. So that's all you're trying to do. But people stuff it up and they have like four links and call. What do we know? When we give people too many options, they do nothing. And I see this on medium, they have four call to actions. Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, join my email list and become a medium subscriber. No, no, no, no. One thing. What's the thing that moves the needle on your online business? It's not. Probably not. Medium subscriber. It's not a follow on Twitter. What is it?

Email sub.

Email sub. Yep.

That is a great point. That is a great point. Damn, Tim, I didn't even realize that you were like that on LinkedIn is even more than medium.

No, I'm throttled though, Cole. Just as a bit of a secret.

They put you in timeout.

Well, I got banned four times accidentally by machine. Algorithm, machine learning. And one of the reasons was on election night, I wrote, I hope Joe Biden wins, just as a cheeky comment. And that got me banned like, a minute later. Um, so I got unbanned, which is fine, but unfortunately, it permanently puts, like, a blemish. So I would be well over a million now if that didn't happen, man. But I. There's nothing you can do once you get banned. You're permanently limited in reach, man.

See, yeah, this is the challenge. This is the challenge of the online writing game is the platforms are always changing, the rules are always changing. What's good today might not be good tomorrow. And so that's why one of the things we talk about a lot is kind of just the thinking of it. You know, the first principles of the game's going to change, so you have to understand how the game works so that you can continue to evolve with it.

Well, the game's going to become Web3, right? Like, in the end, we're going to have decentralized social media. Moderation will be done by the users. We will all be able to buy ownership in the token of the platform that we want to write on. So, you know, if someone recreates Twitter, we'll be able to buy the token and participate in that. You know, we'll all get paid in crypto or US dollar stablecoin. Like all this will disappear in Web three. We're just a few years away from that. So unfortunately, we're still in this web2 where it's like a dictatorship, right? There's just nothing you can do about it.

That was the bullish comment I was waiting for.

All right, now, for anyone, we don't have any Web3 writing platforms. I am watching every day. I've seen a couple like Mirror on xyz, but they all suck. If there's any entrepreneurs on this call, please, for the love of God, someone build a web3 writing platform. I'm begging you.

It's challenging, right? I mean, I honestly think I've spent 10 years thinking about this, and the most challenging part is not actually the business model. The most challenging part is that every writer wants to be paid for the fact that they took the time to write it, regardless of whether or not what they wrote is valuable. That's. That's the challenge. It's. I spent an hour writing, so I deserve to be paid something because I spent an hour doing the thing. And that, that is the hardest thing for, for every creator to wrap their head around is like, nobody cares how long it took you to do it. Doesn't matter if it took you 15 minutes or 15 hours. It only comes down to what is the value I extract from what you created. Period.

Cole, that could be partly solved because. All right, if you don't get paid for the hour that you spent writing, but you're still able to build your audience in your email list, then maybe that's enough for writers.

Maybe. Maybe we will see. Dickie, you have any other questions?

No, I think we could take some from the, the chat here, but no, I think, dang, a lot to dig into here. There's. There's a lot of platforms going on. I think A lot of things to. I think if we were to summarize all this, right, it's platform algorithms are changing, they're unpredictable. You can utilize them as best you can, but you want to get email subscribers.

Yep.

Right.

And so that's the game. And the more value you can add to your email subscribers, the longer they're going to stay.

Right.

Then you build in a viral loop that's like, no, I don't just follow this person. Yeah, they're a great follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, et cetera. But wait till you get on their email list. That's where they drop the really good stuff. And if you can create a ton of value on a free newsletter, monetization is simply a byproduct.

Vicky, I think, as well, just with the email list, some people say it as the Holy Grail. There's only one problem, which is the unsubscribes. If you send an email on a bad day or someone inbox is full, you're going to spike their unsubscribes. So I always say as well, you need an insurance policy for the email list. And in where we are right now, that's a discord group, Right? So if I'm off your email list, I still got you in discord. I think that's another thing that's kind of crucial that not everyone's thinking about.

That is an interesting next step. I mean, in ship 30, we operate out of circle now, and I think that trend is probably going to continue, you know, more of these community platforms. Doesn't matter if it's Circle or Slack or Discord. But yeah, that's the forever challenge, right, Is how do I get in touch with you, the reader. And the high level is algorithms. The next level is newsletter or email, and the level below that is like text chat, platform, signal, you know, some even more personal. Fascinating. Tim, you didn't disappoint. Thanks for making the time and showing up and dropping knowledge. You're one of the. You are definitely one of the few people that I've met over the years who is not only a great writer, I think you're a terrific writer, but you stay incredibly abreast to the changes in the writing world. Like, you are always on the what's. What's being changed? What's the pulse? What are the new rules? And I love that I always learn from you every time we chat.

Thanks, man. Yeah, I think Twitter is really the one that I want to see more people kind of utilizing. That's the. It's it's an old platform, but that's where I'm going to be spending most of my time. And I've I joined only October last year. So I think for everyone doing ship 30 for 30, like that's probably your primary traffic generator. It's got the best viral loop. It's made for writers. Because most of the stuff on the platform is text. I'm going slow on there. I will admit it's pretty hard. It's a lot harder than I thought. But I would just persevere with it. I think if you're on there for a year, Twitter is a great boost to anything that you're writing.

Yep. And on that, my prediction, especially with the whole Elon buying Twitter and all of that, my prediction is that organic education content has its best decade ahead of it. Like if you are creating educational, organic, high quality content, you are going to. The algorithms are going to, I think, have to make a choice and they're going to go, we still need to distribute, but we don't want to distribute the political polarizing stuff. So what else do we distribute? Well, let's go distribute a bunch of how to guides and it's all the education stuff. So I really think that the next five years are going to be incredible through that lens.

With Elon in control of Twitter, I think it's going to be really good. So I'm very excited for Twitter.

Fascinating.

Thanks, Tim.

This has been great.

Let's throw it in the chat. Some thank you, some claps for Tim. Appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. This has been good. I know. I got a bunch of notes. So this was good stuff. Tim, I appreciate you stopping by.