Dear New Writers: You Will Fail Unless You Learn the 4P’s of Online Writing

appearance is everything

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Jonn Leffman

Writing online, be it Medium, Quora, Twitter, etc… is not just writing. Unfortunately, what you write and the quality of it is only part of it.

I know that’s wrong and you don’t agree. And you won’t accept it. But here’s the thing, you absolutely don’t have to accept it, but you won’t get anywhere in the online writing world if you don’t.

This is not journalism class or your creative writing MA, this is writing online.

I didn’t make the rules, and I don’t necessarily agree with them, but if you don’t learn them you won’t get anywhere.

People care about your profile

I recently wrote an article that absolutely was not meant to be contentious. Granted anything you write can get people's backs up, but honestly, I was hoping to give open and honest tips to new writers who are clearly keen to get noticed and get to the 100+ followers mark so they can get paid.

I want new writers to succeed, that’s why I wrote it. All I said was you need a profile picture that is you, a bio blurb, and a name that’s a name.

I had absolutely no idea that it was going to offend so many new writers.