Why Now Is Actually The Best Time To Become A Blogger
“Tell your story..”
Those are the grey words that appear when you open up a new story on Medium.
Go ahead! Open up a draft, write a headline, then press enter and see for yourself.
Oops.. Did I just trick you into opening up a draft because I ACTUALLY want you to write?
The world will never know, but in all seriousness I told you to do that because writing is calling you.
It’s calling you everywhere, really.
It’s calling you when you observe a child opening the door for an older woman at the mall. It’s calling you when you see a “memory” pop up on Facebook from 7 years ago. It’s calling you when you realize you’ve been sitting around a table laughing with friends for hours and lost track of time.
What’s your story?
And why is now the best time to tell it?
My friends, what you’re about to read may seem bleak and depressing, but I’m going to give you some really great advice..
Very Few Writers Are Actually Creative Anymore
NOTE: I don’t wash my hands of the accusations I’m about to lay down.
I look around the internet and see very little information that’s new.
Well, before I get into it, let me tell you a story about Casey Neistat.
Casey’s pretty much the coolest YouTuber on YouTube. I could write a whole article about his crazy story, but just know this..
When he got started vlogging daily — which earned him millions of subscribers — Casey decided to pioneer a different creative route.
He thought..
“What if I made videos that had the same cinematography as feature-length films?”
It was actually an ingenious idea. Instead of just filming his face the entire time, Casey would actually set up his tripod in certain places to make it look like someone was documenting his every move.
This all took loads of extra time. I mean, imagine getting your hotel room key, going into your room, setting your camera up, pressing record, and then walking out of and then back into your room to make it look like you just arrived?
That’s what he did, because he wanted to bring something different to the table as a content creator.
This tiny tweak made him stand out unlike any other YouTuber at the time. He even made a video about his vlogging style, which is ironic once you actually watch it..
Here’s what he basically says at the end of the video..
If You Copy Everybody Else, You’re Failing
Casey says:
“If you follow this video perfectly and make the most perfect Casey vlogs, you’ll have failed before you begun. They don’t want to see your Casey vlogs, they want to see your vlogs.”
It’s true.
We don’t want to see your Benjamin Hardy blogs. We want to see your blogs.
Got it?
And I think writing about personal development is perfectly fine, right? It really is..
It’s just, you have to sort of inject yourself into the “mold.” Build off of what Benjamin Hardy has already done, and now you’re creating something new.
How To Not Copy Everybody Else
Ahh, the question of all questions..
How do you create something new? How do you know where you’re going is actually the right way to go?
To be honest with you, it’s just confidence.
You just have to have the guts to go with your intuition even when blogging “experts” (I like to call myself one sometimes) tell you to do X, Y, and Z.
Well, how about you do A and see what happens?
Spoiler: We don’t know everything.
Jeff Goins doesn’t know everything. Ben Hardy doesn’t know everything. There are vast parts of the blogging ocean they haven’t explored yet.
Yeah, I’m calling you out Jeff. 😜
Something that really fascinates me is what lies beyond email marketing?
The entire blogging community has been so enamored with email marketing that literally everybody says it’s the most crucial part of blogging success.
I agree with everybody, but what if there was a better way?
What if the blogging community has been so focused on email marketing that they didn’t even take the time to CONSIDER anything else?
Got it?
You honestly never know. It makes a lot of sense for beginning writers to respect the guidance of older, more established bloggers, but what if…
I’m just trying to give you the red pill here. I’m trying to make you think about blogging like you never have before.
What if the entire world is doing something the wrong way? What if the way I set up my Medium posts is actually stupid? How can we as creators push Medium past what it is right now?
I see people embedding gifs and creating original drawings for Medium. What if people created 3–4 videos SPECIFICALLY FOR THAT POST and embedded them throughout the story?
Maybe it’s a terrible idea, or maybe it’s a fantastic one?
What I’m saying is, when you’re too busy taking everybody else’s advice, it sort of shuts you off to thinking outside the box.
And that’s a shame, because thinking outside the box is the best part. It’s where we have the most fun. It’s where we can REALLY make a name for ourselves.
So, how do you not copy everybody else? Stop paying so much attention to them. Look at everyone (including me) as flawed.
We don’t know everything, we’re all different, and you can make a killing exploiting things about a platform nobody has ever thought about before.
Why Now Is The Best Time To Get Into Blogging
So I lied to you.. “Now” will ALWAYS be right now. It’s not like February of 2018 is the best time to get into blogging..
“Now” is and always will be the best time because there’s a massive shortage of true creativity.
To be honest, people will never stop copying one another. Follow me for a second..
There’s two types of creativity, people:
- Simple creativity — The kind that builds on something in a small way, but only changes things slightly.
- Raw creativity — The Casey Neistat kind. The kind that kicks down the front door, announces “I’M HERE, PEOPLE,” and makes everybody wonder why they didn’t think of kicking down the door that way before.
There will ALWAYS be a shortage of simple creativity — and an even BIGGER shortage of raw creativity.
There really isn’t that much of it out there in this world. You know why? Because it’s easier to copy. It’s more comfortable to copy. We at least know that there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. 99% of people will copy because 99% of people enjoy the easier route.
Being truly creative, though, takes some major guts and belief in yourself. It’s also extremely difficult and nobody knows whether what they’re doing is actually going to work.
That’s why very few are capable of raw creativity. Because it takes a gut check from the universe to truly accomplish.
This will never change.
And that’s why right now is the best time to get started writing.
You have more to offer the blogging world than you think, because 99% of us are just copying one another anyway.
Want to get started writing online? I actually have a free 5-day email course called “Your First 1,000 Medium Followers” that will teach you how to build an audience here on Medium! Sign up for it right here. I’d love to teach you a couple things.
