I've Made Over $500,000 From Weaving Words (The Art of Monetizing Your Mind With Today's Hottest Commodity)
What is fuelling:
Almost 3 billion global monthly users on Facebook?
Some 1 billion on LinkedIn and around half a billion on X (Twitter)?
Plus billions of websites, newsletters (like
), blogs, etc.?
Words Are.
Words woven together carry immense power. They also carry vast monetary value. Both of these for good and for bad — and everywhere in between.
[Prefer to listen rather than read? Audio version available in Podcasts]
Think for example of a time some few hundred years ago when very few folks knew ‘words’. The vast majority in many parts of the world simply followed the words of others. The ‘Masters’. The ‘fathers’ in those particular cases.
It was actually referred to as “The Word”. And many folks carried ‘the word’ around the world. They were on a mission…
…a mission to get some particular words out to the vast global masses (many still are).
Times have changed… yet the power of words… has not. And, with billions of people accessing and navigating a life full of woven words, these little thought bombs intermeshed into phrases and sentences can change lives — including yours. More on this below… 👇
Summary Free Letter #43
Navigating Saturated Word Markets
My Personal Word Journey
Finding Self in Writing
Discovering the Joy and Power of Writing Through Communicating with Self
The Immeasurable Benefits of Writing for, to, and with Self
Writing Privately to Write Publicly
Weaving Words into Wealth?
Navigating Saturated Word Markets
For those who have read these free Box Cutter issues, and those new, most likely know that in April 2022 I walked away from a long-time career in the public sector. For almost 15 years I worked my way up the ‘career ladder’ first in higher education and then in healthcare and then back to higher education for a brief stint.
But, there came a point where I simply couldn’t be an office jockey and cubicle creature anymore.
What was one of the central tasks of my box-jockeying and creature-cubing?
Weaving words.
A Syllable-slinger. Sentence slicer.
Without a word of a lie… some days I spent hours upon hours — on one email. Especially when it came to the human resources side of things.
Yup, some emails probably cost taxpayers (I worked in the public sector), at least $500 apiece — sometimes more. They needed to be very carefully worded.
• • •
The career-building worked well for many years when our 3 kids were young. I was also able to leverage my salary positions to complete a Master's degree (in Adult Education) and then a doctorate degree (in Online Education). When I finally said “Enough is enough”, I had almost tripled my annual salary in less than a decade to well over $100,000/year.
By the time I walked away, my constant honing and improving my craft of communication — largely through writing — had resulted in a gross income of over $500,000 in that time frame.
What was one of the core skills that facilitated all of that?
Communication…mainly writing.
But it wasn’t always that way.
My Personal Word Journey
Like many, I hated writing in my school-age years. The vast majority of ‘writing’ seemed so frigging “rule-bound”. Big letter, little letter. Period, comma, no comma, comma-splice. Sentence, not sentence, run-on sentence. Paragraph.
Stay within the lines. ❌ ✅
Write an essay about this book (that you actually probably found rather stupid and irrelevant).
I was reflecting upon some of these memories this week when someone commented on one of my stories on Medium “You did OK with this one. You should…”
I actually laughed out loud. My internal, and not-typed response, was initially “Well, you can go fu…”
…and then I let that go.
Pretty much the only thing I enjoyed writing about throughout my K-12 school years was Geography. I’m still fascinated by geography. Here’s a story on Medium connected with that passion. 👇
Finding Self in Writing
Enjoying and recognizing the power of writing came to me not long after I finished high school. I purposely avoided the societal and schooling pressures that suggested the only pathway upon graduation was university or college. I worked and travelled instead. The writing I engaged in was well-separated from scholastic achievement. A lot of which is Bullshit.
It’s a cycle of self-confirmation bias on a grand scale.
In much of North America (and probably other countries too), teachers in the K-12 system had to go to university to become teachers. For many of them, they trounced off to university not long after graduating from high school. Completed their teaching degree and then set off into schools to shape the minds of tomorrow.
Bless those who take on the profession and put their heart and brains into the work. However… going to school, graduating, and then going to university or college is but one of millions of pathways through life.
And, thus, self-confirmation bias reigns supreme.
Teachers, guidance counsellors and administrators (principals, vice-principals, etc.) — who all needed to get university degrees to secure their positions — then go about spending much of their career telling a younger generation that 'getting good grades and going to university’ is the sure path to glory and success in life…
And how does one do that?
By being a good little student in school who writes and colours within the lines, puts their hand up to request to go to the bathroom, and gets “good grades” by doing what the teachers say and fitting into their little grading matrices.
That may be the path for some… a few. However, it leaves little room or space for those who may subscribe to more of a Box Cutter approach. Such as asking “Why?” Not just once, but over and over.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
See… things change because someone questioned the way things were and devised a way of doing things that is different than how things had been done up to that point in time.
As someone who grew up Digital Analog — pre-Internet — I remember clearly how things used to be different. I’m not yet 50, but grew up in a house that did not have a TV until I was pre-teen.
Fast forward to now, and… think for example of Facebook — with somewhere around 35-40% of the world’s population using it… Consider that, there was no Facebook before there was Facebook.
Duh! right?. ; )
However, things generally change because someone, or a group of people, questions how things are — and then devise a new ways of doing things.
In the present era of mass social and digital media and online influence — words reign supreme. Sure there are videos (e.g. TikTok), but those are largely based on words. Learning and building a business through the power of words can be a pretty wonderful thing.
Discovering the Joy and Power of Writing Through Communicating with Self
I was fortunate in that the joy of writing and a recognition of its power kicked in when I was still young. It came in the form of Self writing.
When I was 18, the year after I barely graduated from high school, I travelled to Australia. I had a return ticket, open-ended for a year, and about $900 in my pocket. I ended out travelling around much of the east side of Australia for almost a year.
I did A LOT of different jobs. I picked every fruit imaginable, plus some vegetables. I sold raffle tickets and then vacuum cleaner appointments over the phone. Worked in a furniture warehouse. Casual manual labour. In a food shop in a fancy mall (for a mafia family, I found out later). At one point, I was going to sell calendars door to door but a minor fender bender car accident put a hitch in those plans.
Throughout the trip, I had a day planner. Each day in the planner I’d write some notes about what I did, what I was learning, and some observations. From that point on, I was hooked.
I still have that journal over 30 years later and the photos to go with it. Those times of writing shifted my often negative experiences of writing in school (essays, book reports and exams) to positive habits based on writing in ways I enjoyed and wanted to do. No red pen, no right or wrong ❌.
No stinging sentence structure or preposition wrist slaps. A travel journal has been a wonderful thing to keep and revisit.
Life is a journey, so why not keep a journal of those travels too?
Over the last 30+ years, I’ve kept all forms of Learning Journals. These include more travels: Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bali, Finland, Germany, Austria, multiple trips through the western U.S., and any variety of wilderness trips and travels in Canada.
In recent months, I started publishing my journal entries from a 10,000 km solo bicycle trip from the Canadian Arctic to Los Angeles, California. I did that trip in three stages a little over 20 years ago. Here’s one of the first stories (image is hyperlinked) I posted on Medium.
The story above got a ‘Boost’ on Medium, meaning it was shared all across the platform. That story has now made over $20.
Here’s another of my travel adventure stories:
I really enjoy returning to these various travel journals for a read every year or every few years. Similarly, I’ve been re-visiting them more this past year or so thinking about more writing projects and stories (like the ones above).
And, yet, the travel journals are but a small portion of my overall collection of journals. There were many years before I had kids (all teens now) where I was darn consistent with daily writing habits. I would get up and simply let loose. Free flow.
It’s still common-ish, but being part of getting a household up and moving has meant the morning writing was at a lower output than in past years. Often, I’ll simply start by noting what the weather is. Then launch from there.
What did I learn the day previous?
What events stood out?
What am I looking forward to?
Note some things I’m grateful for
Note synchronicities
Ask myself and my subconscious questions
And dig deeper into my ‘thinking about thinking’ — a lot of “whys?”
Some days, in particular places I might make a little sketch of a scene I was looking at. Or something I noticed around me. Or maybe just a random doodle.
These have always been pen and paper journals. All various forms. I don’t necessarily have a ‘favourite’ type of journal. Or a special pen. I’ve tried all sorts.
I also track things I’ve been reading. Often in a separate journal. I usually have one on the go for free-flow writing, morning pages, call them what you will. And then I have another one that’s more about what I’m reading, notes, quotes, and the like.
Not always separate, but often — especially when I was completing Masters and then a Doctorate degree. I labelled these my “Research Journals.” I still enjoy going back to those and making more notes. Reminding myself of things firing off my neurons a few years back.
I’ll write little present-day notes about thoughts coming to mind, emotions, memories or otherwise. I’ve got into the habit of writing in a journal with space to make notes in the months and years ahead when I go back to read.
Or, I’ll take a digital image, print it off, and paste it into a new, current Learning Journal.
Now that I am building a digital writing business, I track any number of notes, thoughts and snippets on a day-to-day basis. Here are notes and quotes as I prepared this free letter. Some collected over the past few days and weeks.👇
I also use the Notes app on my phone and both record voice memos and notes on there if I’m out and about. I will then write those down the next time I’m sitting down to write to Self.
The Immeasurable Benefits of Writing for, to, and with Self
The act of writing for Self, to Self and with Self are so damn powerful and innumerable to quantify.
There is no shortage of data and evidence gathered in the scientific realm to confirm — however, my experiences from over 30 years now and boxes of journals confirm the life-changing, life-extending benefits of regularly writing to and with your Self.
Self writing (or journalling some call it) whether it’s regular, reflective (learning), or research-focused, offers endless therapeutic qualities. Here are at least ten associated with regular Self writing. I’ve collected these from various sources and noted them during my doctoral research:
Self-awareness: Journaling supports reflection on your thoughts, feelings, emotions, behaviours, and actions (as well as others) leading to a deeper understanding of yourself, your motivations, and others.
Emotional Processing: Writing about experiences, especially traumatic or intense ones, can help in processing and understanding emotions, thus promoting emotional healing. Being able to give names and air to things is deeply therapeutic.
Stress Reduction: The act of writing can be immensely cathartic. Transferring concerns, anxieties, and problems onto paper can reduce the weight they have in one’s mind. Some evenings when I feel full of thoughts of things to come, I simply dump them on paper. Then they’re out of my head and on paper.
Clarification and Problem-solving: Articulating challenges on paper often helps in viewing them from a different perspective, making problem-solving more fluid and intuitive. This was so key as I maneuvered to end the soul-shrivelling office jockey career.
Setting and Tracking Goals: Journals act as a platform to outline and track personal or academic/research goals and progress made towards achieving them — or maybe dropping them. Moving on.
Improving Memory: When it comes to learning and research journals, noting insights, findings, or lessons can help in retention and recall. Look up the “forgetting curve” to see how quickly information leaves our memory without tools to keep it there.
Boosting Creativity: The free-form nature of journaling can encourage creative expression, allowing individuals to explore ideas without judgment.
Building Resilience: Reflecting on past challenges and one’s responses to them can highlight patterns of resilience and growth.
Enhancing Communication Skills: Regularly articulating thoughts and ideas in written form can strengthen one’s ability to communicate more effectively in other contexts.
Establishing Personal History: Over time, journals create a record of personal, academic, or research growth and transformation, offering valuable insights into one’s evolution and change.
Engaging with journals whether it’s noting daily reflections, learning experiences, or systematic research observations, provides a unique and powerful space for self-reflection, self-awareness, growth, and understanding. It doesn’t necessarily have to be approached with therapeutic tendencies in mind — but that is what most will find.
It also doesn’t have to be approached with “learning” in mind. As the learning may come down the road when you re-visit your Self writing.
Regular writing to and with your Self can also provide space for critical unlearning. Years of formal schooling can indoctrinate all sorts of useless information, habits, and various ideologies that we often need to release, let go, and maybe even burn. I’ve found over the years, it’s also been a boon for improving the writing I put out publicly.
In recent years for me, private writing has been key in navigating and processing grief and loss. Over the last 5–6 years, between my wife and I, we have lost a lot of family members and loved ones. This has included a mother, a sibling, aunts, and 6 grandparents. Death is a part of life. There’s no way to avoid it. It comes for all of us. Writing to our Self about death and about deaths that we are facing and then dealing with — is a deeply beneficial process.
As I processed through life choices to leave an over decade-long career and good pay — writing to my Self and navigating ideas, options, emotions, and mapping out possibilities were invaluable. Currently, about 18 months into building a successful digital writing business (Ghostwriting and research), I continue to write daily. To my Self and posting and publishing publicly on a daily basis in a variety of forums — like Medium for example 👇
This past week, I surged past 4,000 Followers on Medium. Not bad growth, considering I was at just over 100 in January.
Similarly, on LinkedIn, I’m approaching 4,000 Connections and Followers. And over the last 365 days over 600,000 Impressions on nearly daily posts. I was a little over 1,000 Connections on there when I started this whole Solopreneur Digital Writer gig in April 2022.
There are some — the many social-media-building-hustle bro-gurus proliferating like mad on social media, bickering with each other about ‘storytelling frameworks’ and Twitter-growth strategies and who made it first — who might poo-poo my online writing strategies.
“Jeez bruh, I could help you get 10x the Impressions and Followers. Let’s take your niche and personal brand TO THE MOON!”
Trust me, I see it in my DMs on X (Twitter) on a regular basis. It’s starting to turn up more in my LinkedIn messaging now too.
So what’s the message in my medium — the medium to carry the message?
Writing Privately to Write Publicly
It seems social media is flooded with ‘storytelling experts’ these days. I see it regularly. I often chuckle as storytelling is an art form that’s been around since well before the written word. However, I can also remember deeply immersing myself in storytelling theory, history, studies, and leading thinkers (e.g. Joseph Campbell and his study of myths from around the world). I still do a lot of reading about storytelling.
Just not so much on social media… ;)
But… the written word and mass literacy have not only shifted the ability to tell and record stories — it has also opened up the ability to write stories and thoughts to our Self too. Then re-visit those over the years to continue to learn and unlearn our way through life.
Over the years, my private writing has fuelled and supported my public and published writing. My private learning and research journals became the topic of my doctoral dissertation and research — especially as I grappled with difficult subjects like Truth and Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada where I live.
As a non-Indigenous person (white Settler descent) I tracked my thoughts, emotions and reflections as I read through reports released a few years ago about the experiences of Indigenous peoples that went to residential schools. Thousands upon thousands of Indigenous children were forced to attend these schools. Thousands never returned home. As a father of three, this still troubles me — deeply.
Today in Canada, where we live. It’s a national holiday to commemorate Truth & Reconciliation. There are also events in different parts of the country where communities are working to determine where children may have gone missing and whether there are unmarked graves near old residential schools.
Heavy-duty, and critical work.
How about you:
Do you regularly write to Self?
Do you write to Self about things you are navigating in life and society?
Do you find it fuels your public writing and writing for publishing?
Weaving Words into Wealth?
As I look back, it’s clear: one of the most valuable commodities I've ever invested in has been learning to weave with words. The power of weaving words, whether in private journals or public forums, has shaped my life, my career, and my present Solopreneur venture.
The headline to this week’s issue is not intended to be ‘clickbait’ — as writing has been central to my past career trajectory. It also facilitated my taking a far more authentic approach (to and for me) in my academic pursuits.
In today's digital age, the ability to weave words is an invaluable skill. Similar to textiles as an extremely valuable commodity in the past — and currently — words can generate much wealth. There is an absolute flood of ‘newsletters’ hitting the digital market. This along with growing swaths of expert gurus and highly priced courses. And torrents of inauthentic, fluffy junk across all social media channels.
This past week, I said “no thank you” to a Mastermind group specifically focused on writing and writing for others (Ghostwriting). This particular group may pose significant wealth-generating possibilities for some and may be worth the investment at tens of thousands of dollars per year — just not for this particular writer.
Our globalized, increasingly interconnected world is starved for authentic voices, stories that resonate, for content that adds genuine value. Every word you write, every genuine story you share, and every reflection you post is more than just personal introspection. It's potential intellectual property, a piece of the vast digital marketplace where authenticity increases the value of the newer commodity that is words.
I have constantly reminded myself of this over the past 18 months or so as I build a business of one — built on foundations of writing (and thinking). It’s very easy to get wrapped up in Follower counts and Impressions and Likes. But these do not translate directly to $$ earned.
This week, a writer on Medium was celebrating on X (Twitter) for passing 280,000 Followers on Medium. One might think that should equal huge earnings…
He shared in the comments that he makes about $4-5K per month from that. Left me wondering about my 4k group of ‘followers’ on Medium and the wealth-generating possibilities…
But that’s not really why I write on the platform and continue to grow a community. That same creator said similarly.
Posting stories and growing on Medium is one strategy of an ecosystem of strategies - and the same goes for my approach. I post nearly daily on multiple platforms and have multiple strategies in play as I build a Solopreneur Digital Writing business — which continues to stand at over $10K per month in gross earnings.
At the core of all this?
Words. Words. Words.
Words are some of the sharpest tools to cut the box.
Want some ideas for writing? Write out and maybe even publish some thoughts and reflections that came to mind as you read this.
I left with this note last week and I will again:
There is a common adage in writing circles (online and off): “write what you know.”
I often suggest and follow the opposite —
Write what you don’t know.
Write what you are actively in the process of learning - especially if you are building something.
Write about things you are Unlearning.
Write what you are trying to figure out about what you believe and value.
That’s it for this week’s Issue. Please share, re-post, drop a like, share a comment, and/or steal at will.
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A very good read ! Thank you for the inspo
It’s great to read about your writing journey. It’s always good to find out about writers who I subscribe to on Substack.