Cristian Mihai (born 25 December 1990) grew up in Constanta, Romania. And he’s still growing up, or at least trying to. Sometimes he writes. Sometimes he gets lucky and writes something good. His favorite painting is “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich. He can’t, however, draw a straight line. No matter how much he tries. Not even with a ruler. And, please, don’t ever ask him to sing.
The written word has changed a lot over the last couple of decades.
The way we consume words has changed, the sheer quantity of content and the ease of access, and the fact that we are now all interconnected, all of these factors influence the way we write and the way we read.
But the basics have stayed the same. The principles of good writing, the principles of a healthy inner game.
Here are 7 timeless tips that, if applied, will help you become a better blogger.
For whatever reason, this saying has always made me reluctant to share blogging tips and advice on my blogging.
As a matter of fact, from 2012 to 2018 there was only one article about blogging on my main blog, as I worked tirelessly to prove others that I could do it.
The result?
In eight and a half years of blogging I have built three different blogs to a total of over 200,000 readers, while being featured by websites such as:
I’m also proud to have founded several other online communities and ventures such as:
We’re over 42,000 here on The Art of Blogging, and I couldn’t be prouder.
An online platform dedicated to promoting art. Simple as that!
Read by over 13,000 people every month.
I managed to do, and while I consistently share blogging tips and strategies, while I sell online courses and books, I feel there’s more that I can do.
Rather than teach you how to do it, I can show you.
Besides, the world of blogging has changed since I last started a new blog (The Art of Blogging in April 2018), and thus I want to prove myself once again.
Recently I’ve built an audience of 2,400 reader on Medium in less than four months, and this made me ask myself, “What would I do if I had to start all over again?”
That’s why I am excited to announce this new project:
The idea behind this project is simple.
On September 15th, 2020, I will start a new blog. A different niche.
I won’t advertise it or promote it, I won’t pay for ads.
And I will show you behind the scenes. Everything I do. The time I invest, the tools I use, and how I optimize 1 hour daily to grow a blog that has an audience and makes real money.
For an entire year, you will get weekly behind the scenes updates, so, if you wish, you can do the same things I do.
I won’t teach, I won’t preach, I’ll show you!
One year of access, starting 15th of September 2020.
You spend an insane amount of time hunched over your keyboard, punching those keys. You write your heart out, search for the perfect image that will compliment your article, rummage through your brain for a genius opening line, for an ending that will surely inspire and motivate your readers.
Now, it’s time to hit the Publish button.
Your baby is ready to be shared with the world.
Or is it?
Well, here’s how you can know for sure if your article is ready to be published on the web.
Two and a half years ago I was just about ready to quit blogging.
First, because I thought there was nothing new to learn. I knew it all, I had reached the top of the mountain, and there was nowhere else to go from there.
Second, because I didn’t get much pleasure out of writing articles anymore. It was not challenging me anymore.
It was a rough time for me, considering that my income was a direct result of my ability to consistently produce new content.
I believe that creativity is directly tied to our ability to interpret work as play, and in order to do so, we must constantly work towards becoming better at our craft.
Since I thought I knew it all, there was no incentive to find ways of improving myself as a blogger.
Accidentally, I shared a couple of blogging tips with my readers. Until then, I had only ever wrote one article about blogging, way back in 2012, an while it was my most popular article ever, I had never thought of it as a topic worth writing about.
Talk about missed opportunities, right?
When I realized that my blogging tips were quite popular with my audience, I decided to launch The Art of Blogging.
It was supposed to be a side-hustle, nothing too wild, just so I could supplement my blogging income.
And the more I researched the topic, the more I understood that, in fact, I knew nothing.
“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.” — Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to his editor, Maxwell Perkins
The average age of a Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature is 63.
The youngest writer to ever be awarded this prestigious award was Rudyard Kipling, at the age of 41.
There’s an often overlooked rule of the written word: you can learn how to write a good story only by writing an awful lot of bad stories.
A compilation of all the hard-learned lessons of eight years of blogging, two years of working on a one-on-one basis with hundreds of bloggers, and countless failures, setbacks, experiments.
There’s this fascinating story about Pablo Picasso being able to produce a work of art in a few minutes.
There are multiple versions, and for whatever reason, I can’t seem to verify this, but apparently a woman once asked Picasso (who was either at a cafe or in a market) to do a drawing for her.
Picasso did what she asked, and then demanded some ridiculously high amount of money. Let’s say ten thousand dollars.
Of course, the woman protested, “But it only took you a couple of minutes to draw this.”
The old master corrected her, “It took me thirty years to learn how to draw this in a couple of minutes.”
Or so the story goes.
I’d like to use this story as a framework to discuss an often overlooked aspect of content creation.
It’s not just the skill, but also how that skill is perceived by others.
Blogging success is not just about years and years of practice, but about having an audience that’s aware of all those years of practice.
Let’s talk about the concept of social proof and how you can best use it to your advantage.
