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✍🏽 Online Creators

A Clear Guide for Creating an Online Course Your Students Will Love

January 14, 2022 by Eva Keiffenheim


The exact steps I followed to reach course-market fit (including templates).

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Many online courses are money machines for course creators but time-wasters for their students.

By creating my first cohort-based course last August, I wanted to do it differently. My goal wasn’t to maximize income but learning effectiveness.

Looking at sales, net promoter score, and completion rate, I succeeded. I sold all 25 available spots, 85 per cent completed all assignments and rated the course with 9.6/10.

Students’ responses to the NPS question of the feedback survey.

The following guide can help you create an online course your students will love. After a brief explainer of why cohort-based courses are the future of online learning and my prerequisites, you’ll find the exact 5 steps I followed to achieve maximum course-market fit.


Why Cohort-Based Courses…

If you went to school, you’re familiar with cohort-based learning. Students take the same lecture, assignments, and tests simultaneously.

In Cohort Based Courses (CBCs), a group of people moves through the same curriculum at the same pace. CBCs often include a mix of life lessons, pre-recorded videos, remote assignments, and peer learning.

… are the Future of Online Learning

In 2011 massive open online courses, so-called MOOCs were praised for revolutionizing online learning.

But data from Harvard University and MIT revealed only three to four per cent complete self-paced MOOCs— a rate that hasn’t improved in the past six years.

On the opposite end, reports about CBCs look promising.

Seth Godin’s altMBA, a cohort-based online MBA, has a completion rate of 96%. Other CBC providers claim to have 85% of their users finish the course they started.

CBCs are designed around best practices in online learning. For example, a study found interaction with instructors affects learner retention. CBCs use online tools like Zoom or Slack to give feedback, host group coaching, or offer 1-on-1 check-ins to help students complete the course.

Source: Eva Keiffenheim

Don’t Compare Apples and Oranges

A friend told me he attempted to copy Ali Abdaal’s structure to make $2,000,000 on Skillshare. My friend soon gave up. He neither had the video experience nor an existing audience that followed him everywhere.

The best tutorial is useless if you compare yourself against someone too different.

Knowing where I started when I built my first course will help you determine whether and which of the below steps will help you.

  • Audience. Before creating the course, I had 15,000 followers on Medium, 2,500 on LinkedIn, 10,000 podcast listeners, and 3,500 e-mail subscribers of the weekly Learn Letter.
  • Teaching experience. In 2018, I completed a six-week teacher training as Teach For All fellow. I worked as a full-time Maths, Informatics, and PE teacher for two years. I hosted about 25 online workshops, and I’ve read around 30 books about how we learn.
  • Additional support. I was accepted to the Maven accelerator and supported by pedagogic, marketing, and point coaches. I also contracted brilliant Eszter Brhlik for e-mail copywriting and operational support.

You can create an effective online course without the above prerequisites. But an existing audience, didactics experience, and support can make building a course easier and faster for you.

The biggest struggle most online creators have is selling their courses. This is so much easier if you have an existing newsletter subscriber base (here’s what I learned from growing my newsletter to the first 3000 subscribers).

But enough with the prerequisites — let’s get started.


1) Collect Data to Make an Informed Best Guess

Source: Eva Keiffenheim

I wanted to run a course on learning how to learn.

Luckily, I learned from my smart fellow writer Julia Horvath that you should first understand your customers before you build a digital product.

In my weekly newsletter, I sent out a couple of questions:

“I’m thinking about building an online course. Which topics would you like to see me cover?”

People replied with questions about how to write online.

In my next mail, I asked:

“What’s the number one biggest challenge when it comes to learning or writing?”

Informed by around 25 replies to these two questions, I wrote this e-mail and created this survey. 200 people replied to the survey, which helped me with the subsequent step.

The e-mail template I used to ask my audience.
The e-mail led to this survey, where I would capture initial interest.

Action steps for you:

  1. Brainstorm 3–5 course ideas informed by what you’re good at.
  2. If you have an audience: Ask them what they would like to learn from you.
  3. Create a survey to learn more about your potential customers.

2) Find a Compelling Course Title and Scope

As a next step, I searched for the intersection between the problems people have around writing online and the problems I can and want to solve.

Narrowing the course scope can feel hard. But if you build a course for everyone, you build it for no one.

The first step I took was copying all survey responses into a visual tool such as Miro. Then, I clustered the responses. After an hour, I realized around 80 percent of the respondents shared the same four pain points.

I decided which of the pain points I wanted to solve and came up with a couple of title ideas. My first three versions for the course name were the following:

  • I help beginner; occasional writers transform into consistent writers that attract a broad audience
  • How to write non-fiction short-form for beginner writers who struggle with publishing consistently
  • How to build an online writing habit to accelerate your learning, express your thoughts, and fuel your impact
Screenshot of Miro, a digital whiteboard I used for organizing the survey results.

Action steps for you:

  1. Analyze the data you acquired from the previous step.
  2. Narrow your course scope by deciding which problems you can and want to solve.
  3. Come up with 3–5 course titles that include whom you do the course for, what they can do based on the course, and which struggle you’re solving.

3) Test and Refine Your Course With User Interviews

Next, I sent out an e-mail to all people who answered the survey. I asked them to book a 15-minute session with my Calendly.

Screenshot of the e-mail for my user interviews.

I felt a lot of resistance in sending out this mail. Until then, I communicated with my audience through writing. I was scared and curious, how Zoom calls would turn out.

After two hours, all 20 available slots were booked. The conversations were interesting and inspiring. During the sessions, I asked the following questions:

  • What’s your single biggest challenge with online writing right now?
  • Name 2–3 areas you are stuck in for reaching your writing goals.
  • How are you currently tackling it? What have you previously tried to achieve your writing goal?
  • What’s your primary goal with writing online?
  • What else should I have asked?

While listening, I took a lot of notes. I organized them on a digital whiteboard.

Screenshot of Miro, a digital whiteboard I used for organizing the user interviews.

Action steps for you:

  1. Schedule user interviews with your potential customers
  2. Analyze the answers to better understand their most pressing problems.

4) Define Your Students’ Transformation

This is what many online instructors spend too little time thinking about — their students’ learning outcomes.

You want to be crystal clear on what your students should be able to achieve with the help of your course.

A helpful framework is the following, suggested by Wes: “By the end of the course, you’ll be able to do X without Y (usual blocker or friction).”

You can replace the verb “do” with anything from blooms taxonomy:

Revision of Bloom’s taxonomy. (Source: Eva Keiffenheim based on Krathwohl and Anderson et al.)

To set the learning outcome, think again about what people told you in the user survey combined with what you know about the topic you’re teaching.

Here are the key learning outcomes I defined:

  • Publishing three high-quality articles within three weeks during the course (and overcoming any mindsets that have held them back before).
  • Discovering, learning, and using the tools that help them with their creative workflow (e.g. for knowledge management and editing).
  • Learning how to use the data they will generate (reading time, views, clicks) to make future content decisions.
  • Starting an e-mail list including landing page, call-to-action, and optimized welcome e-mail that will become their most valuable asset.
  • Having a repeatable and consistent idea-to-paper process that works for them long after the course.

Action steps for you:

  1. Informed by the previous three steps, fill the sentence, “By the end of the course, you’ll be able to do X without Y (usual blocker or friction).”
  2. List all learning outcomes required to make your sentence true.

5) Use Backward Design For Your Course Structure

Traditional curriculum planning uses forward design. People plan learning activities, forms of assessments and only then try to connect them to learning goals.

In backward design, you start with the learning outcome. You think about the destination your learners want to reach and plan the trip to help them get there.

This is more tricky than simply cluttering the curriculum with anything that might be relevant, but it’s far more intentional and effective.

Two questions that led my thinking was: “Which activities would students need to practice to achieve the desired learning outcome?” and “Which input is required so they can best complete this activity?”

Screenshot of the first version of my course structure.

Only once I was happy with the backwards-designed curriculum, started to collect content and resources.

The result were action-oriented sessions that focused on the “how” instead of the why and what:

Source: Eva Keiffenheim

Action steps for you:

  1. Consider the learning outcomes and the necessary practice for achieving them prior to considering how to teach the content.
  2. Design the lessons around action orientation. Provide guided exercises, templates, and step-by-step guides to help your students succeed.

In Conclusion

While getting here can seem tiring, and like a lot of work, the effort is worth every minute. The five steps help you get very specific about the learning design required to help your students succeed:

  1. Collect data to find out what people want to learn from you
  2. Set a compelling course title and scope
  3. Speak to potential users to further refine your course content
  4. Be clear about your student’s transformation
  5. Plan your course structure with backward-design

Building this course has been one of the most rewarding learning experiences of my life (apart from teaching kids at a school). I hope you will find similar enjoyment in building a course your student will love.


Sign-up free for the weekly Learn Letter and register your interest for the second cohort of the writing online accelerator.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: elearning, How to learn, learning

You Want to Write Online in 2022? Publish Your Articles Here

November 20, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Where you start makes all the difference.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Where will you publish your writing?

You face ever-growing options —Medium, Substack, your own website, and LinkedIn, and other publications.

This guide will help you make the right choice on where to start publishing your writing. The choice depends on your context. Some platforms might be more suitable for you than the other ones.

After reading this article, you’ll know the key factors for decision-making, and you’ll feel confident about your choice.


The key question to ask yourself

The most important thing you should look out for is to get sufficient data on your writing because this is what will help you improve.

You want to know which of your posts perform best and how much time people spend on your articles. Comments underneath your posts to learn about your readers’ needs and interests.

Through data, you can analyze your writing and create more from what works well. You can push the topics your readers are genuinely interested in and steadily attract more people.

But to get this kind of data, you need an initial audience of people reading your posts. That’s why the core question you should be asking yourself is: Do I have an existing +10K follower base on any social media platform or +2K newsletter subscribers?

In essence, you can break down all the existing options into this formula: They either distribute your content to their existing audience, or you have to bring in your own people.

You can write the best content in the world, but if nobody discovers your work, it will be worthless. So unless you have an existing audience, the key metric for your decision-making should be whether the platform you choose can help you grow your audience.


Writing on your personal blog

James Clear, Farnam Street, and many other successful writers post their writing on their blogs.

The key advantage of your own blog is that you own your audience. You can do with your blog traffic whatever you like: share affiliate links, advertise brands or sell your own products.

Another argument for blogs is your independence from algorithms. You’re not dependent on platforms to show your work to the readers. And you can design the website in your personal style.

You don’t need to be a programmer to publish your articles online. Content management systems like WordPress, Ghost, or Wix make website building easy.

Yet, unless you have an existing follower base, you’ll need to have a plan to drive people towards your blog. Are you good at SEO or plan to learn it? Can you spare +$2000 dollars and hire freelancers for sustainable traffic strategies? And is your writing good enough so that people will actually read your post once they find them?

When you’re starting out, you don’t know which articles people want to read from you. You might begin with a food blog and realize only later on that you’re not really into the topic. If you write on a blog and change your mind regarding your niche, you might have to start everything again from scratch.

That’s why — unless you have solid data on your niche and some 100 articles in your backlog — I advise against starting on a blog/website.


Writing on Substack

Newsletters are tempting. Platforms such as Substack, a platform for newsletters where subscribers have to pay for the creator if they wish to receive the recurring content, are on the rise.

Substack has grown from 0 to 1,000,000 paying subscribers within its first 4 years on the market. According to Hamish McKenzie, the co-founder of Substack, the top 10 publications of the platform together bring in more than $20 million per year.

“When you look at the economics of newsletters… If you can find 10,000 people to pay you $100 a year, you’re making $1 million a year. No one in media is going to pay you that.”

— Casey Newton, Platformer

Other success stories include Scott Hines, who grew his email list to 1,000 in less than a year. He writes personal essays about life, parenting, sports, and architecture. Scott says he started from scratch.

Yet, substack doesn’t help you gain an audience. You’ll have to bring in people on your own.

One of the most common Substack advice is to reach out to your family members, friends, colleagues and ask them to subscribe (out of solidarity).

Many of the people who experienced rapid growth on Substack, had an existing audience when they started their newsletter. So unless you can bring an audience from another platform, I’d advise against starting on Substack.


Writing on Linkedin

LinkedIn has 774,61 million active users and the platform is expected to reach 1,034.56 million by 2025. LinkedIn is the go-to platform for networking in the business world, and it can offer a large audience.

There’re two ways to write on LinkedIn in 2021. You can either publish articles or posts. Articles are in-depth pieces, while posts are quick ideas.

LinkedIn articles can be an option for you if you have an existing audience within your niche and you know which content works well for them. With that, you can get initial traction of people commenting and being interested in your content.

Yet, long-form articles mostly don’t perform well on LinkedIn even for people with a large follower base. You also won’t get paid anything on LinkedIn for writing, regardless of how many people have read your work.

Short-form posts can help you gain followers if you go viral or semi-viral. Yet, short writing mostly lacks in-depth information and expertise. To build authentic relationships and a loyal follower base, you’ll have to provide more valuable content to your audience than ‘few hundred words long’ social media posts. As on most social media platforms, creators fight for the attention of the users on LinkedIn as well.

Source: Wes Kao

If you want to build a loyal audience that values depth and clarity, I don’t recommend starting writing on LinkedIn. While the platform can be a growth tool to drive traffic towards your content, it’s not the best place to practice your craft.


Writing on Medium

Founded in 2012 by Ev Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, Medium users have grown steadily. The platform has gone through several changes through the years, including the introduction of the Partner Program, which allows writers to earn money based on members’ reading time.

In 2021, Medium proportionally reduced its paid journalists and started to support independent writers.

On Medium, publishing is frictionless. You tap into an existing audience of people interested in long-form content— unlike LinkedIn, where people mainly go to network and scroll. Through publications, comments, and curation, you receive feedback on your writing. Data on reading time, views, and the reading ratio will help you improve.

Plus, you don’t have to spend time building your website, doing SEO, and finding sponsorships or affiliates for your website. You get paid based on the user’s reading time on your articles.

Many creators complain their earnings aren’t in alignment with their time and energy investment. Indeed, only the top 10% of the writers regularly earn more than $100.

My income on Medium varies from $1,500 to $5,000 — but even if Medium wouldn’t pay me a single cent, I’d write on the platform. I get thoughtful comments and 10 to 25 e-mail subscribers a day.

I see the platform as a tool for testing and improving my writing and building an audience. The income is a nice side effect. If you’re starting out, the platform can offer you many growth and learning opportunities.


Conclusion

To make the best decision on where to publish online, you’ll have to consider the size of your audience.

While it makes sense to redistribute your 10k+ social media following to a paid newsletter subscription or to a blog filled with ads and affiliates, if you’re starting from scratch, it’s easier to tap into the audience of already flourishing platforms.


Do you want to build a consistent writing habit?

Pre-register for the next cohort of my writing online accelerator. You will transform into a consistent writer to attract an audience, create career opportunities, and become a better person. Find more details about the next launch date here.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: inspiration, Writing

How the Meta Log Can Turn You Into a Better Writer

October 18, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Steal my tool to build a consistent, deliberate writing habit.

All you need are four columns. Source: Canva.

When I started writing, it felt painful. I didn’t know how to write introductions and struggled to express my ideas. I thought my texts sounded trite (which they did), and I knew I was not as effective as I could be.

I almost stopped writing altogether.

Fast forward, and I’ve built a consistent writing habit and reached more than two million readers through my articles and newsletters.

If I had to name one tool that has kept me going and improved my writing it’s the meta log. It will support you in establishing a deliberate, consistent writing practice that will turn you into a better writer.


The Science Behind the Meta Log

I invented the tool out of necessity and only recently understood why it works. The meta log is rooted in metacognition. It’s a skill essential for learning, according to many educational scientists.

Different studies show high performers have better metacognitive skills than low performers across various disciplines. Educational psychologist Schraw writes:

“Metacognition is essential to successful learning because it enables individuals to manage their cognitive skills better and to determine weaknesses that can be corrected by constructing new cognitive skills.”

But what is metacognition?

In essence, it means noticing and understanding the way you think. It’s thinking about thinking, knowing about knowing, or becoming aware of your awareness.

When it comes to learning, educational scientists say: “It refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one’s understanding and performance.”

Here’s a visual explanation:

Metacognition Cycle. (Source: Abhilasha Pandey on the progressive teacher).

“The best performers observe themselves closely. They are in effect able to step outside themselves, monitor what is happening in their own minds, and ask how it’s going.”

— Geoff Clovin


How to Quickly Set Up Your Meta Log

According to research, three steps are necessary for unlocking your metacognition: planning, monitoring, and evaluating.

Before you start writing, plan. You first think about your desired goal and consider how you’ll use your time.

Second, you can use self-monitoring to remain aware of your progress. You question the steps you take and reevaluate whether you’re following your planned path.

Finally, you want to reflect on your performance. You evaluate what went well and what you can do better next time you sit down to write.

To integrate this into your writing habit, all you need is a journal or spreadsheet with four columns.

  1. The first column is for the date.
  2. The second column is for the duration of writing.
  3. The third column is for planning and self-monitoring.
  4. The fourth column is for evaluation.
Source: Created by the author.

When you fill out the columns before and after your writing practice, you use your experience to regulate and improve future learning behavior. You self-monitor and self-regulate. Thereby, you steepen the learning curve towards your desired goals.


The 3 Principles to Make the Most of It

This meta log is a variation of learning journals, which have been proven to enhance meta-cognition.

“However, how the learning journal is used seems to be critical and good instructions are crucial; subjects who simply summarise their learning activity benefit less from the intervention than subjects who reflect about their knowledge, learning, and learning goals,” this meta-analysis in Nature concludes.

To make this practice effective, keep these three principles in mind.

1) Fill the blanks without a reader in mind.

Contrary to your articles, you don’t write for any reader. The meta log is for you. Don’t obsess over word choice. Nobody will ever read it, and it’s only there for you. The more honest you are with yourself, the more helpful it’ll be.

2) Use it every time you write.

Unused tools are useless. The meta-analysis in Nature says the longer you stick with a learning journal, the more effective it is. Strong effects have been observed among students in the context of writing.

Make it a habit to finish your writing with an entry in your meta log. Specify the next step for tomorrow.

3) Bold your key insights.

At the end of a month, go through your meta log and bold your key learnings. That way, you’ll have an easy time revisiting the critical lessons from the past and bring them back to your mind.

Here’s how my meta log from April 2020. I still keep coming back to the highlights once in a while.

Source: Created by the author.

In Conclusion

If you want to become a great writer, consistency matters most.

The meta log keeps you motivated, shows your progress, and helps you move in the right direction. This tool will help you be more effective by including metacognition in your writing process.

Are you ready to set it up?


I’m building a course on how to write online based on evidence-based practices to make the most of your time. You won’t sit in front of pre-recorded videos and struggle to stick with them. If you’re interested in joining a group of 25 people, you can pre-register here.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Editing, Writing

The Habits that Led James Clear to One Million Books Sold

August 24, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


“The most important thing is also the least sexy one.”

James Clear (Source: James Clear/Flickr CC BY 2.0)

James Clear’s journey has not always been so clear as his name suggests.

I love his book. Others love it too. Atomic Habits has over 20,000 reviews on Audible and was translated into 40 languages. More than a million people subscribed to his newsletter.

I wanted to find out how he became a prolific writer. So I listened to around thirty of his guest interviews. Then, I went all the way down to internet time travel — a site that reveals website content from a decade ago.

His success is no coincidence. These are the habits that led him to write a book bought by one million people. You can steal them to write your own bestseller.


Iterating via Trial and Error

His website ‘jamesclear.com’ has been online for more than a decade. Within a decade, it underwent surprising turns.

In 2010, Clear announced ‘James Clear photography’. He sold his travel photos online and in print.

James Clear’s blog / October 2010 (Source).

Maybe he didn’t get as many sales as he hoped to. Maybe he got bored.

So, Clear started something new. On December 13, 2010, he said:

“I am launching a new site that will become the centerpiece of my effort to build a business that I am proud of. The focus of the site will be on personal finance with an entrepreneurial twist.”

James Clear’s blog / December 2010 (Source).

Three days later, he was done with planning. He announced to focus his self-employment on three main tasks:

  1. Creating mobile applications, including graphic design and user interface.
  2. Building niche websites on a topic he enjoys or a product he believes in.
  3. Selling travel photography.
Fun fact: His own mobile application was called passive panda — an app that teaches people how to earn money / January 2011 (Source).

If you’d asked him in 2011 whether he’s planning to become a bestselling NYT author, his answer probably would’ve been a clear no.

It wasn’t until 2012 that his trajectory finally pointed towards the bestselling author he would later become.


Publishing Articles Twice a Week

In November 2012, James Clear launched a new website. He vowed to publish a new article every Monday and Thursday.

Even though he feared it was too late to start writing online, he kept that pace for the first three years. Reflecting on this first year of writing online, he writes:

“I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday in 2013. (I only missed one day all year, which happened when I was sick with food poisoning while traveling through Italy).

My first article was published on November 12, 2012. I’m proud to say that since that time I have published 114 articles on JamesClear.com and received 686,937 unique visitors.”

His streak went on in 2014. In his annual review, he says:

“I’m proud to say that I stuck to this schedule without missing a post in 2014. I did take some time off during a planned sabbatical in June.”

2013 was also the first time he wrote about identity-based habits. Three years of writing online would go by until he was offered a book deal.


James Clear (Source: James Clear/Flickr CC BY 2.0)

“The most important thing is also the least sexy one. I wrote two to three articles per week for three years, and I tried my best every time.” — James Clear


Following His Two Most Important Principles

While his business ideas iterated, he realized two core principles. In essence, it’s what still drives his continuous growth.

Discover what your audience wants

Early on in his entrepreneurial journey, he advised people who wanted to build a business.

“I’m about to let you in on an advanced technique that everyone should be using — and it’s really simple. Ask people what they want from you.

It is critical that you get to know the people that spend time on your site. Ask them what they want. Get to know their interests and needs. You will gain valuable insights about what you should be offering.”

He intuitively understood what Pat Flynn would later popularize as ‘Will it fly’ or Tucker Max as the ‘Target book audience’. You can copy his approach to learn more about your audience.

“Also, use open-ended questions that are proven to get responses. For example, a great question would go like this, “With respect to [your topic], what is the number one problem that I can help you with?”

When you start like James Clear — publishing on a blog, within a newsletter, or on Medium, you can build an audience before selling a book. You’re more likely to land a book deal and have an existing audience when you start selling your book.

Writing online before writing a book diminishes your risk. Instead of assuming what people want to read from you, the data shows you what works and what doesn’t. You get to know your audience without any sunk costs.

Writing online helps you discover the value you can bring to your audience before taking any money from them. Clear writes:

“I have readers emailing me each week asking when my book is coming out. I have friends telling me every month that I need to launch a product. Maybe it’s my own fears or mental barriers holding me back, but I haven’t done it yet. I want to do it. I plan to do it.”

Connect with your audience using email marketing

In a podcast interview, he explained that his email list went from 0 to 30,000 subscribers in the first year.

Eight years later, on Jan 5th, 2021, his list hit 1 million subscribers.

What did he do? He focused on connecting with his audience to truly understand their needs and build an email list from day one./media/e424a38d9f3b51c7b55549d26cde4674


Continuous Improvement for High Quality

Clear says it took him about a year to find his voice. He copied the style from various artists he admired. The longer he stuck with a writing habit, the more he developed his voice.

Even when he discovered his niche, he didn’t start writing a book. Instead, he continued improving his website.

He explains that the average article took him 20 hours to write. During his sabbatical, he reflected on how he could improve his writing. He added pictures to his articles and sources below every single one.

It’s this learner’s mindset he fostered all along.

“Picking what to read and making sure I’m reading consistently is a really important part of my writing and idea-generating process.” — James Clear


Final Thoughts

Success isn’t linear. James Clear could have stopped in 2010. He could have quit after his travel photography failed to take off. He could have quit after the demand for his financial freedom app didn’t materialize.

But he didn’t. He searched for his niche, produced consistently, and never stopped learning. And so can you.


Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Entrepreneurship, money

Top 3 Ways to Discover Inspiring Content as a Creator

July 27, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


All of them are free.

Source: Created by the author via Canva

With fluff-flooded feeds, finding unique content can be tricky. As a creator, you probably know how difficult that can be.

When I started writing, I wasted much research time on social platforms. In the end, I was rarely satisfied with the results.

But discovering inspiring resources doesn’t need to be complicated. There are reliable, free platforms designed for online creators.

Here are my top three sources for content inspiration. Every single one can improve your creative process.


1) Refind — the 5 most relevant links.

The site helps you find the best from all around the web, tailored to your interests, curated by experts and algorithms.

You follow your favorite topics, sites, thought leaders, and friends, and Refind puts together the most relevant new links and key takeaways for you. Every day you see 5–10 new content pieces. I use Refind as a key inspiration for my weekly newsletter.

In addition, you can also subscribe to Deep Dives. Dozens of experts introduce you to the best articles and videos from their field of expertise.

For example, I created a deep dive on ‘How to build a writing habit’ with ten time-tested articles and videos from around the web. Any creator can curate a deep dive and get boosted to an audience who would otherwise not have found them.

How you can use it:

Sign up for free here and select your favorite creators and industries. Once the platform knows your preferences, you’ll receive 5–10 relevant links each day.

Whenever you find something valuable, you can organize your links within your collections— for yourself or the web.

Screenshot of Refind.

2) Bookshlf —curation by humans.

Bookshlf is a place designed for curious learners who share their knowledge in public.

So-called shelves are curated link collections. A single Shelf can be organized by topic, mood, category, or media type, or in any other way that makes sense to you. As a result, the platform is filled with diverse content across industries.

Most curators post 20% self-created content, like their podcasts, videos, articles, and 80% resources. You can find things that alter your mindset, your understanding or get you to look at the world from a new angle.

I’ve used the platform since January 2020 to discover and organize content. I created shelves around my writing topics. On my profile, you’ll find shelves for education & learning, entrepreneurship, and creativity.

How you can use it:

You can sign up free here. Browse the Shelves and communities that trigger your interest. Subscribe to Shelves and follow your favorite curators to access exciting and relevant content easily.

You can also create your Shelves and get tipped by other users.

Screenshot of Bookshlf.

3) Feedly — smarter news reader.

Feedly is an online service that uses artificial intelligence to cut through the noise and flag specific topics and trends you care about from all the sources you trust. In essence, it’s an RSS feed aggregator.

While Refind and Bookshlf started recently, Feedly has been around since 2006. The platform is used by +15 million curious minds.

I started with Feedly in 2014 and upgraded to the premium version four months ago. For $99/year, I have all newsletters, favorite Twitter feeds, and blogs in one place.

How you can use it:

You can sign up free here. Just like Refind and Bookshlf, Feedly is free — and if you’re happy with limited functionality, it can stay free forever.

Feedly is less intuitive than Refind or Bookshlf. First, you want to find and organize the right sources. Second, train the AI assistant Leo to filter out the noise (which I haven’t managed to do yet). Then, you can read through your curated feed.

Screenshot of Feedly.

In Conclusion

Managing and discovering content doesn’t need to feel difficult. These three tools help you organize, curate, and find the content you love:

  • Refind — the 5–10 most relevant links tailored to your interest.
  • Bookshlf — a digital library from curators for curators.
  • Feedly — an RSS feed aggregator to have everything in a single place.

I rely on all three content discovery tools, but right now, Refind is my favorite (it’s free, but I like it even better than my paid Feedly).

Instead of feeling discouraged by all these ways to find new content, experiment at your own pace. Try the platforms that resonate with you, and screw the rest.

Choose one or two new content resources until you find a pattern that helps you to become a better content creator.


Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Ideas, inspiration

7 Easy Ways to Tame Your Inbox and Save One Hour Every Week

July 3, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Make the most of asynchronous conversations.

Created by the author via Canva.

Emails kill productivity. They point your attention towards random tasks and distract you from focused work.

A McKinsey analysis showed we spend around 2.6 hours a day reading and answering emails. Data analysis from RescueTime revealed we check e-mails every 6 minutes.

If you spent the same time playing an instrument, you’d soon be a musician.

But for your inbox, the opposite is true — the more time you spend on e-mails, the less effective you become. That’s why inbox-driven workdays are a source of anxiety and stress.

Luckily, there are quick fixes you can use to tame your inbox and reclaim your attention. Here are seven things that help you become an effective email manager and save you hours every week.


1) Don’t use tags or folders

Managing your mail with folders is 9% slower than searching with keywords and 50% slower than searching for names.

When you archive your emails in different folders, you add an unnecessary step (deciding which and where to stare emails). Instead, use the search bar to find what you’re looking for (e.g., “from:hello@evakeiffenheim.com”).

Don’t create folders to deal with emails later. Instead, answer and archive directly, or reschedule the mail to reoccur in your inbox. Here’s how it works for G-Mail.

Screen recording by the author.

2) Follow the single touch rule

Many professionals keep e-mails in their inboxes (200 on average). But even if you only reread the subject lines from some of them, your brain will restart thinking about the issues.

Re-reading e-mails equal brain waste.

Instead, have a bias towards action. When you read an e-mail, always archive, delete, reply, or reschedule. Don’t let any mail you read linger in your inbox.


3) Anticipate the next move

As a project manager, checking your e-mails once a day for 20 minutes doesn’t work. 90% of a PM’s work is communication.

I currently lead an entrepreneurship education project. On busy days, I receive 60 and send 50 emails (this doesn’t include my personal and work e-mail account or replies to The Learn Letter).

Email statistics from my project management account for June. (Source: E-Mail Meter)

This got me thinking — is there a better way to reduce e-mail volume and stop information overload? There is. Here’s how.

Before you press ‘send,’ ask yourself which questions your recipient might have. Add the answers in your mail. When you anticipate your reader’s questions, you save time for both of you.

“To RECEIVE less email, SEND less email.” — Jeff Weiner


4) Delete the mail app from your phone

I used to check my email when walking up the stairs and while waiting in a line. But unless you’re working for an atomic plant, nothing is so urgent it’d require your immediate attention.

When you want to build muscles, your body needs rest days. Your muscles recover, and your nervous system regenerates. The same goes for your brain.

To get maximum focus during your working hours, you want enough time away from work. Plus, boredom brings benefits.

Deleting the mail app from your phone will prevent you from disrupting your break time.


5) Pause your inbox for most of your day

Compulsive inbox checks don’t go well with focused attention. Some reports suggest it can take people up to 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after an interruption.

“You can’t get meaningful things done when you’re constantly going start, stop, start, stop.” — Jason Fried

I protect my focus is by using the pause add-on for Gmail. New emails only enter my inbox only during specific times. Alternatively, you can use BlockSite for Chrome to block your email provider during specific time frames.

Don’t be among the workers who check their mail every 6 minutes. Installing inbox zero and scheduling dedicated e-mail response windows can help.


7) Create calendar invites with a single click

Even if you use a scheduling tool like Calendly or Chilipiper, creating calendar invites is sometimes inevitable.

Luckily, you can save a minute each time using this built-in Gmail feature that converts an email into a calendar appointment.

All you need to do is clicking on the three dots and select ‘Create event.’ Then, Gmail will distill the information from your e-mail and add them to the email fields.

Screen recording by the author.

7) Use Parkinson’s Law to get more done in less time

According to Parkinson’s Law, “the work expands as to fill the time available for its completion.” You can use this principle for you.

Set a timer for 25 minutes and aim for inbox zero. Try to beat the clock. Repeat this twice or thrice a day. Making your email inbox a game against time will help you become more productive.


Final Thoughts

Sivanathan said in his TED Talk: “You cannot increase the quality of an argument by simply increasing the quantity of your argument.”

In a perfect world, everybody would follow this rule, and email would be more concise.

But until we’re in our perfect world, you can use the tips from above to become more effective at managing your e-mails. Thereby, you’ll save one hour every week.


Want to feel inspired and improve your learning?

Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. I read a book and 50 articles a week, and each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Productivity, Time management, Work From Home

7 Tools That Make Working From Home More Productive

June 1, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


How you can focus on what matters.

Created by the author via Canva.

Maximizing productivity doesn’t mean minimizing leisure. Working more hours doesn’t equal getting more done. It just means you spend more time working.

Productivity isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing less. It’s about blocking distractions so you can focus and get things done.

Here are the tools I use every day to make most of my work time. Every single one can help you overcome procrastination traps, maximize focus and enter flow states.


1) Notion for Weekly Reflection and Planning

If you don’t set your agenda, somebody else will. Without a weekly reflection, it’s easy to be busy without doing what matters.

David Allen, a productivity guru and author of ‘Getting Things Done,’ writes: “The Weekly Review will sharpen your intuitive focus on your important projects as you deal with the flood of new input and potential distractions coming at you the rest of the week.”

I use the free version of Notion for my Sunday review. There are a few things I tick off to make the most out of my work week:

  • Plan my week in Google Calendar (including food and sport).
  • Review last week’s tasks in my Bullet Journal and set goals for the next week.
  • Empty my E-Mail inboxes to zero (reply, delete, or schedule).
  • Clean my Mac desktop and downloads folder to zero.

This end-of-week review takes me around 60 minutes. While a weekly review might feel like an additional burden, it’ll make your workweek more intentional and productive.


2) Your Phone‘s Flight Mode

Ever wondered why you get much work done on long-haul flights? It’s because no call, no message, no notification can distract you.

I tried app-blocking with apps like Freedom or Forest. But what worked best is charging my phone in flight mode outside of my bedroom.

My phone is in flight mode from 8 PM to 12 PM. I’ve been using this schedule for half a year, and it’s the single most effective productivity booster.


3) Noise-Cancelling Headphones for Flow States

Three hours of creative flow might be all you need to improve your career. Flow states helped me make a full-time income from writing by writing 12 hours a week.

And the best thing — flow feels like joyful, easy work.

Yet, flow is fragile. Noises like a knock on the door can break it.

When interruptions are flow state’s enemies, noise-canceling headphones are its alley. Once you put them on, it’s just you and full focus on the task ahead.

Whenever I want to get into flow, I put on my headphone, pick one song from my playlist, and listen to it on repeat.


4) Site Blocker for Distraction-Free Productivity

How often do you check social media? Whenever I faced a difficult thought, I’d check Gmail or LinkedIn.

I felt my behavior was in the way of great work, yet I couldn’t manage to change it. Red notification badges and infinite scrolling made me crave the next dopamine rush.

Compulsive social media checks will make your thoughts bounce around like a ping-pong ball. A study from Irvine University found it takes 20 minutes to refocus after distractions.

Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook executive, says: “We were not evolved to get social approval being dosed upon us every 5 minutes.”

For better productivity, fix your environment. If you don’t want to get distractions, use a site-blocker. I use this free chrome extension to block LinkedIn, Facebook, and Mail from 9 PM to noon.


5) Use FocusTimer to Practice Deep Work

Focused and uninterrupted creation time is your secret weapon to maximum productivity. Cal Newport coined the term Deep Work as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.”

To unlock deep work and get more done in less time, you need practice. Learning to focus feels hard first. That’s why you want to start small.

After learning about deep work four years ago, I started with a single 20-minute block a day. Gradually I increased the duration. Now I’m at 3×50 minutes with 10-minute breaks in between each deep work session.

Once you can focus for more extended periods, your work’s quality and quantity improve.

To schedule these sessions, you can use any timer. I use the free BeFocused Timer for Mac. You can adjust the duration for breaks and deep work sessions.


6) Delete Any Messaging Apps from Your Devices

Instant messaging, including e-mails, can be addictive. I checked my email when walking up the stairs, waiting in a line, or waiting at a red light.

I disabled all phone notifications for more than three years and stuck to my flight mode schedule. Still, I found myself checking work-related apps like Gmail and Slack.

Nothing is so urgent it can’t wait until your back at your desk. When working from home, your computer is always within reach. Don’t take work-related communication with you on the couch or to your bed.

To get maximum focus during your working hours, you want free thinking when you’re not sitting at your desk. Deleting these apps from your home will prevent you from compulsive e-mail checks.


7) Virtual Co-Working with FocusMate

Focusmate is virtual coworking that helps you get things done. You work side-by-side with another worker somewhere across the globe.

You sign up and schedule your desired focus hours. When the time comes, you log into your account and turn on your video camera. You greet each other, communicate your goals for the session, mute your mic, and start working.

The tool can improve your productivity with accountability, commitment, and implementation intentions.

If you ever feel like you procrastinate too much, it’s not because your lazy or unmotivated. Often procrastination is caused by distraction. These tools helped me find focus and get things done. I hope they do the same for you.


Want to join a community of lifelong learners? Subscribe free to The Learn Letter. Each Wednesday, you’ll receive the best in your inbox. This newsletter will make you find tools and resources that help you on your path to health, wealth, and wisdom.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Productivity, Time management, Work From Home

This is How I Made My First $30,000 From Writing Online

May 15, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim



7 beginner-friendly tips to get you started.

Photo by Julia M Cameron from Pexels

I published my first article in late March 2020. Since then, I made a full-time income from Medium and writing for clients that found me via the platform.

I had no prior writing experience, and English is not my first language.

Yet, I won’t say anyone can succeed. Writing is like running. You get better with practice, and almost anyone can do it. But how many of the people who fancy running end up running a marathon?

99% who read this will never start or quit too early. But if you’re in for the long-term, the following strategies and tips will help you make a solid income.


1) Is starting on a platform still worth it?

It depends on your answers to the following questions.

  1. Do you have an existing +10K follower base on any social media platform?
  2. Are you good at SEO or plan to learn it?
  3. Do you know how to code or want to build your website on a CMS like WordPress, Ghost, or Wix?
  4. Can you spare $2,000 to hire help in case you fail with SEO or programming?

If you answer yes to all of these questions, write a blog. Read this excellent guide by Natt Eliason, and stop reading this article now.

In all other cases, start on Medium.

Publishing is frictionless. You tap into an existing audience. Through publications, comments, and curation, you receive feedback on your writing. Data on reading time will give you additional insights. Plus, you don’t have to spend time finding sponsorships or affiliates for your website. You get paid based on the user’s reading time on your articles.

Even if Medium didn’t pay me a single cent, I’d write on the platform. I get thoughtful comments and 10–15 e-mail subscribers a day. I see the platform as a tool for learning and growing my business.

What you can do:

Create an account and enroll in the Medium Partnerships Program.


2) How to find endless ideas

When I wrote my first three articles, I feared I’d run out of ideas. But with a system in place, this won’t happen.

The more you create, the more creative you become. Research shows the best ideas will arise once you flow into the writing process.

Once you get the ideas, you want to capture them. Most of my ideas come while I write an article, read a book, or talk to friends. How I capture the ideas evolved over the months from Trello, to Notion, to Milanote.

v1 Idea Management on Trello March 2020 —July 2020 (Screenshot by author)
v2 Idea Management on Notion August 2020 —December 2020 (Screenshot by author)
v3 Idea Management on Milanote Jan 2021 —today (Screenshot by author)

But in the end, it’s less about the tool and more about a system. A lack of structure is a threat to creativity.

Thanks to the process of capturing everything on the go, I never start with an empty page. I know I have more ideas than I will ever be able to cover.

What you can do:

Pick your favorite tool and start collecting ideas today. What are you curious about? Do you have life lessons worth sharing? Any insights based on your studies or your profession? Write your first 10 article ideas and add a line or two. From now on, capture any idea.


“The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust — and those elements are universally accessible.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert


3) The single metric you should measure

Unless you’ve written before, your first twenty articles will suck and not reach a broad audience. Don’t stress about it. Every good writer goes through self-doubt and the valley of despair.

The most important metric to measure is whether you created quality content. I found the Medium distribution guidelines very helpful for adding value to my writing.

Many first-time writers say they read and follow the guidelines when they don’t (me included).

How to spot it? They write journal-like entries instead of focusing on the reader. Burn the following advice from Medium’s editorial team into your mind:

“Does it add value for the reader? — Does it share new insights or perspectives? Offer an original take on a familiar issue? Does it stir emotions and/or thinking? Provide meaningful advice? Enrich a reader’s understanding of the topic? Does it feel like time well spent?”

Writing is different from journaling. Avoid using “I” too much. Posts are not about you but the reader. Always put the reader’s benefit first by putting yourself in their shoes. How can you derive actionable advice from your article? Where can you add more empathy for your reader?

Value creation is the single most important metric to focus on. Most successful writers I know went from a niche audience to a broader audience by focusing on the group of people they can truly help.

What you can do:

Study the distribution guidelines. Take notes. Read through the work of successful writers, such as Michael Thompson, Megan Holstein, and Niklas Göke.


4) Publish with big publications

Think about it this way: The official Headspace Youtube Channel with 425,000 subscribers would publish your article about meditating. You could reach almost half a million people without having to build this audience.

With Medium publications, you can do exactly that. Better Humans has almost 400,000 followers. If you publish an article with them, you can reach way more people than you would have ever reached by self-publishing.

Many writers feel demotivated by rejections and miss out on the power of publications.

You have to write quality content before big publications accept your work. Don’t feel angry if they don’t want you in the beginning. Your writing isn’t good enough yet.

I applied 9 times for Mind Cafe, 12 times to Better Humans, and 15 times to P.S.: I Love You before publishing with them. Some publications haven’t added me (yet). But I’ll try again and again.

What you can do:

Choose publications within your niche. Search for the top writers in your topic and look where the most successful articles were published.

Once you found your target publications read their submission guidelines and recent posts they published. Then, write quality content, and submit. Don’t feel discouraged by rejections. Be patient. Tapping into the existing audience is worth the wait.


5) Collect your reader’s emails

“You have to start collecting emails today,” Sinem Günel told me in one of our first coaching sessions.

I had just published my first article, and asking my 7 readers to sign up for a non-existing newsletter seemed hilarious.

But Sinem insisted: “Now is the right time to start one. If you’re trying to make money online, your email list is one of your biggest assets.”

A year and 1K+ subscribers later, I know she was right. Platforms change. Emails don’t. Your follower’s email address is their most permanent online identity.

What you can do:

Register on Convertkit, Mailchimp, Substack, or Mailerlite. I chose to go with Convertkit as it’s intuitive, free and helps me grow my audience. But again, the tool doesn’t matter that much. The important part is to get started.

Add a call to action at the bottom of each article. Until recently, my CTA was a fluffy “Do you want to connect? Sign-Up here”.

Don’t worry if you’re unsure about your newsletter’s content. I didn’t send a single email until six months in. But when I knew what I wanted to write about, I started with 400 subscribers.


6) Write headlines that make people click

Simple but sad: If your headline isn’t interesting, nobody will read your article. There’s so much great content that will never be read because the headline sucks. You can write the best blog post, but without a great headline, nobody will read it.

To succeed in online writing, you must learn to write great headlines. Writing headlines is unglamorous. That’s why many writers avoid practicing the craft.

But to make money with writing online, there’s no way around it. The best headlines make the reader curious, describe a transformation, offer a specific benefit, or a thought-provoking statement.

“I’ve written more than 15,000 headlines since I’ve started writing. Only one percent of them are really good. Those one percent of headlines I’ve written created 100 percent of my viral successes. Every single morning, I write down 10 ideas for headlines. […] I promise, if you don’t learn how to write good headlines, you’ll never have a career as a blogger. Never. So do it.”

— Ayodeji Awosika

What you can do:

Browse through your reading list and save the headlines that made you click. Write 10 headlines every morning before you start writing. Most writers never do it. By practicing, you gain a sustainable competitive advantage.


7) Use online tools to improve your writing

These tools won’t turn you into a professional writer; they will level up your writing process. These are the tools I use daily:

  • Improve your headlines with co-schedule
  • Format your headlines with Title Case Converter
  • Look beyond Unsplash pictures with Pexels, StockSnap, Freepik, or Burst
  • Run a health check with Grammarly or the Hemingway Editor
  • Look for alternative words with Thesaurus

Are you ready to increase your income?

Making money from online creation is a long-term game. You won’t see the desired results in the beginning. But if you keep working, you might suddenly hit a glass ceiling.

Progress is slow but exponential. Whenever you think about quitting, keep in mind, you’re in for the long term. Writing in 2021 isn’t hard.

Making money through writing works by providing value at scale. Here’s what to remember:

  • Enroll in the Medium partner program.
  • Collect every idea with your favorite tool.
  • Focus on creating value for the reader.
  • Pitch and publish with the big publications.
  • Start an email newsletter from day one.
  • Write ten headlines every day.
  • Use online tools to improve your texts.

Don’t waste time searching for a secret sauce. Use success stories as inspiration but don’t get lost in them. Creation is all that matters.

When looking at your metrics, don’t feel discouraged. Use data to analyze what works and do more of it. But apart from that, don’t agonize over low stats. Instead, spend all of your energy consistently creating user-centric content.

You’re not too late to the party. Today is the perfect time to start. Follow these steps and make a full-time living as an online writer.


Sign up for the Learn Letter and get weekly inspirations on reading, learning, and growth.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Entrepreneurship, Reflection, tutorial, Writing

The Creator’s Guide to Optimizing Your Day for Productivity, Focus, and Health

April 15, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Make your time work for you.

Photo: Designecologist/Pexels

When I started working for myself a year ago, I felt bombarded with suggestions on structuring my days. I was overwhelmed by conflicting advice and struggled to find a balance between hustle and rest.

This is the article I wish I’d had when starting to work for myself. I skipped the self-help fluff and distilled what made my days such a massive force for achievement and joy.

The following structure helped me earn a consistent +$5K monthly income, generated through writing, podcasting, and consulting.

You may not like all of these suggestions, or you might have great routines for some areas. If so, skip the paragraph. Your life, your rules. This article has only a single purpose: helping you, dear creator or solopreneur, getting smart at building your thing and excelling at whatever you’re doing.

The ten building blocks of creator days. (source by author)

A morning routine to set you up for success

Many people talk themselves down when they don’t check all of their morning routine boxes. I was the same. Unless I did oil-pulling, drank a glass of warm water, took a cold shower, meditated for at least 15 minutes, journaled about my dreams, visualized my goals, and practiced 20 minutes of yoga, I felt like a failure.

When a routine feels like an obligation, it misses the point. There’s not the perfect routine. Your morning routine is less about what you do than why you do it. Design a routine around your goals.

But this doesn’t mean you need to follow the same pattern every day. If you get up and feel like going for a walk, do it. If you don’t feel like journaling, skip it.

The best results often come from a combination of structures and intuition. Adjust your routine to your needs, and wants and don’t judge yourself on checking the boxes.

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • What’s the first thing you do in the morning?
  • Which activities help you get excited for the day?
  • Are there any habits you can do to feel fresh and awake before you open your laptop?

A calendar setup that will make you thrive

If you ever feel like you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them, it’s likely because your calendar isn’t set up for success.

As a creator, time is your most valuable resource. To make the most of it, learn to master a respectful no and use time blocking.

Time blocking is a simple productivity trick people like Elon Musk use. While a to-do list shows you what you need to do, time blocking reveals when you’re going to do it.

The technique works because it’s designed for focus. When you work towards one goal at a time, you are more productive than splitting your attention across various projects.

Plus, when you know you have time set aside later for checking messages, you’re less likely to give in to hooking mechanisms and random e-mail checks.

A time-blocked week in my calendar (Source: Eva Keiffenheim).

My high-level priorities include writing, reading, eating good food, moving my body, and client work. These time blockers are non-negotiable. Even in a work-intense week, I won’t skip the sports and food blocks because that’s how I keep my balance.

When you see in your calendar the time that’s blocked for existing projects and your thinking time, you’re less likely to say yes to other people. You take ownership of your time. Y

“In this day and age you cannot call something distracting unless you know what it’s distracting you from.”

— Nir Eyal

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • What’s the proportion of calendar events you created vs. events other people invited you to?
  • Which meetings can be replaced by a call, an email, or a shared document?
  • How can you integrate time-blocking to focus on your high-level priorities?

Deep work is your most valuable skill

If you can create three focused hours of uninterrupted creation time, you solve most of your time management issues. Because once you’re in deep work and focus on one thing for an extended period, you produce your best work.

Cal Newport says Deep Work is “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.”

From an 8-hour workday, how much do you really work? Your best work does not emerge from the total time spent but from the intensity of focus. Here’s the equation:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

To get into deep work, choose a space free of distractions. Then, determine how much time you’ll devote to the task ahead. For a start, aim for 10–15 minutes. After a few days of deep work, your ability to focus on one task will increase.

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • How much time do you do deep work during a day?
  • Do you protect your deep work sessions with time blocks in your calendar?
  • What’s your deep work structure? (Will your phone be off or on? Will you let yourself check the internet? How will you measure a session’s success (pages read, lines coded, words written)?

Cultivating helpful phone habits

If you’re like 80% of smartphone users, you check your device every morning within the first 15 minutes after waking up.

By checking your phone early in the day, you condition your mind for distraction. Notifications and messages will make your thoughts bounce around like a ping-pong ball.

Throughout your day, your morning behavior repeats itself. By checking your phone too early in the day, you won’t produce any deep work. You’ll get distracted and lose focus again and again.

According to this study from Irvine University of California, it takes 20 minutes to refocus after distractions.

As a self-employed creator, you have the ultimate freedom over your days. No boss can schedule an unproductive meeting at 9 AM. Protect your time by cultivating smart phone habits (pun intended).

My phone is in flight mode from 8 PM to 12 PM. I’ve been using this schedule for half a year, and it’s the single most effective productivity and health booster. It helps me focus on my tasks and makes my mind calm down.

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • Do you control your phone, or does your phone control you?
  • Do you charge your phone at a place you don’t see it?
  • During which hours do you want to be available for calls and other people’s requests?

Quality breaks you need to take every day

Did you ever finish your workday realizing you haven’t moved away from your chair for the past 4 hours? In our work culture, many people see breaks as a luxury. But to find long-term joy in your workdays, you need them.

Luckily breaks don’t need to be complicated. A study compared break lengths of 1, 5, and 9 minutes, and even the shortest break made workers feel better.

To take regular breaks, I use Be Focused. The timer starts in 50-minute intervals for my writing sessions and reminds me to take a 10-minute break. When it rings, I stop whatever I’m doing and move away from my screen.

This is how what I typically do during my breaks: Drink a cup of water. Make a tea. Practice the guitar for a few minutes. Dance and shake to a song. Take a short walk outside. Puzzle. Prepare lunch or dinner. Sit down to meditate. Clean the bathroom. Stretch. Take a long walk outside and call a friend.

The list is endless. Your breaks might look completely different. But take them. Scheduling meaningful breaks inside your days will help you enjoy your workdays and prevent you from overworking.

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • How often do you take breaks during a working day?
  • Have you scheduled breaks in your calendar?
  • Do you have non-negotiable playtime for undirected exploration?

Focus on learning and knowledge expansion

Knowledge is power. That’s why learning can improve any life. Yet, only very few people make learning an ongoing habit.

No life skill can earn you greater dividends than learning how to learn. We can’t expand our time, but we can expand our minds. Learning is the virtuous circle that can help you create the life of your dreams.

Reading is the easiest way to learn every day. Books are to the mind what exercise is to your body. They make you discover truths about the world and yourself. Page by page, they help you live a happier life.

Reading is liberating. Freedom means choosing from a set of options. The more options you have, the freer you are. But most people don’t know about all their options. And that’s where reading kicks in. It helps you explore options you never knew existed.

So, read outside of your specific field. Say less and ask more and better questions. Let curiosity guide you to learn something new.

I reserve time to read books, newsletters, listen to podcasts, take online courses, join learning communities, attend educational conferences, and take notes after exciting conversations.

“The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn.”

— Naval Ravikant

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • Which three skills do you want to learn this year?
  • What’s the ratio between spending time on social media vs. learning something helpful?
  • Does your calendar reflect your learning goals? Do your learning activities align with your goals? If not, how can you adapt?

Unlock the power of reflection

“Most people are other people,” Oscar Wilde once said. “Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

Whenever I have a spare moment, I try to fill it. I listen to podcasts, read books, have a conversation with my beautiful boyfriend, answer messages, or hop to the next task in my bullet journal.

And while these activities can be enjoyable and add energy to my life, they have a marginal return on thinking utility. After a certain point, every additional minute of doing decreases the ability to think for yourself.

When we’re so busy doing, we don’t spend single second thinking. Entire days go by without a single deep thought. At the end of your life, you realize you’ve lived the life of others.

“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”

— John Dewey

Before learning from Warren Buffett, Bill Gates said he had every minute packed and thought that was the only way you could do things. Bill concludes Warren taught him the importance of giving himself time to think and reflect.

Reflection is the active decision to think about your past. Researchers define reflection as the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.

I integrate reflection every Sunday. They are the most valuable 60–90 minutes I spend every week. Here’s how my Sunday reflection checklist looks like:

My weekly reflection in Notion (Source: Eva Keiffenheim).

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • Do you have a daily, weekly, and yearly review in place?
  • Do you block time to think about what you achieved instead of moving forward?
  • Do you have a habit of asking yourself after each completed job “what went well” and “even better if”?

Design your environment for desired behavior

I long believed that I need motivation and willpower to adopt new habits. But both resources are limited. When I first read the following section by James Clear, I realized I overlooked one of the most critical factors in building desired behavior:

“Our behavior is not defined by the object in an environment but by our relationship to them. In fact, this is a useful way to think about the influence of the environment on your behavior. Stop thinking about your environment as filled with objects. Start thinking about it as filled with relationships. Think in terms of how you interact with the spaces around you. For one person, her couch is the place where she reads for an hour each night. For someone else, the couches where he watches television and eats a bowl of ice cream after work.”

When you design the right environment for your desired habit, you link the habitat to the desired habit. That’s why it makes sense to design an environment around the person you want to become.

If you want to write every day, your environment’s essential elements are a computer, site blockers, noise cancellation headphones, and a distraction-free place to write. That way, you turn into the architect of your reality.

“If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.”

— Marshall Goldsmith

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • Is your physical workspace supporting you? (screen at eye level, daylight, a healthy seating position).
  • Is your digital workspace setting you up for success? (which apps are installed, do you use site-blockers, tools to manage your knowledge)
  • Do you keep your phone and distractions away during your deep work session?

End-of-day shutdown rituals

If you work in an office or co-working space, you can skip this. Your natural shutdown ritual is leaving the building and heading home.

If you, however, are among the 50% of people in the US who work from home, a shutdown ritual is crucial for your mental health.

After a full day, it’s challenging to calm down and get ready for the evening. In the early days of my self-employment, I found myself working until late. Sometimes I replied to mail or watched online courses when I knew I should be calming down.

This works if you do it once in a while. But after a few days working long evenings, you have to search for the energy and enthusiasm to create great content. A shutdown ritual will improve your remote work productivity.

“A shutdown ritual is a set routine of actions that you perform at the end of each work day to finalize your day and signify that your work day is done.”

— Cal Newport

A great shutdown routine ensures that you review incomplete tasks, goals, or projects and you confirm that you have a plan you trust for its completion, or you wrote it down somewhere you’ll see it at the right time.

Your end-of-work-day ritual can have different elements: updating all to-do lists, review the calendar for tomorrow, writing a plan for the next day, closing every tab on your computer, leaving your working desk.

Before dinner, I take 5–10 minutes to go through my Bullet Journal and review the daily log. I tick off To Do’s, move them to the next day, and add items with a look on my weekly goals and my calendar. I close all computer windows and leave my desk.

Consciously ending your workday gives you a beautiful feeling that everything you needed to do is done or schedule.

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • Do you wrap up your day and plan for the next one?
  • How do you know your workday is over?
  • What reminds you to start your shutdown ritual? (time, feeling, alarm)

Evening routine

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 45% of Americans state poor or insufficient sleep affected their days at least once in the past seven days.

But even if you’re among the lucky ones who fall asleep quickly, a proper evening routine can improve your focus, well-being, and health.

As with the morning routine, there’s not the perfect evening routine. Do whatever feels good for you.

My evenings vary, but most include some of the following activities: having a friend over for dinner, foam roll, guitar practice, calling a friend, cooking, talk to my fiancé, or go for a walk. The only constant thing is that I put my phone into flight mode and go to bed around 9 PM.

Probing questions to ask yourself:

  • What helps you sleep better and relax?
  • Which activities do you enjoy in the evening?
  • What’s the last thing you want to do before sleeping?

Are you a life-long learner? Get your free learner’s letter now.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Digital detox, Productivity, Time management, Work From Home

These Five Tweaks Will Help You Grow Your Newsletter

April 11, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Running a newsletter is another opportunity to provide value at scale so make sure you do it right

Photo by Nicole De Khors from Burst

“You have to start collecting emails today,” Sinem Günel told me in one of our first coaching sessions.

I had just published my first article, and asking my 7 readers to sign up for a non-existing newsletter seemed hilarious.

But Sinem insisted: “Now is the right time to start one. If you’re trying to make money online, your email list is one of your biggest assets.”

A year and 1K+ subscribers later, I know she was right. Platforms change. Emails don’t. Your follower’s email address is their most permanent online identity.

Whether you run a newsletter or are about to start one — the following tips will accelerate your newsletter’s growth.

1) Build a High-Converting Newsletter Landing Page

Many creators rely on their e-mail provider’s pre-built landing pages. But by sticking to the default option, their newsletter looks like any other. Potential subscribers might bounce off.

Take a look at these two landing page examples. For Daily Writing Habits, Nicolas Cole used the default Substack landing page; for BrainPint, Janel built a customized landing page with Carrd.

Daily Writing Habits vs. BrainPint (Source: created by author)

With an existing follower base, the Substack default option will still work for you. If you, however, start from scratch, there are a few things that can help you achieve higher conversion:

  • social proof such as a subscriber testimonial that highlights your newsletter’s value or relevant personal proof (e.g., Janel’s “I read 150+ articles each week”)
  • actionable wording for your subscribe button (e.g., join the community, subscribe for free, unlock the secrets)
  • examples of previous newsletter issues

Your landing has one goal: make your visitor sign up for your newsletter. Add anything that supports the goal. Remove everything that doesn’t, including other products or services, social media share icons, links to other websites, and bland filler fluff.


2) Optimize Your Newsletter Welcome Mails

First impressions matter. Within seconds the other person forms an opinion about your writing. Here’s how you can use the 50% average open rate for welcome emails to make a great first impression:

  • Choose an engaging subject line. 
    (Hint: A specific Welcome to the [Name Of Newsletter] community is always better than the generic Thanks for subscribing).
  • Thank your new subscriber for signing up.
  • Explain your newsletter’s content and frequency.
  • Link to other social media channels.
  • Provide an overview of your best articles or newsletter issues.
  • Optional: Add a question to engage your new subscriber.

What follows are two welcome emails by content creators who’ve mastered the welcome mail.

An excellent welcome email by David Perell. (Screenshot by author).
Another great welcome email by Janel from BrainPint. (Screenshot by author).

3) Include Social Share Options

An efficient way to grow your subscriber base is by making existing subscribers spread the word. Here’s how Anne-Laure from the Maker Mind applies social share options in her weekly Maker Mind newsletter.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff in Maker Mind. (Screenshot by author).

By adding social share options, you offer an easy way to share your content on other social media platforms.

All you need to do is create social links with free sites like this one or this one (for Twitter). Here’s a text template that you can copy or adjust:

I subscribed to [your newsletter landing page]by [@your twitter handle] and joined fellow [your newsletter's community name].
Looking forward to receiving valuable [your value proposition].

4) Engage Your Audience By Asking Great Questions

In his book, Superfans, Pat Flynn describes how you can transform your audience into loyal followers. In essence, it’s all about relationship building. And a great way to build relationships is by starting a conversation.

The easiest way to do so is by asking questions. You can ask for opinions and feedback. Or you can learn more about your subscriber’s needs and wants by sending something along the lines of What is your number one challenge when it comes to [topic of your newsletter]?

When you get answers, make sure to be helpful. By returning every handshake, you start building relationships. Plus, you will be surprised to learn things you haven’t thought about before.

An additional benefit of asking questions is deliverability. When a person replies to your email, your next mail will land in their inbox instead of the spam folder.

“Learn the language your audience uses — especially how they describe their pains, problems, and needs — and put it into action.”

— Pat Flynn


5) Leverage Your Social Media Accounts

This advice might sound trivial, but using your social media can help you grow your newsletter list. I neglected this trick until I heard Janel’s talk about self-promotion in a Newsletter mastermind./media/1d560191dd4ba9bd5f7f375d1aaddde9

Twitter

Add your newsletter link on your profile’s bio section. Your visitors will see your page as one of the first things. Additionally, you can tweet your newsletter’s value proposition and pin it on your profile page.

Facebook

Add your newsletter link as a website to your profile’s bio. Go to your page, click on ‘edit profile’ and navigate to ‘update your information. In ‘contact and basic information, you can add a link to your newsletter’s landing page.

Medium

You can link to your newsletter in your Medium bio. Additionally, you can write a CTA at the bottom of your articles. These are some of my favorite examples from fellow writers:

  • “Wonder Tools is a useful free newsletter focused on sites and apps that make life a tiny bit better. Written by a former Time Magazine reporter who now teaches journalism, it’s for anyone who doesn’t have time to test every new site or app but wants to know what’s most useful. Subscribe free here.” — Jeremy Caplan
  • “Want to improve your health, one habit at a time? My newsletter will help you to create the momentum you need to move towards a healthier and happier future.” — Ashley Richmond
  • “Join the Self-Letter, a weekly email that helps you learn more about yourself, embrace your creativity, and make money while you live in alignment with your personal values.” — Julia Horvath
  • “Get access to exclusive self-improvement and relationships content, subscribe to my free newsletter here.” — Sira M.

Final thoughts

Running a newsletter is another opportunity for providing value at scale. If you want to grow your subscriber base, consider doing these five things:

  1. Creating a high-converting newsletter landing page.
  2. Optimizing the first impression.
  3. Leveraging existing subscribers by adding social share options.
  4. Building relationships by asking great questions.
  5. Displaying your newsletter on various social media profiles.

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Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: audience, newsletter

Stephen King’s 8 Tips Can Improve Your Writing and Editing

March 30, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


A guide from one of the greatest authors.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, edited by Author

For the last 12 months, I’ve been absorbing advice from world-class writers.

One of the most useful books I read is Stephen King’s On Writing. He describes his writing journey and applicable lessons he learned along the way.

To date, King published 62 novels and is among the richest authors of our time. Here are his best tips.

1. You can learn only by doing

“You don’t need writing classes or seminars any more than you need this or any other book on writing. […] You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”

— Stephen King

Every successful writer follows a writing schedule. King writes every morning. But the time doesn’t matter. What matters is that you sit down and write.

I read his book, searching for a secret sauce. But there’s none. If his success teaches us one thing, it’s that there are no shortcuts. You have to read a lot and write a lot.

2. Use rejections as resilience practice

“By the time I was fourteen (…) the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

— Stephen King

As a young boy, King put the nail in his wall to collect the publisher’s rejection slips. But he didn’t look at it and feel discouraged. Instead, he used these slips as reminders for trying harder.

We all face rejection and failure. What differentiates the mediocre from the most successful writers is they never stop. Rejections don’t matter. But our reaction does.

Whenever you read a publisher’s ‘no,’ remember young King. Persistence ultimately pays off.

3. You should be the only person to judge your work

“I kept hearing Miss Hisler asking why I wanted to waste my talent, why I wanted to waste my time, why I wanted to write junk!”

— Stephen King

A movie inspired King to write his first commercial stories. After a cinema visit, he summarized the thriller on paper. He then printed the story and sold copies at his school. Another time, he wrote some not-so-kind words about one of his teachers for the school paper.

Both times teachers denounced his writing. They asked him to stop. When he didn’t, they sent him to work for a journal. King’s first paying job as a writer was the sports paper for a small-town.

Based on the teacher’s words, he depreciated writing horror stories. He thought of them as something serious people don’t do. Yet, he trusted his instincts and continued. If King followed his educator’s advice, he would have never become a world-class author.

Don’t stop because other people tell you to quit. There’s only one person who should choose what to do — you.

4. Treasure your relationships

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”

— Stephen King

Carrie is King’s first published novel. But when he wrote the first pages, he didn’t like what he saw and tossed them into the bin. His wife found the pages. She was curious how the story of the 16-year-old girl with telepathic power would continue and urged King to continue.

Your loved ones believe in you when you fail to believe in yourself. Relationships provide crucial mental support for writers.

5. Master the art of deep work

“There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. Eliminate every possible distraction.”

— Stephen King

Cal Newport wasn’t born when King published his first novels. But likely, King’s work routine served as inspiration for ‘Deep Work.’

He creates a distraction-free environment. He banned his telephone, TV, videogames, and even YouTube from his writing space. That’s how King writes 2,000 words a day. He creates a 180,00 words novel in three-months.

If you get three focused hours of uninterrupted creation time, you solve most of your time management issues. Because once you’re in deep work and focus for an extended period, you immerse yourself in the activity in front of you.

When I write an article with LinkedIn open and my phone within reach, it takes me 5–6 hours. When I’m undistracted, I finish in 2–3. The equation is as follows:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

6. Diffused thinking is as important as focused thinking

“Pow! Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together, and I had an idea.”

— Stephen King

To tackle any large task, our brains use the diffuse and focused mode. They have different purposes and to do your best work you need both of them.

We often optimize our days for focused mode thinking, for example, through deep work, flow states, and other highly productive sessions. Much of the learning process happens in this focused mode of thinking.

Yet, the diffuse mode is equally valuable. It only occurs when our minds can wander, e.g., during taking a shower or going for a lonely walk. Without actively thinking, our subconsciousness works on problems. While we feel like taking breaks, our mind continues to work for us.

King shares that the best novel ideas occurred to him while showering, driving, and taking his daily walk. Give your mind regular breaks. Your creativity will thank you for it.

7. 2nd Draft = 1st Draft — 10%

“The shorter the book, the less the bullshit.”

— Stephen King

On one of his rejection slips, an editor gave him invaluable advice. He wrote to him: “You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft — 10%.” Here are some easy fixes for how to do it:

  • Replace adverbs with stronger verbs: The women said silently. → The women whispered.
  • Delete unnecessary “that’s” whenever you can. He feared that his brother loved the sandwich. → He feared his brother loved the sandwich.
  • Exchange nouns for verbs: He made the decision to meditate daily. → He decided to meditate daily.

Kill needless words and shorten long phrases. Or, as King says: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

8. Use the first words that come to your mind

“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words.”

— Stephen King

It’s tempting to dress up your vocabulary. But when we try too hard, our writing becomes unnatural. It might even feel unrelatable.

Don’t disguise your language. Don’t obsess over the thesaurus for unnecessary fluff. The first word that comes to your mind is most often also the best one.

The best writers I know don’t try to sound intelligent. They use simple words in powerful ways. Whenever you catch yourself searching for ‘professional’ words, stop. Instead, use the vocabulary that first comes to your mind.


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Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Editing, Writing

The Two Traits That Made Joe Rogan a Million Dollar Podcaster

March 12, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


No, it’s not consistency and patience.

Photo by Luis Miguel P. Bonilla from Pexels

Joe Rogan is to podcasting what Stephen King is to writing.

Their careers weren’t set from the start. They took random jobs to pay the bills. Both honed their crafts in early adulthood and pumped out content like crazy. To date, Joe published 1615 episodes, Stephen 62 novels.

Stephen is among the richest authors; Joe is the highest-paid podcaster.

In the past year, I published 149 articles and 61 podcast episodes. I’m still a bloody beginner. But I want to learn from the best.

I spent some hours analyzing Joe’s success and was surprised. Many online creators preach consistency is key. But Joe’s story adds deeper layers to the common advice.


From Kickboxer to Kickass Podcaster

Joe’s journey wasn’t clear from the start. In 1988 he set out to become a stand-up comedian and kickboxer. He said he tried to pay the bills by delivering newspapers, driving limousines, and construction work.

Between 1995 and 2006, he appeared on TV shows, continued with stand-up comedy, and became an interviewer and commentator for the UFC. In 2005, he hired two full-time employees to film him on tour.

In short: Joe had a ton of different jobs before starting his podcast.

The Joe Rogan Experience launched on December 24, 2009. If you look at one of his early videos, you see he even was a bloody beginner. You find snowflakes on-screen and identify the background as one of his house’s spare rooms.

In a podcast with Jon Stewart, he says about his early days: “The early episodes sucked. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t think anyone was listening. It was just for fun.”

And while his Comedy career and TV shows contributed to his conversational qualities, his career path hasn’t always been clear.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

— Steve Job

Joe’s dots connected in the future. These days his podcast gets 200 million downloads a month. If we look at the pricing for podcast advertising, he charges something between $22 and $50 CPM. Joe makes somewhere between $53-$120 million a year solely based on podcast advertising.

His real income is likely higher as he generates revenue from his 8 million subscribers YouTube Channel. Plus, Rogan signed a hundred million dollar deal with Spotify. Joe is indeed the highest-paid podcaster.


What Makes His Show Successful?

To be successful in anything, you need to be persistent. That’s the prerequisite. If he had stopped a few years in, he would have never gotten where he is right now.

But I’m pretty sure there are a few hundred other podcasters who started in 2009 and continued for five or even ten years without ever seeing the success Joe is seeing.

Two traits made his show so successful — courage and curiosity.

Courage

In his 1,600 episodes and counting, his guests range from comedians, over fighters, and thinkers including Elon Musk, Tim Ferriss, Sam Harris, and Rhonda Patrick.

If his guests have one thing in common, it’s that Rogan doesn’t pick them by fame but by sympathy. Every conversation feels like a small journey as he really tries to understand his guests.

Often dialogues drift into surprising directions. For example, the conversation with Metallica singer James Hetfield was less about heavy metal and more about bees and alcoholism.

But Rogan’s also not afraid to ask hard questions and discuss controversial topics. If somebody delivers sound arguments, he likely changes a stance on topics he was very certain about.

A person who lived like Joe Rogan for six weeks summarized the charm of his mission perfectly: “Hear several facets of a narrative, entertain disagreeing viewpoints, and decide positions from a place of the reason all without losing one’s cool or resorting to petty insults.”

Curiosity

To entertain disagreeing viewpoints is a rare gift of our time and super needed. Joe is genuinely interested in the position of someone who thinks differently, as in his interview with Ben Shapiro.

The unscripted, interested, sometimes, hour-long conversations make his guests open up. He creates an atmosphere where you can disagree without discomfort. He detaches arguments from a personal level. Even in disputes, he aims to find common ground.

In a time where the media often takes aside, these open-minded moments are gold. Politically Rogan is probably one of few public figures whose attitudes are difficult to assign.

As this article analyzes, Rogan advocates introducing the unconditional basic income as suggested by Yang, the legalization of cannabis, and marriage for same-sex couples. He identified himself as a supporter of left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders. On the other hand, he complains about high taxes and is hostile to transgender activists.

I disagree with Jordan Peterson on most of his positions, but in his reasoning for Rogan’s success, he couldn’t have been clearer:

“You’re very very curious but also very very tough. It’s interesting watching you because if you don’t understand something you will go after the person […] you’re really good at pursuing things you don’t understand instead of assuming that you know what you’re talking.”


Joe is by all means not perfect, and there are viewpoints I disagree with. But his courage and curiosity help him produce episodes millions of people want to hear.


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Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Entrepreneurship, podcast

3 Reasons to Write No Matter What Field You’re In

March 8, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


Plus my tips on how to write consistently.

Vienna University of Business and Economics. (Photo by Ngai Man Yan from Pexels)

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was a genius, but he wasn’t a writer. He dictated his memoirs, and his friend transcribed the audio-tape.

Still, Feynman wrote. A lot. Because he realized something, many people don’t — writing equals working. He explains it in this interview:

Weiner: (Referring to Feynman’s journals) And so this represents the record of the day-to-day work.
Feynman: I actually did the work on the paper.
Weiner: That s right. It wasn’t a record of what you had done but it is the work.
Feynman: It’s the doing it — it’s the scrap paper.
Weiner: Well, the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here.
Feynman: No, it’s not a record, not really, it’s working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper. OK?

Writing is working. But it’s so much more. Here are three reasons why you should write even if you’re not a writer.


1. When You Write, You Have to Understand and Think for Yourself

You can’t summarize an idea that you don’t really understand. So, through writing, you realize whether you truly got the concept or swim in the illusion of knowledge.

The problem is as follows, writes Schopenhauer:

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. … For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.”

Writing changes the game. You put pressure on your thinking. It forces you to push your thoughts into logic. And in this process, you learn and understand.

Scientists call this the Generation effect. In 1978, researchers discovered information is better remembered if it’s generated from one’s own mind rather than simply read.

And while research is still unclear about why it works, it has been shown to accelerate learning and remembering information.

You can’t just read through an idea, hear a conversation, or watch an online course to learn what’s in front of you. Learning requires effortful engagement.

“The one who does the work does the learning,” Doyle said. And when you write about what you read and think about, you do the work.

2. Writing Will Create Meaning in Your Life

There are more than writing’s benefits to learning and working. Writing helps us make sense of our lives. Or, as diarist Anaïs Nin writes:

“Writing to me means thinking, digging, pondering, creating, shattering. It means getting at the meaning of all things; it means reaching climaxes; it means moral and spiritual and physical life all in one. Writing implies manual labor, a strain on one’s conscience and an exercise of the mind. My life flows into ink and I am pleased.”

Think of Dumbledore’s pensive. When you put the wand to your head, the pen in your hand, you extract thoughts from your head. Once they flush into the bowl and on your paper, your thoughts take a different form.

Now you see your mind in front of you. Writing helps you see how seemingly unrelated thoughts connect with each other. That’s why writing is a mind-expanding, often even enlightening experience.

I wrote my first article on March 28, 2020. Since then, I write almost every morning. Writing has paid me +€15K. But I gained something that outpasses any monetary reward: I learned more about myself.

Once you see thousands of words and plenty of articles in front of you, you’ll start to see a pattern — a pattern that can tell you more about yourself than any life coach or any book ever will.

3. The More You Write the Better You’ll Get

In the past months, a lot of people told me they also want to write every day. But they don’t. Because deep inside of them is this belief that they can’t write.

Quantity trumps quality. The reason why most people feel they can’t write is that they’ve never really tried it. They’re stuck in a memory of their high-school writing.

My first few articles were bad. There was much resistance inside my head. I was scared. I obsessed. But what helped me get better was pushing myself to publish and to write more. And more. And more.

Research shows the more you create, the more creative you become. The best ideas and connections will arise once you flow into the writing process.

Don’t tell yourself you can’t write until you’ve really tried. If you don’t want to write it’s fine. Life is still great. But if you want to give it a try, don’t use your inability as an excuse. Publish 100 articles before you decide.


How to Write Consistently

Writing can be fun once you found your process. As with many skills you want to learn, starting is the hardest part. Here are the things that have helped me stick to writing for almost a year.

Set a writing schedule. Whether it’s daily, weekly, or bi-weekly is up to you. Block a time in the calendar and make it consistent.

Give yourself a time limit. According to Parkinson’s law, work expands to fill the time available for its completion. When you write, set yourself a timer. Aim to finish your writing before the timer is up. Even if you don’t, it’ll help you progress.

Write down topic ideas on the go. Keep a journal, or use your favorite note-taking app. When you go through everyday life, write down what you think you could write about.

  • What makes you curious?
  • What surprises you?
  • What can’t you stop thinking about?

Every thought that triggers your emotions is a good starting point. Don’t judge your ideas when you write them down. And don’t ever worry about what you’ll be writing about next month—consistency trumps strategy.

Practice in public. Writing is so much easier when you have a clear goal. You can start small. Set up a newsletter for your friends and tell them they’ll get one article a month. Publishing your work with others will also help you learn faster. Feedback is fuel for better writing. So don’t be shy and share your work.

“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

— Sylvia Plath


Final Thoughts

Feynman was known to never settle for knowing a description of things. He wanted to discover the underlying truth. He really wanted to know, and it was curiosity that led him to his greatest work.

Use curiosity to guide your writing. Soon you’ll discover something about yourself you didn’t know before. All you need is time, motivation, and dedication.

So, when will you dare to write?


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Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: learning, Writing

How Ali Abdaal Makes Over $1m Per Year as an Online Entrepreneur

February 12, 2021 by Eva Keiffenheim


And the habits that helped him achieve success.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

From 2017 to 2020, Ali Abdaal built a 7-figure online business while completing his full-time medical studies at Cambridge.

As a YouTuber, instructor, and podcaster, he explores the principles, strategies, and tools that help people live happier, healthier, more productive lives. His YouTube channel has 1.4 million subscribers, and with a book and a second online cohort around the corner, these numbers likely double in 2021.

Recently, he published a 50-minute video on how much he earned in 2020. Ali’s levels of humbleness, humor, and self-reflection make it one of the most inspiring entrepreneurship videos I’ve seen.

This article gives a quick glance at how he made more than a million dollars in 2020, and more importantly, the key takeaways from his entrepreneurial journey.


How Ali Abdaal made +$1,000,000 as a YouTuber

Ali diversified his online income streams over the years. While he built the last two pillars in his early online career, the first three emerged more recently.

1) Skillshare Courses: $475,700

Teachers on Skillshare earn revenue through royalty payments and premium referrals. Instructors make money for every minute watched by Premium students in their classes and for every student they bring through a referral link.

Ali has seven classes on Skillshare, with more than 100,000 students watching his classes at more than 9,000,000 minutes of watch time.

2) Self-Created Online Course: $371,046

In 2020, Ali launched the part-time YouTuber academy. He teaches students how to grow a YouTube channel from 0 to 100,000+ subscribers and transform it into a sustainable, income-generating machine.

The pricing starts at $1495 for the essential package, up to $4995 for the premium package. His 2021 enrollment for February is already sold out.

3) Sponsorships: $184,843

Brands pay YouTubers to feature their products or services in some way. Sponsorships require an existing audience, and Ali got his first sponsorship deal in 2018 when he already had 50k subscribers.

Sponsored videos might run in-video advertisements or use product placements, like Ali does here with Notion, or here with Apple.

4) Affiliates: $180,047

Affiliate marketers earn a commission by promoting other people’s or company’s products and content. The broader creators’ reach, the more people will buy what they talk about.

Ali’s main affiliate income sources include Amazon’s affiliate program, Tiago Forte’s Second Brain Course, a special Keyboard, and a paperlike iPad protector.

5) AdSense: $136,859

Google AdSense is the main income for many YouTubers. The advertisements are the short 5-second clips before videos or the snippets you see while watching a video. To start earning money with AdSense, YouTubers need a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 valid watch-hours on their channel.

For reaching $136,859 in 2020, Ali published 98 videos with 1.3 million subscribers.


5 Lessons from Ali’s Journey

It’s tempting to use Ali’s success as an example for a get-rich-quick scheme. Nothing could be further from the truth. His entrepreneurial journey is another proof that shortcuts don’t exist. Instead, success is a result of smart habits and strategies.

#1 Focus on the single most important metric.

Value creation is the most important metric to measure. Recently, Ali shared a tweet, stating:

“Achieving creator-market fit feels a lot like cheating because you can suddenly grow incredibly fast.”

But if you look at his history, you see that he didn’t cheat. He found his creator-market fit step by step.

In his first months, he targeted the one group he could provide value for: students wanting to get accepted into Cambridge medical school. He recorded videos on test-taking and interview questions.

A few months in, he expanded for the students among him, sharing learning strategies and university productivity desk set up. Only after more than a year of video creation, he tapped into a broader audience and shared videos on note-taking, a general desk setup, reading, and time-management.

He went from a niche audience to a broader audience by focusing on the group of people he can truly help.

How to apply this lesson:
What do you know that can help other people grow? What have you done with ease that other people are struggling to achieve? Focus on this niche as a start. Whatever you do, focus on the single most important metric: creating value for your audience.


#2 Publish consistently for +2 years.

Ali started in 2017 and didn’t earn a cent from his first 50 videos. He needed to build a solid 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch-hours before he’d qualify for the income program.

Around the same time, Ali posted his first video in 2017, Danika Chilibeck and I started Investella, a personal investment platform for women by women. We put in 20, 40, 100 hours and but didn’t see desired results. We grew impatient because we didn’t make any money. A few months in, we stopped.

That’s the difference between Ali and most people on this planet. He continued to trust in his process and producing great content, while most aspiring entrepreneurs stop along the way.

His YouTube success didn’t come overnight. Before earning +$100k a year, he had published more than 300 videos. He stuck to the process and published consistently without expecting returns.

How to apply this lesson:
Making money from online creation is a long-term game. You won’t see the desired results in the beginning. But if you keep working, you might suddenly hit a glass ceiling. Progress is slow but exponential. Whenever you think about quitting, keep in mind, you’re in for the long term.


#3 Accept there’s no secret sauce.

While preparing this article, I expected to find a secret sauce for growing a content channel into a thriving business. But there’s no secret.

On his website, Ali writes that all it takes to become a successful online entrepreneur are three things:

  • Producing content that your audience finds useful (see #1)
  • Posting this on YouTube once a week (see #2)
  • Repeating this for 2+ years (see #2)

Successful content creators know there’s no magic trick. And that’s why they can calmly focus on creation. Ali followed his own advice. He created one to two high-quality YouTube videos for more than three years and ultimately saw the results.

How to apply this lesson:
Don’t waste time searching for a secret source. Use success stories as inspiration but don’t get lost in them. Creation is all that matters. When looking at your metrics, don’t feel discouraged. Use data to analyze what works and do more of it. But apart from that, don’t agonize over low stats. Instead, spend all of your energy consistently creating user-centric content.


#4 Always invest in learning and growth.

In 2017 Ali invested £ 2000 in buying camera equipment while he didn’t make a single cent from his new YouTube channel. Three years later, he wrote in the advertisement for his part-time academy:

“ I’ve spent over $30,000 in courses and coaching programs.”

Learning fuels growth. The best entrepreneurs are lifelong learners and don’t hesitate to spend money on themselves. A quote from Billionaire investor Warren Buffett sums up why this strategy works:

“The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself. The more you learn, the more you’ll earn.”

How to apply this lesson:
Make self-investments and learning a priority. Seek courses, coaching, and training within your niche. Don’t agonize about whether you should spend money on these things. Save on consumer goods, and invest the spare income into learning and growth. Finally, make reading a habit.


#5 Connect with new people.

Ali said he planned to launch his part-time YouTuber academy as another Skillshare course. Then he talked to Tiago Forte and David Perell (both sell online courses at +$1500 and +$4000).

Probably that’s how Ali learned about the features of learner-centric online courses: highly interactive, community-based, feedback opportunities, accountability.

Because he connected with people who’ve successfully done what he intended to do, he deviated from his original plan. He learned that a top tier offer at a higher price is a better way to go.

How to apply this lesson:
Make it a habit to connect with new people. In a Forge article, Michael Thompson shared great strategies for how to do it. He suggests calling one new person every week and reaching out to people you already have weak ties with.


What’s next?

If there’s one thing we learn from Ali Abdaal’s impressive way towards a YouTube millionaire, it’s that the best way to make large amounts of money on the internet is to provide value at scale. Here’s what to remember:

  • Focus on creating value for the audience.
  • Publish high-quality content for +2 years.
  • Stop searching for the secret sauce.
  • Make it a habit to invest in learning and growth.
  • Regularly connect with new people around you.

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Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Entrepreneurship, Productivity

How to Create like Elizabeth Gilbert

November 24, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


Make your creativity work for you.

Photo by David Becker on Unsplash

Creativity is like Bertie Bott’s every flavor beans, a risk with every mouthful.

“You want to be careful with those. When they say every flavour, they mean every flavour — you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a bogey flavoured one once.”

— Ron Weasley

With every new creation, you dare to eat another Bertie Bott. Even with a solid idea-to-paper process, your creativity will surprise you. You feel moody, surprised, vulnerable, depressed, and enthusiastic while writing the same paragraph. The dynamics make creative work harder than cognitive work, but you can learn to play with it.

Elizabeth Gilbert chewed more Bertie Botts than most of us. She’s been a writer for almost three decades and the personification of a self-made creative-genius. If you read her books about chasing happiness, 19th-century botany, and sexual liberation in the 40s, you’ll see nothing but growth.

From 2007 to 2019, her writing style and content depth drastically evolved. And, lucky for us, her 2015 book takes us through her insights on creativity. Here they are.


“When courage dies, creativity dies with it.”

Fear is part of any creative process. You might fear your lack of talent, inspiration, professionalism, experience. You might fear other people’s opinions, or, even worse, your own judgment. You might fear you’re too old or too young to start. See? Fear is intertwined with creativity.

“Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome,” Gilbert writes. “In fact, it seems to me that my fear and my creativity are basically conjoined twins — as evidenced by the fact that creativity cannot take a single step forward without fear marching right alongside it.”

You don’t need to be fearless to strive for your creative endeavors. But don’t let fear take the lead. Gilbert uses a car metaphor to describe the role of fear: “You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.”

Courage isn’t the opposite of fear. Courage is to feel fear but risk it anyway.


“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

Focusing on things outside of your control will leave you frustrated. You can’t influence how people react to your work. It’s pointless to measure your worth by external reactions, like monetary rewards, audience reach, or editor opinions.

All you can influence is your creative process.

Focus on the dedication to your path. Or, as Gilbert writes, “work with all your heart, because — I promise — if you show up for your work, day after day after day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.”

When we look at the work of successful writers, we only see the tip of the iceberg. We envy other writer’s success but don’t look at the dedicated work they’ve done for years. We admire the great works of George R.R. Martin and Stephen King but forget how even they still struggle through the hard work of the creative process.

You have to stick to your path, even if you’ve achieved your definition of success.

“Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk, and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done,” Gilbert writes. “No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy’s reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself.”

See? There’s no magic. No fast track. You have to drag yourself through ups and downs and eventually, just do the work.

Don’t wait for inspiration to strike you. Measure your progress by your dedication to writing. Inspiration and fear will join you along the way.


“Most things have already been done — but they have not yet been done by you.”

I remember my writing coach’s words, Sinem Günel, who told me a harsh truth in one of our first coaching sessions. Unless I’m a scientific researcher, she said, I shouldn’t expect to create any groundbreaking work.

While I first felt offended — I wanted to innovate education with every written word — this also took away the pressure.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. All you need is to describe your experiences with the wheel and how it can benefit others.

As Gilbert put it: “Once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours. Authenticity beats originality. While the latter often feels like an extraneous attempt to create something new, authenticity brings an inner serenity that creates calm resonance with your readers.”

Every great writer imitates before they find their own voice. Saying what you want to say is the definition of authenticity. Don’t worry about the degree of innovation.

This is what artist Austin Kleon meant when he wrote, “Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.”


“Debt will always be the abattoir of creative dreams.”

Creativity works best when there’s no pressure attached to it. Your inspiration creeps away when it feels the burden to feed a household. Plus, worries don’t go well with your creative flow.

To make creativity work for you, you’re better off keeping a job that can pay your bills.

Elizabeth committed to becoming a writer in her early twenties. Yet, she didn’t go to an expensive school to learn to write. Instead, she made a living on jobs like bartending, tutoring, flea-marketing, or waitressing. And meanwhile, she wrote every day throughout her twenties.

“I held on to my day jobs for so long because I wanted to keep my creativity free and safe,” she writes. “I knew better than to ask this of my writing because, over the years, I have watched so many other people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills. ”

Don’t drive your creativity away by relying on monetary rewards too early in your career. Instead, have a job that pays you bills while you create without monetary pressure.


“Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person.”

Almost any creator can relate to the disappointing feeling after a rejection. But turndowns are part of any creative journey. If one creates with courage, one will face refusal again and again.

Elizabeth writes that she stacked all her rejection letters in one place. Every time she got a rejection from a publisher, she sent a new application at the same time: Whenever I got those rejection letters, then, I would permit my ego to say aloud to whoever had signed it: “You think you can scare me off? I’ve got another eighty years to wear you down!”

If you want to unleash your creative potential, you have to see rejection as part of the process. If you dare to reach high, hearing a lot of no’s is unavoidable. By playing the long-term game, you can stick to the process.

“The world is filled with too many unfinished manuscripts as it is, and I didn’t want to add another one to that bottomless pile. So no matter how much I thought my work stank, I had to persist,” Gilbert writes. “You try and try and try, and nothing works. But you keep trying, and you keep seeking, and then sometimes, in the least expected place and time, it finally happens.”


In Conclusion

Generalizing creative writing advice is hard since every brain works differently. What is good for Elizabeth Gilbert might not have the same benefits for you.

And while these five insights have been useful to my creative journey, they might be useless for someone who’s at a different stage of their creative process.

But if your goal is to create great content, support others, share your knowledge and struggles, and eventually make money online, these five pearls of wisdom can help.

  1. Courage means to feel fear but risk it anyway.
  2. Measure your success by the dedication to your path.
  3. Authenticity beats originality.
  4. Create without monetary pressure.
  5. Endure disappointment and keep on trying.

Creative work is like Bertie Bott’s beans. But if you dare to eat them despite your fear, one day after another, you’re on your journey towards your best creative self. In the words of Gilbert:

“The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust — and those elements are universally accessible.”


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Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Writing

The Two Learning Curves First Time Writers Need to Master

November 5, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


It’s not only how you write but also what you write that matters.

Photo: Joshua Welch/Pexels

Many new writers start with an illusory superiority. Naïve as I was, I expected my first article to be a hit. Journaling, academic work, and well-rated high-school essays made me overestimate my writing ability. Together with all the other writers who start with overconfidence, I was on top of what social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger label the ‘Mount Stupid.’

According to their research, incompetent people overestimate their own competence and, failing to sense a discrepancy between their performance and what is desirable, see no need to learn or improve. New writers know so little, they fail to see what they don’t know.

“We start at a disadvantage for several reasons. One is that when we’re incompetent, we tend to overestimate our competence and see little reason to change,” cognitive researchers Roediger & McDaniel write about this phenomenon. “To become more competent, we must learn to recognize competence when we see it in others, become more accurate judges of what we ourselves know and don’t know, adopt learning strategies that get results, and find objective ways to track our progress.”

Many new writers never get to this point. They quit after the disappointment of a bad performing first article. Or they gave up because of the daunting number of skills neccessary to become a prolific writer. While overcoming the first, I almost quit because of the latter. Comparing oneself to Niklas Göke, Michael Thompson, Ali Mese, or Megan Holstein can feel demotivating.

Yet, the few new writers that move past this point embark on an exciting learning path. Writing is one of the rare professions that offer a ticket to life-long learning. Here are the two learning curves that make writing worth mastering:

Curve 1: Learning how to articulate your ideas

Writing includes much more than writing. It’s not as simple as having an idea, writing it down, publishing, and watch it reach millions of readers. New writers often fail to acknowledge the micro-steps that are neccessary to move from idea generation to a well-articulated article.

Items on the first learning curve help new writers to organize their thoughts and pack them into a neat, coherent package:

  • content consumption as sources of inspiration
  • researching and applying for publications
  • a solid idea-to-paper process
  • writing clickable, non-clickbaity headlines
  • choosing article pictures
  • writing powerful introductions
  • engaging the reader using an appropriate style
  • editing articles including proofreading, writing flow, word choice, and grammar
  • formatting the article according to respective publication style guides

While the number of items might feel overwhelming, countless guides can help to gain mastery. For example, Cynthia Marinakos offers excellent advice on headline writing, Niklas Göke on the skill of captivating introductions, and Ali Mese provides a useful grammar cheat sheet.

How fast you move on this learning curve depends on your mindset and your discipline. After reading six books and taking three writing online courses, I’ve noticed a recurring statement: the only way to improve your writing is to write.

An open, learning mindset helps to digest and apply everything you learn from people more experienced than you and reach out to people you look up to. But a daily writing praxis is what makes you hone your craft.

Your speed on the first learning curve depends on mindset and consistency.

Curve 2: Becoming an expert in your writing areas

If you want it or not, you become an expert in the topics you write about. When you write about personal finance, you’ll know your way around money management. If you write about attention fragmentation, you might be able to recite a list of ten things you can do immediatly to minimize technological distractions.

When we write, we elaborate. “Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know,” cognitive researchers define. And elaboration, as this study showed, is one of the most effective learning strategies.

And as you become an expert on the topics you write about, it’s important to make a conscious choice. When you accept a writing client you don’t want to represent, you’ll soon find yourself in cognitive dissonance, meaning your actions don’t match your beliefs. You’ll represent something you no longer want to represent.

Nicolas Cole included a great tip for this learning curve in his current book on online writing. “In your first six months of writing online, you should be less concerned with “establishing” yourself and more focused on “discovering” yourself,” he wrote. Once you know what you enjoy writing about and see the data from what people want to read, you can move on.

“If you start writing about marketing strategies, but data tells you it’s your stories about being an angel investor people love reading most, you should pay attention to that. If you start writing sci-fi, but you discover it’s actually your historical fiction people are flocking to, data is trying to tell you something. If you start writing poetry, but you find your morning meditations are what get dozens of people to comment and engage with your writing, what are you going to do? Keep writing poetry? Once data enters the equation, this is where the “Who Do I Want To Be?” conversation gets interesting.”

— Nicolas Cole in The Art and Business of Online Writing

Closing thoughts

Writing is a life-long learning journey. It’s one of the rare jobs you (eventually) get paid for acquiring new knowledge.

Once you move up on both learning curves, writing will feel more natural. At the same time, one curve doesn’t go without the other. If you’re great at articulating your ideas but no expert in the topics you write about, you do not realize your full writing potential. The opposite is true as well: If you are a topic expert but don’t know how to articulate what you want to say, there’s no way you can get through to your readers.

To move from a new writer to a prolific writer, we must watch out for both learning curves. Fostering a growth mindset, learning from the best, experimenting, and deciding on a writing genre helps.

Whatever you’re doing, keep in mind: writing is one of those rare jobs where you get paid for learning. So, it’s worth doing the work it takes to improve your craft. Cambridge Editors’ Blog puts it best:

“Writing takes hard work and practice, just like everything else. If you want to be a good writer you need to put in the effort, plain and simple. And that means anyone can be a writer so long as they are willing to put in the work. It’s a comforting thought.”


My free weekly Learn Letter will give you tools and resources to accelerate your learning. If you’d like to accelerate your online writing, register here.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Writing

How to Build a High-Quality Website to Best Market Your Business Online

October 28, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


An affiliate-free beginner’s guide to wordpress.org

Wordpress Backend Site displayed on a Computer
Photo by Stephen Phillips — Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash

What do Snoop Dogg, Quartz, Alanis Morisette, the Obama Foundation, and Vogue have in common?

They all run their stunning sites on wordpress.org.

But you don’t need to be rich or famous to have a great website. Thanks to WordPress.org, you can build a beautiful, unique place to best market your business for less than $150.

Whether you’re a freelancer showcasing your portfolio, a founder building your brand’s identity, or a hustler trying to generate passive income with an e-commerce store—marketing your presence with a WordPress site is a great way to reach a broader audience.

In the past three years, I’ve built over 10 WordPress sites for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and e-commerce stores. Here’s how you can get started.


1. Choose Your Hosting Platform

First, you want to choose where to host your website. There are plenty of so-called hosting providers. A quick Google search will show you tons of providers that specialize in managed WordPress hosting.

You can compare choosing a web host to picking an apartment. How much space do you need? It’ll be more if you intend to run an e-commerce store with tons of items and less if you offer three types of yoga classes.

I’ve hosted websites with four different providers (world4you, Strato, Checkdomain, and GoDaddy). To be honest, they’re all very similar to each other. You can’t do much wrong as long as your choice includes managed WordPress hosting and has over 1,000 trustworthy user reviews.


2. Pick a Domain and Install WordPress

Once you’re set for a hosting platform, you want to buy a domain. A domain is the name of your site. When you look at www.medium.com, for example, the domain name is Medium.

From a marketing perspective, your domain should represent your brand. Picking a name that supports your communication can make your message more effective. This site allows you to explore your name’s availability on different marketing platforms.

If you haven’t bought a domain yet, go with your hosting provider. If you buy the domain with your host, you have everything done in one place. You save the step of transferring a domain to your existing provider.

Once you give your website a name, you want to install the general WordPress framework on this domain. Usually, installing WordPress equals a quick button-click and a confirmation email — that’s why you chose a managed WordPress host in the first place.

Now you’ve figured out the technical prerequisites, and you’re all set for the fun part.


3. Buy a WordPress Theme

This will make or break your website. With your host, you chose the size of your apartment. With your WordPress theme, you’re buying the furniture. While you will still be able to change cushions or your walls’ color, it’ll be time-intensive to buy a new kitchen or wardrobe once you live there.

Just like in real life, you want to spend some time buying your furniture. A WordPress theme is a one-time investment so that I wouldn’t factor the price into the equation. If you use the site for five years, there’s not much difference between a $30, $50, or $80 theme.

You pay for the programming service that’s been done for you. WordPress themes are the reason why you don’t need to code.

Three steps make picking the right theme easier.

  1. Find 3 websites you love and you want your website to look similar to.
  2. Browse WordPress theme marketplaces (like this one, this one, or this one) to research 3–5 WordPress themes that have templates with a similar look and feel.
  3. Compare your theme shortlist in terms of documentation (how intuitive are the how-to guides), user numbers (the more people use the template, the better), and reviews.

Once you’ve picked your favorite template, you can download the .zip file and install the theme in your WordPress backend.


4. Determine Your Corporate Identity

Corporate identity is the most crucial part of marketing your business online. These five parts make up your corporate identity, meaning the way you present yourself online: logo, typography, color palette, imagery, and iconography.

Logo

If you’re on a budget, you can use platforms like Canva to create your own logo. The better option is to find a freelance designer on UpWork or Fiverr to make a logo for you.

For the website, you want it as a .png file with a transparent background, ideally in two versions: one for a white background and one for a darker background.

Typography

There is an entire science behind the anatomy of typography and font pairing. Make it as complicated as you want.

A more pragmatic way than downloading and installing a very unique font on your WordPress theme is to pick a preinstalled font that is also a Google font. That way, you can use the font in all of your documents.

Color Palette

Similar to fonts, there is also a ridiculous number of marketers who discuss the meaning of specific colors. Again, spend as much time on it as you want. You can also hire a freelancer to do the color scheme for you.

Since I discovered this website, I love to do the color setting part on my own.

Imagery

Now this one is tricky. Just like your WordPress theme, images on your website make your website look unique and beautiful, or boring and cheap.

To get the best images, hire a photographer, or use high-quality stock images from sites like Pexels, Pixabay, or Adobe Stock.

Iconography

Most WordPress themes come with a stock of existing icons. If not, you can use platforms like thenounproject or undraw to come up with good icons.


5. Individualize Your Page

Once you figured your corporate identity, you can start customizing your page. Most WordPress themes come with a setup manual that tells you how to implement your logo, typography, color plate, imagery, and iconography into the page.

Apart from the built-in features of your template, you can add powerful plug-ins to improve your marketing. You can include a Mailchimp or ConvertKit Plugin to collect email addresses. If you connect Google Analytics to your page, you gain insights into your visitor’s behavior. Plus, plug-ins like Yoast will level up your organic search performance.

As 37% of all websites on the internet run on WordPress, developers are constantly creating and optimizing plug-ins for WordPress sites. Whatever you’re trying to build, a simple Google search will likely offer you a solution for your site.


In Conclusion

In 2020, building a unique website to market your business doesn’t need to be expensive, nerve-racking, or difficult.

On the contrary, it can be cost-effective, inspiring, and fun. Again, here are the five steps it takes.

  1. Choose your web-hosting provider.
  2. Pick a domain and install the WordPress CMS.
  3. Buy a WordPress theme.
  4. Determine your corporate identity.
  5. Individualize your page with plug-ins.

Starting and building a website takes work. But with a bit of time and a problem-solving mindset, you can make it work.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: marketing, websites

9 Free Writing Tools That Helped Me Make $4,167 In One Month

September 18, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


They can do the same for you.

Photo by Khachik Simonian on Unsplash

Let’s get this clear: Your writing won’t bring you money because of these tools.

Sitting down to write will make your writing better. With quantity comes quality, my writing coach continues used to say. And she was right.

I wrote my first Medium article on March 27. Since then, I have published 55 pieces with a >80% curation rate. In August, I earned $4,167 on Medium alone.

Screenshot by Author

And while these tools won’t turn you into a professional writer, they will level up your writing process.

Whether you’re struggling with headlines, keeping a writing routine, or are non-native speakers, these priceless tools will help.


1 Manage Your Articles With Trello

Trello is an idea keeper, a writing tracker, and a motivation booster. Here’s how I use my Trello Board, from left to right:

  • Medium Article Ideas
  • Working Projects
  • Articles Submitted to Publications
  • Articles Rejected by Publications that need Reediting
  • Articles Published

When to use it:

Your Trello board will be useful on five occasions.

  1. When an idea strikes you. Add the title or the idea as a new card to your very left corner. You can also access it from mobile. Write down everything that comes to your mind.
  2. When you start writing. Because of all the article ideas on your board, you’ll never have to worry about a blank page in front of you. When you start a new story, pick one of your ideas, drag them to the “Working Projects” column, and start writing.
  3. When you hit publish. This is a motivational booster. It feels great to move a working project card to the “articles submitted” column. In the card add a date when you expect to hear back. Thereby, you’ll see when you need to follow-up or submit your piece to another publication.
  4. When the publication publishes or rejects your piece. Being rejected is part of every writer’s journey. Move your card to “rejected” and improve your piece. Then, give it a new shot at another publication.
  5. When a publication publishes your piece. Boom! You’ll move your card from “submitted to publication” to “published.”
Screenshot by Author

2 Improve Your Headlines with Co-Schedule

Most writers ignore this fact. They write great content and bad headlines. Yet, readers will never read your writing if your headline isn’t catchy.

Nobody will read your article if your headline sucks.

I ignored this fact until I completed Benjamin Hardy, PhD’s online course writing course. He takes 20–30 minutes every time he writes an article. He’d jot down 10–30 headlines before he starts to write.

Headline writing is a craft. It leaves the reader asking questions and wanting more.

Headlines consist of a combination of words. And while there are great articles on headline hacks, this tool does a quick check-up for you.

When to use it:

Opinions vary on this one. I love to find the headline before I start writing. It’ll help me frame my idea in various contexts. Moreover, a clear headline will help you structure the content.

Screenshot by Author

3 Format Your Headlines With Title Case Converter

After you mastered the balancing act of crafting a headline that grabs the reader’s attention, you’ll want to format it. Many publications reject articles because of their first impression.

When to use it:

I use Title Case Converter before I paste the headline into my story.

Screenshot by Author

4 Look Beyond Unsplash Pictures

After you’ve leveled up your writing with a great and proper formatted headline, you want to make sure you choose an awesome picture.

Search images by emotions instead of keywords. Pick a picture that supports the feeling you’re trying to convey. Tim Denning is an incredible picture picker.

When you analyze his images, you’ll see he searches beyond Medium’s built-in Unsplash feature. Here’s a list of links to free high-quality stock images:

  • Pexels
  • StockSnap
  • Reshot
  • Pixabay
  • Flickr
  • Freepik
  • Burst

When to use it:

After you set and formatted the headline, and before you start writing.


5 Use A Leftover Graveyard To Edit Without Mercy

Excellent writing requires ruthless editing. A leftover graveyard is a simple tool for producing clear, dense, and solid writing.

It’s a simple text document containing every phrase that wasn’t good enough to remain in your piece but was too beautiful to be deleted.

With every passage, ask yourself: Does this add value for the reader?

If the answer is yes, keep what you wrote. If the answer is nay, move sections or words to your graveyard. Every time you doubt whether you should delete a sentence, cut the sentence out, and paste it into your leftover document.

When to use it:

When you do the editing after you’ve written your article.

Screenshot by Author

6 Engage Your Reader With Thesaurus

If you’re also a non-native English speaker, a synonym finder is a pure piece of gold. It’ll find words outside of your vocabulary and give you suggestions on how to use them.

By adding variety to your writing, you’ll make your texts more interesting.

When to use it:

I use it at the same time as the leftover graveyard. In my first round of editing, I’d cut out everything that’s not needed and look for words that make the writing better.

Screenshot by Author

7 Run a Health Check With Grammarly

Grammarly has gained a lot of popularity within the last year. And it’s well-deserved. This writing tool checks your writing for grammar and punctuation mistakes.

And, in the pro-version, it also offers suggestions on how to replace your words.

Yet, don’t let Grammarly ruin your copy. It’ll sometimes be very strict on suggestions and make you want to reach the 99, even though a 78 score might be more authentic and humane.

When to use it:

To ensure it’ll not change your message, only use it after your round of self-editing. A grammar health check will give your piece the final touch.

Screenshot by Author

8 Do A Second Audit With The Hemmingway App

Even though I love Grammarly, it’s not perfect. So anytime I submit a piece, I’d make it run through the Hemingway App and look for phrases that are very hard to read.

Most of the times, the very hard to read phrases contain some logical errors. I’ll try to split them into two sentences or change the overall structure.

By focusing on clear, logical writing throughout your entire article, you’ll attract more readers, and, after all, take your writing to the next level.

When to use it:

After you’ve run your writing through Grammarly and before you hit publish.

Screenshot by Author

9 Analyze Your Articles With an Excel Sheet

I first learned about this sheet in Sinem’s Medium Writing Academy. It’s a self-made excel sheet you can use after you publish your article. It serves as an analyzer and a motivator.

This sheet helps you to do more of what works well. Moreover, this system helps you keep track of the number of articles published, your curation tags, and the publications you’ve published with. You can use your sheet to set your writing KPIs.

When to use it:

Once a publication published your piece add all the details to the sheet. Once a month, add the stats and the numbers.

Screenshot by Author

Do you want to learn more about my writing journey? Join the E-Mail List.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Tools, Writing

9 Free Writing Tools That Helped Me Make $4,167 a Month

September 18, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


Let’s get this clear: Your writing won’t bring you money because of these tools.

Sitting down to write will make your writing better. With quantity comes quality, my writing coach continues used to say. And she was right.

I wrote my first Medium article on March 27. Since then, I have published 55 pieces with a >80% curation rate. In August, I earned $4,167 on Medium alone.

Screenshot by Author

And while these tools won’t turn you into a professional writer, they will level up your writing process.

Whether you’re struggling with headlines, keeping a writing routine, or are non-native speakers, these priceless tools will help.


1 Manage Your Articles With Trello

Trello is an idea keeper, a writing tracker, and a motivation booster. Here’s how I use my Trello Board, from left to right:

  • Medium Article Ideas
  • Working Projects
  • Articles Submitted to Publications
  • Articles Rejected by Publications that need Reediting
  • Articles Published

When to use it:

Your Trello board will be useful on five occasions.

  1. When an idea strikes you. Add the title or the idea as a new card to your very left corner. You can also access it from mobile. Write down everything that comes to your mind.
  2. When you start writing. Because of all the article ideas on your board, you’ll never have to worry about a blank page in front of you. When you start a new story, pick one of your ideas, drag them to the “Working Projects” column, and start writing.
  3. When you hit publish. This is a motivational booster. It feels great to move a working project card to the “articles submitted” column. In the card add a date when you expect to hear back. Thereby, you’ll see when you need to follow-up or submit your piece to another publication.
  4. When the publication publishes or rejects your piece. Being rejected is part of every writer’s journey. Move your card to “rejected” and improve your piece. Then, give it a new shot at another publication.
  5. When a publication publishes your piece. Boom! You’ll move your card from “submitted to publication” to “published.”
Screenshot by Author

2 Improve Your Headlines with Co-Schedule

Most writers ignore this fact. They write great content and bad headlines. Yet, readers will never read your writing if your headline isn’t catchy.

Nobody will read your article if your headline sucks.

I ignored this fact until I completed Benjamin Hardy, PhD’s online course writing course. He takes 20–30 minutes every time he writes an article. He’d jot down 10–30 headlines before he starts to write.

Headline writing is a craft. It leaves the reader asking questions and wanting more.

Headlines consist of a combination of words. And while there are great articles on headline hacks, this tool does a quick check-up for you.

When to use it:

Opinions vary on this one. I love to find the headline before I start writing. It’ll help me frame my idea in various contexts. Moreover, a clear headline will help you structure the content.

Screenshot by Author

3 Format Your Headlines With Title Case Converter

After you mastered the balancing act of crafting a headline that grabs the reader’s attention, you’ll want to format it. Many publications reject articles because of their first impression.

When to use it:

I use Title Case Converter before I paste the headline into my story.

Screenshot by Author

4 Look Beyond Unsplash Pictures

After you’ve leveled up your writing with a great and proper formatted headline, you want to make sure you choose an awesome picture.

Search images by emotions instead of keywords. Pick a picture that supports the feeling you’re trying to convey. Tim Denning is an incredible picture picker.

When you analyze his images, you’ll see he searches beyond Medium’s built-in Unsplash feature. Here’s a list of links to free high-quality stock images:

  • Pexels
  • StockSnap
  • Reshot
  • Pixabay
  • Flickr
  • Freepik
  • Burst

When to use it:

After you set and formatted the headline, and before you start writing.


5 Use A Leftover Graveyard To Edit Without Mercy

Excellent writing requires ruthless editing. A leftover graveyard is a simple tool for producing clear, dense, and solid writing.

It’s a simple text document containing every phrase that wasn’t good enough to remain in your piece but was too beautiful to be deleted.

With every passage, ask yourself: Does this add value for the reader?

If the answer is yes, keep what you wrote. If the answer is nay, move sections or words to your graveyard. Every time you doubt whether you should delete a sentence, cut the sentence out, and paste it into your leftover document.

When to use it:

When you do the editing after you’ve written your article.

Screenshot by Author

6 Engage Your Reader With Thesaurus

If you’re also a non-native English speaker, a synonym finder is a pure piece of gold. It’ll find words outside of your vocabulary and give you suggestions on how to use them.

By adding variety to your writing, you’ll make your texts more interesting.

When to use it:

I use it at the same time as the leftover graveyard. In my first round of editing, I’d cut out everything that’s not needed and look for words that make the writing better.

Screenshot by Author

7 Run a Health Check With Grammarly

Grammarly has gained a lot of popularity within the last year. And it’s well-deserved. This writing tool checks your writing for grammar and punctuation mistakes.

And, in the pro-version, it also offers suggestions on how to replace your words.

Yet, don’t let Grammarly ruin your copy. It’ll sometimes be very strict on suggestions and make you want to reach the 99, even though a 78 score might be more authentic and humane.

When to use it:

To ensure it’ll not change your message, only use it after your round of self-editing. A grammar health check will give your piece the final touch.

Screenshot by Author

8 Do A Second Audit With The Hemmingway App

Even though I love Grammarly, it’s not perfect. So anytime I submit a piece, I’d make it run through the Hemingway App and look for phrases that are very hard to read.

Most of the times, the very hard to read phrases contain some logical errors. I’ll try to split them into two sentences or change the overall structure.

By focusing on clear, logical writing throughout your entire article, you’ll attract more readers, and, after all, take your writing to the next level.

When to use it:

After you’ve run your writing through Grammarly and before you hit publish.

Screenshot by Author

9 Analyze Your Articles With an Excel Sheet

I first learned about this sheet in Sinem’s Medium Writing Academy. It’s a self-made excel sheet you can use after you publish your article. It serves as an analyzer and a motivator.

This sheet helps you to do more of what works well. Moreover, this system helps you keep track of the number of articles published, your curation tags, and the publications you’ve published with. You can use your sheet to set your writing KPIs.

When to use it:

Once a publication published your piece add all the details to the sheet. Once a month, add the stats and the numbers.

Screenshot by Author

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Medium, Tools, Writing

How a Leftover Graveyard Will Make You Edit Without Mercy

September 7, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


A simple tool for producing clear, dense, and solid writing.

Photo by Anna-Louise from Pexels

The first draft of anything is always shit, Hemingway used to say. And as a writer, your own experience will attest to the quote’s truth.

You know you need to be a merciless editor to get the best out of your articles. To seduce your readers, you need to distill the quintessence of your writing.

Yet, most of us are lousy editors. We’d rather clinch to the clutter in our pieces than deleting parts of our creations.

Humans avoid pain, so it’s natural we desist editing. It hurts. Deleting the words you carefully put on the paper feels like cycling backward.

There are two options to ease the ache. You‘re either fortunate enough to afford an editor or using a leftover graveyard.

I used the latter for my past 39 Medium articles. 35 were curated and resulted in over $4k Medium Partner Program income in August alone.

And as I feel much of the article’s performance is attributed to my leftover graveyard, I want to share this simple tool with you.

In the following lines, you’ll learn what it is and how you can set up your own.

What is a Leftover Graveyard

A leftover graveyard is a fancy name for a simple text document. It’s an archive containing every phrase that wasn’t good enough to remain in your piece but was too beautiful to be deleted.

A leftover graveyard’s sole purpose is to store all words and sentences you’re hesitant to delete. You cut out all fluff from your original piece and bury it in your graveyard. You’ll remove all the clutter as all your semi-rare sentences move to the document. Thereby, your leftover graveyard will make your writing more clear, dense, and solid.

It’s a psychological trick. You delete your words without deleting them forever. In case you miss your words or want to reuse them for other articles, you know where to find them.

I started with one big graveyard, but as I love to scroll through the graveyard’s to find inspiration, I split them into three different ones. I have one for business, one for love, and one for education.

Pictured by Author

How to Set Up A Leftover Graveyard

You don’t need any fancy tools to make your own one. All you need is a simple text document. I use a google sheet because the cloud makes it accessible from anywhere.

Here’s how my business graveyard looks from inside the document. You see sentence fragments that I cut off from writing a piece on spending less time on your phone.

Pictured by Author

Once you have the document set up, you’re ready to use it for your editing process.

How to Use It to Edit without Mercy

Your editing graveyard will fill with your first round of editing. That’s when you’ll start to burry your words. Every time you go over a written piece to improve it, open your leftover graveyard.

With every passage, ask yourself: Does this add value for the reader?

If the answer is yes, keep what you wrote. If the answer is nay, move sections or words to your graveyard. Every time you doubt whether you should delete a sentence, cut the sentence out, and paste it into your leftover document.

In case you miss the cutout part, you’ll be able to copy it back to your text anytime. When you feel something should be added, revisit your graveyard and take back sentences that add value for your readers.

Moreover, you can use this graveyard as inspiration when you’re crafting a new piece. I love to scroll through my leftover graveyard from time to add article ideas to my Trello board or to reuse sentence structures I haven’t used so far.

Final Words

Excellent writing requires ruthless editing. Using a leftover graveyard has helped me to make a full-time income from my writing. If that’s your goal, I hope this simple trick does the same for you.

By editing with a leftover graveyard, you’ll have the quintessence left. Your readers will want to read your articles until the end. Your writing, your rules. Use whatever works for you. Ultimately, you determine which process elevates your written words.


Do you want to stay in touch? Join my E-Mail List.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Editing, Writing

7 Lessons from Silicon Valley Legend Ben Horowitz Every Entrepreneur Should Know

July 22, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


On management, culture, responsibility and so much more.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

I sighed when a fellow founder recommended I read Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things. I thought it’d be another book full of theoretical self-help fluff from a person who has never done what he is preaching.

Turns out I was wrong.

Horowitz’s book is a management bible for growing any company. I wish I’d read this book before founding my first business. His advice would have saved me from making costly mistakes.

Here are the top seven lessons from his book with instructive examples on how to apply them.

Don’t Protect Others by Whitewashing Facts.

It’s in our human nature to protect people who depend on us. This behavior is helpful when raising a child. Yet, it might be counterproductive for startup management.

I fell into the protection trap early in my entrepreneurial career. Back then, I conducted the user tests for our new app. We didn’t follow the Lean Startup approach. The product was ready. But our potential customers weren’t.

I listened to harsh criticism. Testers did neither understand the app’s navigation nor find the functionalities they were looking for.

Yet, I felt the urge to protect our CTO. I used positive framing to sugarcoat the negative feedback. I thought he couldn’t handle the hard truth.

By keeping the hardest feedback to myself, I prevented the product team from building a better application.

When you don’t share the hardest obstacles, your people can’t build a better business.

Horowitz advises us to be brutally honest with our employees. Honest conversations lead to trust. Besides, the more people are aware of hard obstacles, the more brains can start building solutions.

“In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.”

How to apply this lesson:

Share everything you know about a challenging situation. Be both brutally honest and transparent. Don’t whitewash facts.

When you share uncomfortable facts, tell your team you have the company’s goals in mind. Growth is about tackling the hardest parts.


Always Put Your People First.

With investors in the neck, it’s tempting to prioritize profits over people — particularly when things don’t go well. When your ship might sink, you might go over lives to protect it from going down.

Yet, we should never lose sight of our moral compass. When Horowitz’s company was fighting for life and death, he still focused on what mattered. He put people first.

He was between sign and close of company saving acquisition talks. John Nelli, former CFO, would not have transferred to the new company. Meanwhile, he was diagnosed with cancer.

From a profit perspective, Ben should’ve stuck to the initial plan and let John go. He didn’t owe his CFO anything. Yet, he accepted the healthcare costs and thereby prevented John’s family from bankruptcy.

This lesson teaches us to always focus on what matters in life. You should always put people first. Thereby, you’ll not only stick to your moral compass and do good in the world but also create loyal employees as they know they can trust you.

“Take care of the people, the products, and the profits — in that order.”

How to apply this lesson:

Listen to your people with open ears and open hearts. Be generous with your words and actions. Care for your employees’ families and show understanding when anyone is facing tough family circumstances. In this way, you create a company culture of loyalty and trust.


Look for Things You’re Not Doing.

You defined and communicated your vision to your team. Your people know their KPIs and focus on execution. The entire team is on track, and you’re working hard.

Your business might be so focused that you overlook one important thing, and you no longer see the wood for the trees.

To avoid this common issue, Horowitz suggests asking one powerful question. This question invites out-of-the-box thinking and keeps different perspectives involved.

In every meeting, he’d ask: What are we not doing?

“Ordinarily in a staff meeting, you spend lots of time reviewing, evaluating, and improving all of the things that you do: build products, sell products, support customers, hire employees and the like. Sometimes, however, the things you’re not doing are the things you should actually be focused on.”

How to apply this lesson:

Make it a habit to ask in every meeting, “What are we not doing?”. You’ll shed light on the necessary tasks.

By asking this question, you’ll give your team a creative thinking space. To involve all meeting members, ask them to write down their ideas. Then, do a quick round of sharing all thoughts.

When you find different people giving similar answers, you know what should move on your list.


Create a Culture That Enables Free Information Flow.

According to Horowitz, free information flow is critical for the health of your business. It’ll allow you to learn about negative news before it’s too late.

Yet, many company cultures discourage the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act. By being judgy or nurturing fixed mindsets where mistakes are viewed as failures, employees won’t share bad news.

Create a culture that encourages openness and sharing struggles and challenges. Your feedback system shouldn’t punish employees for getting obstacles into the open.

“A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news.”

How to apply this lesson:

Thank your colleagues for sharing difficult things. Avoid choleric reactions. Be okay with people revealing a problem without offering a solution.

Show gratitude when an employee tells you something you don’t want to hear. Remember, it’s better to know about critical turning points too early than too late.


Don’t Put It All on Your Shoulders.

As a founder or CEO, you feel like you must know it all. You think you should have a solution to any problem. Yet, this thinking is flawed and will harm your business.

By taking too much responsibility on your shoulders, you restrain your people from problem-solving.

Instead of keeping the hard things for yourself, allow your team to join you in brainstorming for solutions. Give the challenge to people who can not only fix the issue but who are also intrinsically motivated to do so.

“You won’t be able to share every burden, but share every burden that you can. Get the maximum number of brains on the problems even if the problems represent existential threats.”

How to apply this lesson:

Call an all-hands and tell your employees what’s the block in front of you. Share the problem with all details and then get the team mastering to build a solution that can help your business.

That’s why you hired your team first — making your company win. By not putting it all on your shoulders, you empower your team.


Take Action on Negative Indicators.

When I learned our new users grew by 38 percent beyond the average growth rate, I strategized about the next growth steps.

Who would we hire next? Should we increase our budget for marketing campaigns? I jumped into taking action.

Entrepreneurs have a bias for taking action on positive news. We love to act on promising information such as unexpected customer growth.

On the other hand, when things don’t go as planned, we tend to blame it on the rain. We find alternative explanations for the bad results and wait it out instead of taking action.

“Almost every CEO takes action on the positive indicators but only looks for alternative explanations on the negative leading indicator.”

How to apply this lesson:

When one of your teams didn’t reach their KPIs, don’t sit it out. Instead, focus on figuring out what happened and how you can improve it for the time to come.

Which numbers or people can give you a detailed explanation about what happened? What should your team be doing differently to overcome this obstacle the next month? Take action on negative indicators.


Set Up Employee Training Structures.

When I suggested my co-founder, we set up a training program; she replied, “There are so many decisions to make, customers to win, products to improve that we can’t prioritize training right now.”

Many founders argue that putting a training program in place will take too much time.

Yet, no investment will yield to higher interest rates than investing in your people. Training will improve productivity in your company.

Moreover, when your best people share their most developed skills, your company culture will improve more than with any team-building event.

“Being too busy to train is the moral equivalent of being too hungry to eat.”

How to apply this lesson:

Teach a course yourself, for example, on management expectations. Select the best people on your team to teach other courses. Make training mandatory.

Horowitz suggests teaching can also become a badge of honor for employees who achieve an elite level of competence.


Moving Forward

As with all business advice, pick the lessons that apply to your situation. Focus on the principles that make a difference in your company.

  • Be brutally honest about hard things.
  • Always put your people first.
  • Regularly ask, “What are we not doing?”
  • Embrace the free information flow.
  • Share your burdens with your team.
  • Take action on negative indicators.

Without application and action, the best business lessons are worthless.

If you, however, apply one principle at a time, you’ll realize how these small decisions accumulate and lead to changes in your company.

Now the only question is: Are you ready to do the work?


Do you want to stay in touch? Join my E-Mail List.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: advice, Books

19 Things I Learned About Writing From My $699 Medium Coach

June 15, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


90 hours of coaching broken down into 7 mins for you

Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash

Benjamin Franklin once said,

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

This spring, I followed the advice and invested $699 in a medium coaching program. Until April, I hadn’t written anything except for 150 pages of academia and 1350 pages in my bullet journals. Since April, I’ve published 16 articles on medium and filed the resignation for my 9–5 job.

Here are 19 essential lessons I’ve learned about writing from my professional medium coach, and Benjamin Hardy, PhD’s online writing course:


1. If you’re a new writer, focus on white space

The less experienced you’re with writing, the more white space you’ll need. Section breaks, paragraphs, and subtitles help you deliver your message.

My first articles are living proof that white space works. I published this article before my first coaching session and this one after it. To this date, the first article earned 9$, the second 127$. These numbers show my medium coach was right about the importance of white space.

Reserve your longer paragraphs for the time you found your writing voice. Gary Provost, a famous American author, once demonstrated how to write longer passages that sound like music:

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say, “Listen to this, it is important.”


2. Publish 100 articles before you expect anything

A writing career isn’t linear. In the beginning, while you’re learning the craft, don’t expect to earn anything. As with everything in life, there’s no such thing as an overnight success.

Making a living from writing is the result of hard work. Authors earning >2000$ on medium or other platforms have spent months practicing.

You can reach writing success as well if you’re willing to put in the work.

Most writers lose faith in their abilities before reaching exponential growth. Following my coach’s advice, I committed to publishing 100 articles before expecting any return on my time investment.


3. The only way to improve your writing is by writing

The only way to get better in writing is to sit down and write. Thinking about writing, speaking about writing, and reading about writing won’t be nearly as effective as writing.

Once my coach asked me the following question, and my writing practice changed:

Do you know there’s a difference between creation and consumption time?

While consuming is all about reading and learning, creating is the process of putting words on paper.

Here’s how I track writing vs. consuming time. Tracking helps me to find a balance between learning and writing.

Image By Author

4. Writing quality will improve with writing quantity

The quality of your words will increase with practice. Instead of editing yourself a fourth time, focus on producing more content.

As an economist, I’d label it as the diminishing return of editing: The longer you edit one article, the later you start a new one.

Ben Hardy explained it’s better to publish a lousy piece than not publish at all. Some of the articles he resisted to publish, went viral afterward.

Unless you stop editing a piece and spend your time on writing a new one, you don’t create. Don’t be too critical on yourself and identify perfectionism as another form of procrastination.

Publish before you think your piece is perfect. Writing quality will improve with quantity.


5. Build a daily writing/creating habit

To write a lot, you need a writing routine. While plenty of articles tout specific writing routines, you know best what works for you.

I get up at 6 AM, practice yoga, journal and meditate. At 6:40 AM, I start writing. By 9 AM, I’ve done all of my creative work and ride to work.

It doesn’t matter which routine you decide on, as long as you stick to the habit. Or, as Austin Kleon puts it:

“What your daily routine consists of is not that important. What’s important is that the routine exists. Cobble together your own routine, stick to it most days, break from it once in a while for fun, and modify it as necessary.”

Ask yourself,

When can you make time to write and focus without distraction?

What helps you getting into your creative state?


6. Always ask, “What’s in it for my readers?”

I felt incredibly proud to publish my first pieces. But my mentor made me realize my articles equaled personal journal entries. She asked:

Do you write for yourself, or do you write for your readers?

One should never write without your readers in mind. Here are some helpful questions, both from my mentor and the medium curation guidelines:

What’s in it for your readers?

Is your piece written for the reader?

Does this add value for the reader?

What do you want your readers to take away?

Which feelings do you aim to provoke?


7. Headlines make or break your stories success

Headlines are the entryway for your readers. If your headline doesn’t spark your readers’ interest, they won’t bother to read the first lines of your well-crafted introduction.

Benjamin Hardy jots down 10–20 headline versions for each of his pieces before he determines the best one. I follow this advice by spending 20 minutes on brainstorming headlines. Being strategic about headlines helps you reach more readers.


8. Check headlines, instead of your stats

My coach caught me on the spot with this one. Here’s what she said:

“The first times you get curated and published with bigger publications, it’s tempting to check your stats again and again. Especially if one article got published in a publication.

But instead of reviewing your cents trickling down, use your time wisely and study successful writer’s headline.”

Instead of checking your stats, study virality. Look at successful writer’s headlines, like Jessica Wildfire, Niklas Göke, Kris Gage, Liz Huber, and Tim Denning.


9. Combine logical with emotional writing

Before mentoring, I thought the number of high-quality sources lead to popularity. It turns out I’m wrong.

The combination of head and heart knowledge makes a story unique.

I come from academia, and it’s easy for me to combine other writer’s logic and craft a coherent story. However, when you look at best-performing articles on medium (like this one, this one, or this one), you’ll realize they don’t sound like peer-reviewed papers. Readers aren’t looking for pure facts.

Instead, it’s your personal experience, combined with a touch of logic, that speaks to your reader’s heart and triggers reactions. To start an article, my coach asked me the following helping questions:

What are the things you can’t stop thinking about?

What are you excited, angry, upset or inspired about?

Which difficult experience did you encounter and what helped you to overcome this?


10. Search images by emotions, instead of keywords

Choose a picture that supports the emotional message you’re trying to convey. Your answers to the questions above offer a great starting point for image search.

In the beginning, I used my pictures and searched at other platforms for the perfect image. But top medium stories demonstrate, in most cases, the built-in Unsplash image search is enough. While crafting your article, click on the + symbol and select the loupe. Then type in your emotion-triggering keyword.

Image By Author

11. Structure your article bones to write faster

Working for days on the same piece can leave you frustrated. Particularly, if you can’t see any progress. For writing development, Ben Hardy’s practice helped me the most. It might help you as well if you tend to get lost in your writing process. Here’s what he said:

“Always start with the headlines, then get all of the subsections.

Once you’ve got the subsections title them in powerful ways.

Once you’ve got the subsections titled, get quotes for each subsection or other essential elements you need.

Once you have these bones formed, begin writing.”


12. When you write, — write

Once you have the bones formed, focus on writing. When you stop for research or edit yourself, you break your flow state.

Focus on putting words on the paper. Don’t stop your flow. Don’t look for more knowledge. Use abbreviations for flowing through your craft.

  • LINK if you want to link something later on write
  • CHECK if you need to double-check what you’ve just written use
  • IMG in case you want to add an image or graphic

Editing and researching interrupt your flow state. Add all of the above once you’re done with the first draft of your piece. When you write, just write.


13. When you don’t feel like writing, write

As said in the beginning, writing quality improves with quantity. Hence, you need to write consistently. When you don’t write, you don’t produce content. You don’t learn. You don’t improve.

Create environments that help you to write. In case you don’t know how to focus without distraction, no matter what, read Cal Newport’s Deep Work. If you only have a limited amount of time for writing, focus on smaller tasks like researching headlines, images, or coming up with new ideas.

On days, where you don’t feel like writing, try to compose the worst piece you can. It’ll make your process more fun.


14. Bury mediocre passages in your editing graveyard

Editing can hurt. Deleting entire phrases might feel like going backward. But to craft excellent writing, you should edit without compromise. Mediocre sentences will ultimately lead to average articles. Not every word you typed deserves to stay in your piece.

A document that serves as editing graveyard can help. This document has the sole purpose of editing more strictly and not clunch to useless words. You cut out all fluff from your original piece and bury it in your paper. In case you miss your words or want to reuse them for other articles, you know where to find them.

If you’re unsure whether to keep or destroy a passage, read the entire paragraph out loud. Your voice is a great editing tool after you’ve written your piece.


15. Use a system to manage your ideas and articles

The more you write, the more critical it is to keep an overview. Inspired by my medium coach, I use Trello for ideas and article management. Here’s how I use Trello:

Image By Author

In the column “ideas,” I store all headline and topic ideas. I prefill most idea cards with an outline and the described bones structure. Prefilled content helps to get into writing quickly. You no longer have to sit and wait in front of a blank piece of paper, waiting for ideas to cross your mind.

Once I started putting an idea onto paper, the Trello card moves to “working projects.” Some longer articles, like this one, linger around in “working projects” for a few days as I add ideas to the piece in several writing sessions.

When I finished editing the article and found both the headline and an emotion-provoking picture, I submit the article to a publication. In the “submitted to publication” column is a timestamp on every card that indicates when I expect to hear back from the publication.

In case publications rejected my article, I move the card to the “re-edit” column as my work needs further improvement. If a publication publishes my piece, I slide the card to “published.”

All articles in the “published” column receive an entry in my article overview sheet, which looks like this:

Image By Author

This excel sheet is a great motivator for reminding you of the work you’ve completed. Moreover, this system helps you keep track of the number of articles published, your curation tags, and the publications you’ve published with. You can use your sheet to set your writing KPIs.

What indicates your on track in your writing process?

Do you measure your success by the number of articles you published?

By the words, you’ve put on paper?

Is it the total reading time in minutes, that shows your effort?

Or is it the variety of publications you’re looking for?

Be clear about your key performance indicators. The clearer your goals, the easier it’ll be to reach them.


16. Publish with publications to reach more readers

Instead of self-publishing my first articles, I should’ve spent more time researching suitable publications. Here are the three benefits of publishing with publications:

  • You reach more people
  • By following publication guidelines, your writing improves
  • Thereby, your chances of curation increase

Once you’ve written and edited your piece, research suitable publications, there are medium run publications like Onezero, Elemental, Gen, Zora, Forge and Human Parts, and prominent other publications like P.S. I love you, The Startup, The Ascent, or like this one The Writing Cooperative. If you’re unsure which publication might suit your writing, use medium’s search for your topic. Look which publications recently covered your area of expertise.

Don’t feel discouraged in case publications reject your piece. I applied three times for The Ascent before they accepted one of my articles. See the application process as a free learning opportunity; if editors reject your work, ask yourself how to improve your writing. Ask for feedback and use the publication guidelines to double-check.


17. Done is better than perfect

As a writer, you put your name behind everything you publish. I asked my coach several times how she determines a piece is “good enough.”

Instead of looking for the perfect breakthrough, give your best to produce as much useful content as you possibly can. You have to accept your okayish content if you want to become an exceptional writer.

Don’t overjudge your work and don’t fear to publish something that isn’t perfect. Once you’ve hit publish, you can let your fears go and focus on your next idea.

In retrospect, I wasted my time editing this article for 8 hours. I would’ve used my time better by posting earlier and creating more content.

Done is better than perfect. Hit “publish” once your piece is good enough.


18. Learn to write faster

Megan Holstein said in one of her inspiring articles on writing,

“Every writer’s business is a factory. We can choose to produce a better product, or we can choose to produce more of it. The more writing we put out to the world, the more readers might stumble across our writing.”

By publishing more than 30 pieces a month, my medium coach puts these words into action. Thereby, she earns more than most people I know. Moreover, with quantity comes quality. When you improve your writing speed, your writing quality improves likewise.

To increase my writing speed, I track the time I need to write an article. While this doesn’t sound highly creative, it helps me to keep my goal in mind and to focus on the process.


19. Ideas are everywhere

Whatever idea comes to your mind, be sure to capture it in your idea management board or a journal, so you don’t lose it. Ideas come best when you don’t aim to have them.

Here are some great prompts from my mentor, that helped me getting ideas:

Which stories can you tell from your life?

What’s interesting about your career?

Which resources have helped you in your daily life? How?

Which book have you read that triggered something in you?

What topic are you currently struggling with?

Which vulnerability do you dare to share?

Write about something you care about and be brutally honest about it.

Feel free to try anything you like, whether it’s investments one day and relationships the next. People follow you for your voice, rather than expertise on any given topic.

And whenever you lack ideas, check out Bookshlf to get inspired by academics, distinguished professionals, journalists, and online creators.


Want to join a life-long learning community? Sign up here for applicable insights on reading, learning, and growth.

Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Writing

What Every Entrepreneur Should Know About SEO

May 2, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim



The only step-by-step guide you need to succeed in SEO

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

Sales funnels, social media strategies, email marketing…these are only a few of the things any digital entrepreneur has to understand and apply.

As someone who has worked with several digital businesses, I know how overwhelming all of this can feel.

Unfortunately, I can’t provide a solution to all these areas, but after reading this post, you’ll be able to cover one of the essential areas of any digital business: SEO.

Setting up a website is easier than ever before, but how do you ensure people find your work?

SEO is the most effective way so that people really find your website.

You probably read articles on keyword research, backlink strategies, and H1 tags before and you might be aware of the importance of SEO, but how do you put all of this into action?

“A website without SEO is like a car with no gas.”

— Paul Cookson

WordPress.org was the CMS of choice for the websites I created. In retrospect, I can also recommend wordpress.org from an SEO perspective as there are great plugins and resources.

SEO is significant leverage to increase your visibility in the online space.

SEO can help yoga teachers, product owners, company co-founders, dentists, etc. — anyone who owns a website. Important message first: you do not need to have coding skills. Let’s take a deep dive into the three significant areas of SEO.


On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is everything you do on your website. More specifically, on-page SEO contains Keyword Research, Content Strategy, and SEO Copywriting.

On-Page SEO is one of the three pillars of SEO (Source: Eva Keiffenheim).

Keyword research

Keyword research is the most important part of On-Page SEO. Unfortunately, I did not take this seriously two years ago and wrote my first blog articles before doing keyword research. By skipping the research step, my pieces were, from an SEO perspective, useless.

Without proper keyword research, you optimize for words that don’t help you advance your business or product. Here’s how to do proper keyword research so that you don’t waste as much time as I did.

First, consider your company’s mission and your audience before diving into the technical part of keyword research.

What is your unique selling proposition? How does your service/product enhance your visitors’ /companies’ lives?

Then, through the eyes of your visitors, think about which search terms users should find you for. Consider that your visitors do not look for technical terms.

An ugly but substantial truth upfront: the best SEO in the world won’t improve a shitty product or low-quality content. In case you are unsure about your product or service — use your website to ask for feedback and learn from potential customers instead of reading this SEO guide.

After doing proper keyword research, my final result looked like this table. I used a google sheet to prioritize my keywords (feel free to duplicate the research template to your cloud):

My Keyword Research Sheet (Source: Own Sheet based on Yoast SEO Academy)

Here’s how I filled each column with content and how you can master your keyword research, too.

For the first four columns:

  • Start with brainstorming all keywords that come to your mind and use the free tool “answer the public” for finding questions users ask related to your search term. Brainstorm at least four to five main groups for the first column.
  • Find related keywords to your main groups based on google search with Yoast google suggest expander
  • Look for keyword suggestions and keyword’s rank and search volume with ubersuggest by Neil Patel
  • Compare the search volume for different keywords over time and region with Google Trends and fill in the column “traffic potential.” Note that this is no exact number, but your best guess.

As I had new websites with a domain authority lower than 5, I aimed for mid to long-tail keywords. A mid-tail keyword would be “Yoga Studio Vienna” and a long-tail keyword “Ashtanga Yoga Studio next to Vienna University.” Long-tail keywords contain 4–6 content words and are therefore more specific. You reach a more targeted audience, while the search volume (people that type this word combination into google) is lower.

“In SEO the keyword length matters because, at least in the beginning, we’re going to go after long tail keywords — very exact, intention-driven keywords with lower competition that we know can win, then gradually we’ll work our way to the shorter keywords .”

— Austen Allred

For me, focusing on long-tail keywords also made sense from the conversion potential. People who google “Yoga Vienna Mysore Style in 9th district” are more likely to become my customers than people who google “Yoga.”

You also notice in the excel file that I scored “chance for conversion” higher for long-tail keywords.

Lastly, make a good guess on your chance to rank in the top three.

Ranking in the top three means that google displays your site in the first three organic results for your specific keyword. Score your chance by researching what the three best ranking sites for your particular keywords are doing.

For ranking research, open an incognito window to research. With the tool “I search from,” you can access google from any location.

Do you have content that’s better than the current top 3? Do the current top 3 have a low domain authority? Great. This keyword is your chance to rank.

After you identified your top 5 keywords, check the competition that is ranking best for those keywords, and make better and more relevant content than they do. Here’s how.


Content Strategy and Content Creation

Before you determine a specific content topic, think about the search intent (=what are your visitors looking to find on your site).

Do your visitors want to buy something? Are your visitors looking for information? Do visitors come to your site for educational purposes? Each page you create should exist for one search intent.

Here’s what your website’s content pieces can do:

  • you can demonstrate competence (case studies, industry updates, awards, lengthy testimonials from previous buyers)
  • create consciousness about what you do (product pages, service descriptions)
  • develop a sense of belonging (behind the scenes & team, company culture, philosophy on things)

Great! Once the search intent is clear, you can focus on creating content. If you already have ideas on content, you can skip the next paragraph as it shows you how to come up with content ideas.

As the Content Idea Generator, Google Analytics is a great tool. However, the best way is to ask your target audience about their interests.

You can also follow relevant hashtags on social media. Here are my favorite hacks for content creation:

  • Find the content that performs best with buzzsumo
  • Monitor new web content with Google Alerts
  • Research the trending topics of the world with Google Trends
  • Type in the first idea of your keyword and look at the sentences google suggests

Are you clear about the content you want to cover? Great, let’s continue with actually composing the content.


SEO Copywriting

Your blog posts are SEO Copywriting. I had to fail before realizing that SEO Copywriting is nothing similar to journaling or blogging.

In SEO Copywriting, your keywords come into life.

If you do not have the time (but the money) to outsource, take a look at SEO copywriters on Fiverr. I am a big fan of the YOAST plugin as it monitors your post’s quality and gives actionable advice on what to change.

Here is a checklist for single blog posts and SEO quality:

  • Good readability — active voice, alternating sentence beginnings, transition words. For English texts, the free online writing assistant Grammarly can help.
  • Keyphrase length — the optimum is up to 4 content words (e.g., Ashtanga Yoga Class in Vienna)
  • Keyphrase in the slug, title, and subheadings — you should have your focus keyphrase of your article in your URL, in the <H1> title tag and your <H2> or <H3> tags
  • The proper length of your piece — For a regular post it should be >300 words and for cornerstone content >900 words
  • The adequate length and content of your meta description — between 120 and 156 characters with your key phrase in it, use an active voice with an actionable call to action
  • Keyphrase density — 0.5%–3% is the optimal density, you can also include synonyms
  • Images alt attribute — include your keyphrase in the image descriptions in your blog post
  • Outbound and internal contextual links — your article should link to other relevant websites and also to other related sites on your page (follow or nofolllow). By building an internal linking structure, you show Google which of your pages are most important.

Before jumping to the (easier) part, one mistake I want you to prevent making: NEVER optimize different articles for one keyword. Otherwise, you are competing against yourself.


Technical SEO

Technical SEO improves your site in such a way that search engine spiders can crawl your website and index your content in their search results.

Technical SEO is one of the three pillars of SEO (Source: Eva Keiffenheim).

If you are already familiar with the terms “crawling, indexing and spiders” you can skip this 5-minute video.

The technical side is my favorite SEO part because you can work through a list step by step. In case you are wondering who determines the importance of each factor, take a look at Google’s search quality evaluator guidelines (Dec 2019).

If your time is better spent on other tasks and you have the financial resources, hire a Technical SEO freelancer on Fiverr. The following checklist can still help you determine which specific tasks to look for.


Page Speed Optimization

Page Speed matters. Check your current page speed with GTMetrix or with Googles Page Speed Insights.

Both metrics give you tailored advice on how to improve your page speed. The easy fix is the proper size of your web images (I reduced my image sizes with tiny png.)

As a rule of thumb, a picture should never exceed the size of 200kb. There are also plug-ins for image auto-optimization, but in my experience, the manual adjustment works better.

In addition to image optimization, use a caching plugin (I used and liked wp fastest cash).

On a side note: FB Pixel or Hotjar can make your page slower. Only enable both when you are testing and analyzing something. Otherwise, consider switching them off.

Mobile Optimization

The Google search algorithm strongly favors sites that are optimized for mobile devices. Most WordPress themes are mobile responsive.

Nevertheless, always make sure that the mobile content is displayed correctly.

For exploring your site’s mobile-friendliness, you can use the google chrome built-in testing tool to view your content from different devices. Here’s a video that explains how.

Repetitive Technical To Do’s on Your Site

  • Use Tags for Hierarchy <H1> <H2> <H3> — only one H1 Tag per site (check source code on every single site)
  • Use Meta Title Tags (e.g., check with this free tracker from SEObility where your site needs improvement).
  • All URLs should be human-readable and contain keywords. Remove stopwords (such as “a” or “and”) from your permalinks.
  • Alt descriptions of images. The alt description is the text that appears in place of an image on a webpage if the image fails to load on a user’s screen.
  • Have clear path navigation visible on your site. Breadcrumbs show your visitors how the current page fits into the larger structure of your website and allow them to navigate. Moreover, Breadcrumbs allows google search to determine the structure of your site more easily. Add Breadcrumbs with the help of a Breadcrumb Plugin.
  • HTTP Status Codes. Check for 404 errors in Google Search Console at Crawl errors. Google Search penalizes sites with many errors, as this can be a sign of bad maintenance. 301 redirects can help in solving this issue.
  • Use Structured Data in your sites. Here’s an SEO’s guide to writing structured Data. Alternatively, Schema&Structured Data is a helpful plugin for WordPress Sites.

Crawlability

The crawlability determines whether search engine bots (like Google’s crawling spiders) can discover your site.

If your site is not crawlable, bots can not find it, and not list it in search results. Here’s how you make your sites crawlable and your On-Page SEO worth your work:

  • Submit your XML.sitemap via the Google Search Console (Here’s how to submit it).
  • Check whether your site has duplicate content that needs removal. If duplicate content is necessary, make use of canonical links and the robots.txt to avoid problems.
  • robots.txt file tells search engine bots where they can or cannot visit your site. For example, you do not want your audience to find your checkout page in the search results. The official syntax of the robots tag is: <meta name=”robots” content =”value”> The most common robots value are index, noindex, follow and nofollow

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO is everything you do away from your website that brings traffic to your site.

This part of SEO is about so-called “inbound links” from other websites to your site.

The higher the domain authority (=trustworthyness and relevance on the internet) of sites that refer to your site, the more valuable is such a link for you. Links from high authority domains to your site tell the search engine (e.g., Google) that you are referred to from trustworthy sources.

Let’s have a look at ways to gain those backlinks. In contrast to Technical SEO, (whitehat) backlink building requires continuous long-term work.

Off-Page SEO is one of the three pillars of SEO (Source: Eva Keiffenheim).

Backlink strategy

There are several paths that you can include in your backlink strategy:

  • Google alert for your company name and always claim to mention your enterprise’s name + a link to your site
  • Google your keyword inurl:blog intext”learn more” to figure out blogs you can address
  • look for old content in your niche, make it better and send it to all sites that currently have old backlinks
  • For a high domain authority page link, you can contact your last education institute and suggest writing a blog post for them. For example, I composed a blog entry for Vienna Business University on “Do you need to study if you want to found your company?”

Public Relations

Press coverage can help to gain more traffic from external sources. I followed these steps to gain traction from newspapers:

  • Build a Public Relations network by attending journalism meetups and talking to journalists at conferences.
  • Draft a story and send it to contacts you met and general newspapers.
  • Prepare a media kit with the image sizes and company description length required for your newspaper.

Sounds too easy? This step is all about trial and error, story, and timing.

The more you try, the likelier the chances that a newspaper will cover your topic and refer to you. Are there any trade journals in your niche that would benefit from your insights?

Is there any local newspaper in the area you grew up that would want to portrait you? These are good questions to start with.


Conclusion

For successful SEO, the three fields of Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, and Off-Page SEO are equally important.

The three pillars of Search Engine Optimization (Source: Eva Keiffenheim).

Your time is limited. Decide how much time you dedicate to each SEO field and you want to outsource specific parts like SEO Copywriting or Technical SEO.

SEO is a never-ending process. If you’ll ever say “I have done it all, and I’m finished with SEO,” — you did not understand SEO at all.

Even a few hours of serious SEO work can move the crawl spiders to index your page.


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Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: Entrepreneurship, websites

6 Simple Ways To Find Joy in Remote Teaching

April 26, 2020 by Eva Keiffenheim


#5 Empower your students by appointing technical assistants

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

Intro

All over the globe, educators work remotely. Through remote teaching, many schoolteachers don’t enjoy their job anymore.

Joyless lessons are a dramatic problem for student’s learning success. If teachers aren’t fond of teaching, students aren’t fond of learning either.

“Teachers who love teaching teach children to love learning.”

— Robert John Meehan

Hence, as an educator, it’s your responsibility to relish online teaching as much as possible.

Here are four actionable steps for making your remote teaching fun.

1. Close your device and allow digital time-off

Be okay with not being accessible 24/7. Set your boundaries. Be clear about when you are not reachable.

Before remote schooling, you set your natural boundaries by leaving the school building.

Working from home, you are responsible for creating those boundaries. If you do not create barriers, your students can neither see nor accept them.

Even if you’re not physically in the same building with your students, teaching is still emotional work.

For example, if you correct assignments on google classroom, you put yourself in the eyes of each of your students. That’s tiring.

Allow yourself to take digital breaks during the day. Award your eyes with unfocused glances into the distance. Slow down your speed of thought.

Put on your favorite music and dance for some minutes. Take the time to prepare your meal.

Here’s a list of things you can do in your home while taking a break:

  • Meditate for a few minutes. If you don’t know how to start, consider trying Calm or Headspace.
  • Breathe deeply or become versed in the breath of fire.
  • Take a nap — take a look at this TED Talk by Matthew Walker in case you think resting is a waste of time.

Only if you feel rested and in balance, you can revel in teaching.

Remember to take digital time-off and close your devices, even for some minutes during the morning.

2. Schedule digital breaks with your students

Do you remember your student, that regularly asked whether you like the new __________ (haircut /outfit /ruler)?

Don’t you miss the casual, comical conversations in the hallway? Many of your students do miss the break time with you.

You were and still are, a critical person of reference for your kids.

Stay this person of reference for students. Give them time to talk to you outside of task assignments.

A “google meets” every other day can do the job. Label this 10–15 minutes meeting as collective recess.

Your students determine what to talk about. In my class, I implemented the “we do not talk about assignments during the break” rule.

You’ll be surprised how much you learn by seeing your students in their homes.

Soon you’ll realize that these playful moments lighten up your days. Joint breaks make your teaching more joyous.

3. Make one cheerful call for every negative call you make

Sounds like extra work? From a time-wise perspective, I’d agree. But you will soon appreciate the energy generated by those appreciation calls.

Your student’s parents do struggle theses days: short-time working, cut paychecks, cramped living conditions, or sick relatives. The list of burdens is endless.

An unexpected encouraging call from your kid’s teacher will bring a smile on their faces. And on yours, too.

You will realize that positive feedback calls bring joy into your days. You will soon realize your motivation hits peaks after such a dialog.

Use this motivation to enjoy your teaching. You deserve to have fun during remote schooling!

4. Stay in touch with colleagues you love talking to

During a precorona week of school, conversations with colleagues happened naturally (sometimes even too much).

Now, the natural exchange with your colleagues is gone. Unless your school hosts online conferences with networking time, you don’t chat with your co-workers.

The lack of natural chatter offers an opportunity for you:

Schooling remotely, you decide whom you want to call. Probably your choice does not fall on the negative, gossiping co-teacher.

You can selectively pick the persons you want to chat with. Call the ones you admire. Text the teammate you miss — Check-in with your humourous companion. Laugh together, gossip together, and share your worries.

“All problems exist in the absence of a good conversation.”

— Thomas Leonard

These conversations will wash away any humdrum and make your remote teaching more fun.

5. Empower your kids by appointing technical assistants

Technical support is your newest job requirement. Fixing your student’s technical issues can be time-consuming.

“My smartphone can’t upload my homework in this Google Classroom” is a prompt you might be hearing from time to time.

If you do the technical fixes on top of your daily schedule, you will soon feel exhausted.

Put your students in charge of technical issues and create a win-win solution to this dilemma.

A promotion interview between you and your student could flow like:

“Julia, I realized you always deliver your homework on time and never had any technical issues. I’m impressed. How do you do that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m good at using my smartphone.”

“Technical proficiency is a skill giving you multiple job opportunities in the future. Would you support me as a technical assistant? It’s a job of high responsibility as I’d rely on you to fix technical issues of other children.”

Some of my students even managed to record their screens. Julia shared a tutorial for the entire class. She learned autodidactically and strengthened the class community.

By transferring your responsibility for technical matters to your students, you create more space for other activities. Like self-care:

6. Take good care of your self-care

Eat and exercise. Get plenty of sleep. Treat yourself with self-care time. You are a role model for your students.

If you take good care of yourself, you can inspire students to take good care of them as well.

Your students can tell whether you are teaching from a position of exhaustion or satisfaction.

The better you take care of yourself, the better your interaction with your students. The more joyful your teaching — the more joyful your children’s learning.


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Filed Under: ✍🏽 Online Creators Tagged With: teaching

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