PDF Summary:The Art and Business of Online Writing, by Nicolas Cole

Many people feel their dream of being a professional writer is too abstract to become reality. However, Nicolas Cole argues otherwise and uses his own story as testament—he went from a nobody blogger to a successful career writer in only a few years. According to Cole, anyone can create a successful online writing career—be it in blogging, copywriting, poetry, or any other digitally published format—as long as they do two things: write consistently and understand the world of online writing. In The Art and Business of Online Writing, Cole lays out his guide to establishing an online writing career based on his experience and success.

In this guide, we’ve organized Cole’s tips and tricks into a three-part guide for becoming a successful online writer. We’ll discuss the technicalities of writing successfully, gaining an audience, and eventually profiting from your content. In our commentary, we’ll expand on Cole’s advice using expert sources like On Writing by Stephen King and Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk.

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1) One opening sentence: This sentence should aim to express the main point of the piece in roughly 10 words. For example, in an article titled “5 Signs Your Relationship Is Healthy,” your opening sentence might be: “Every healthy relationship depends on five key factors.”

(Shortform note: According to experts, the first line (sometimes the first few) of a work of fiction is just as important as the opening line of an article. This is your first opportunity to entice your reader, and there are a few techniques you can use to do so. For example, you can make your theme clear through an interesting statement, or offer a strange detail that piques the reader’s curiosity. Alternatively, you could show off your unique writing style as Vladimir Nabokov does in Lolita with the line “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.” His use of alliteration and figurative language tells readers to expect more of the like throughout the book.)

2) Three expanding sentences: These sentences should 1) clarify or elaborate on the opening sentence, 2) reinforce your point with a form of credibility (for example, a source or logic), and 3) wrap up the argument and prepare for the concluding sentence. For example: “Many relationships may have three or four of these five factors and be stable. However, being stable isn’t the same as being healthy. Lacking even one factor can create weakness in the dynamic that introduces the potential for major relationship issues to develop down the road.”

For longer or more complex pieces that may require further explanation in the introduction, you can include one or two additional descriptive sentences.

3) Concluding sentence: This should wrap up your point. For example, the concluding sentence of the relationship article could be, “It’s better to strengthen your relationship health now than face problems that could lead to a breakup later.”

(Shortform note: Cole’s strict five-line formula is his own unique brain-child. However, his format of using the middle sentences to explain and solidify the opening line, and the conclusion to wrap up your point, is similar to the traditional format of an essay. Traditional essay advice adds that you should look at your introduction as an upside-down triangle—each line after your opening sentence should clarify and narrow down your point until, in the conclusion, you state your thesis (or main point) for the piece.)

The Body

The body of your piece houses your main points. For example, the main points in the relationship article are the five signs you’re promising to discuss. Cole says the length and organization of each point in the body largely depends on how many points you’re making. To keep the reader engaged, the average length of a piece should be around 1,000 words—including more points means you have fewer words available to describe each one.

For example, if you have five points to make, each point can use the five-line format you used for your introduction: 1) Clearly state the point, 2) expand on or clarify the opening, 3) state why the reader should care (or why the point is important), 4) wrap up the argument, 5) conclude with why this point matters to your specific audience.

On the other hand, if you have 20 points, you’ll need to make the discussion of each point as short as possible to fit them all. For example, if the point is about having trust, you might say “Trust is a sign of a healthy relationship. Mutual trust makes both parties feel secure in the relationship. A lack of trust can lead to false accusations and hurt feelings, which put the relationship at risk.”

(Shortform note: Cole says you should aim to write shorter articles of around 1,000 words and adjust the length of each point in your body accordingly. However, some studies suggest that shorter articles aren’t always better. For example, a study done by HubSpot found that their most successful articles were between 2,250 and 2,500 words. So rather than trying to rush through each point in a 20-point article, it may be more engaging to your readers to give each point the description you think it deserves, even if that means your article goes well over 1,000 words.)

The Conclusion

Cole says there are three main ways you can conclude your piece:

1) A summary: This is most useful when your discussion is long or complex and readers may need a recap of the most important points.

2) A cliffhanger: This leaves the reader wanting more. Cliffhangers only require a few lines—imagine you’re metaphorically “dropping the mic.” For example, your conclusion in the relationship article might be: “These are the five factors that research tells us indicate relationship health. They may not be the only factors you need for your relationship to succeed, but they’re the ones that have the power to make or break your relationship.” This cliffhanger makes the reader want to know more—about how they can improve their relationship or what other factors they need to succeed. They’ll be likely to seek out more articles written by you.

3) A strong opinion: This is one of the best options if you want to end with a strong final point. The concluding point should connect all the points you’ve already made. For example, your final point in the relationship article could be: “If you want your relationship to last, you need to establish relational health at the start. Otherwise, you’re laying the groundwork for big issues later on.” You should organize this paragraph using the same format as a body paragraph.

Writing a Resolution in Fiction Pieces

The conclusions Cole discusses are specifically tailored toward nonfiction writing, but some of them may also be useful considerations when writing the resolution (conclusion) of a fiction piece. Resolutions typically have three main requirements: The story's main conflicts are resolved, the characters arcs are completed, and any unanswered questions are answered.

Providing a summary of the story's plot points may not be an effective conclusion if you want to accomplish these three things; however, ending with a strong opinion may help you complete a character arc. For example, your main character can end with a philosophical statement (strong opinion) about any new perspectives or revelations they’ve acquired from their growth throughout the story. Just be sure you also use the resolution to resolve the conflict and tie up any loose ends.

Cliffhangers are popular endings for stories if you plan to have a sequel, but they’re employed differently in fiction than in nonfiction. In fiction, cliffhangers are exceptions to the three main elements of resolution discussed above, since they often leave unresolved conflicts and unanswered questions. They usually end in one of two scenarios: Either the main character faces a threatening situation, or something shocking happens that threatens the course of the narrative.

Part 2: Choose Your Niche

Once you’ve been writing consistently online for about six months, Cole says you should gather metrics and use those to focus your efforts on a specific niche. To be successful in the world of online writing, you must stand out by doing something unique and being the best at what you do. This requires you to determine where you’re the most successful and dedicate yourself to that area—if you spread yourself too thin by writing about too many different topics or for too many different audiences, you’ll never become the best at anything, just decent at a lot of things.

(Shortform note: While Cole argues that niching down is crucial to become a successful writer, this might not be the case for everyone. Cole’s emphasis on niche writing is to gain popularity—this is great if you want to be a famous or viral writer (like Cole), but having a successful career doesn’t require fame. For example, if your end goal is to be a successful freelance copywriter, being a generalist may benefit you more than being a specialist. Generalists have a broad portfolio that shows potential clients they’re flexible and talented—they can make any topic jump off the page. This could provide you with a wider range of job opportunities.)

Step #1: Gather Data and Get Focused

Cole says the first step in determining your niche is looking at the likes, dislikes, views, and comments on your posts and seeing which topic is most popular with your audience. This is because your audience determines your fate—if they continue to read your content, you’ll gain popularity and credibility and can start making money (we’ll discuss this in Part 3). To grow and maintain that audience, you must continue giving them what they want.

For example, imagine that your posts about relationships are getting the most views, likes, and comments. While you don’t have to stop writing other things, you should dedicate the vast majority of your time to relationship pieces because this is the content that builds your audience.

(Shortform note: While Cole argues that you should select your main focus based on what others are most interested in, Gary Vaynerchuk argues otherwise in Crush It!. According to Vaynerchuk, you should select your niche based on what you’re most passionate about for two main reasons: First, your authenticity will allow your audience to relate more to your content. Second, pursuing what you’re most passionate about will sustain your motivation and interest, which is necessary for you to maintain your success.)

Step #2: Narrow Down Your Topic

Once you’ve determined the topic you’ll focus on, Cole says you must narrow down your topic into a niche by getting as specific as possible with your subtopic, audience, and style. This is an ongoing process throughout your career—the longer you’ve been writing and the more data you gather using the above process, the more you can narrow down your niche until you eventually create an entirely new niche that no one else offers.

Subtopic

First, Cole says you must narrow the scope of your topic into a subtopic. For example, if the general topic is “relationships,” subtopics you might try are “relationship management” or “breakup management.” Under a subtopic like “relationship management” you could then create numerous articles with content like how to spot communication issues, how to spice up the relationship, and so on. Cole says you should continue trying out subtopics and use your data to determine which one to focus on for your niche.

(Shortform note: If you’re having trouble coming up with subtopics for your niche, one way to generate ideas is to visit Reddit and see what people are (or aren’t) talking about within your topic. For example, if you search “relationship” on Reddit and click on “communities,” some subreddits that come up are “toxic relationships,” “ADHD relationships,” and “BPD loved ones.” All of these are great starting points for a subtopic.)

Audience

Specifying your audience—who you’re writing for—will help you narrow down your subtopic further until it becomes a niche. For example, if you determine that the subtopic that works best for you is relationship management, especially the articles written for people with mental illness, you should try creating more content for this audience. Your subtopic will narrow into the niche “relationship management for people with mental illness.”

You could then narrow this down even further, for example, by targeting your advice toward people with a specific mental illness like depression. Use data in this way to continually focus your writing throughout your career.

(Shortform note: There are a number of factors to take into account when narrowing down your audience. For example: What are your audience’s expectations of you? How much does your audience know about the topic already? What’s their attitude toward the topic—do they already agree or disagree with you? What are their demographics? Consider categories like age, religion, gender, ethnic background, sexual orientation, relationship status, occupation, and so on.)

Style

Finally, narrow your niche further by choosing your style. Cole says that your style will exist somewhere on a range between educating and entertaining. For example, if you’re a hard educator, your content might be very formal and include scientific research. If you’re a hard entertainer, your content might be largely opinion-based, with humor and drama to highlight your points. Your style can exist anywhere in between.

To narrow down your niche into something completely unique, Cole says you should adopt a style that’s unusual for your niche. For example, if your niche is “relationship management for people with depression” and most writers in this niche use a highly educational style, you can stand out by incorporating elements of entertainment like stories and humor.

(Shortform note: If you want to make your style unique, there are a few more defining factors of style you should take into account. For example, diction—the types of words you use—plays a large role in defining your style. Your style is also impacted by your sentence structure—the way you arrange your words—and your narration, which is the perspective you speak from. Further, the tone (your attitude) and the creative devices you use (like metaphor or symbolism) shape your style. These additional elements are especially important to consider in fiction writing, as they shape how the reader will interpret your story.)

Part #3: Establish Your Business

Cole says that once you’ve narrowed down your niche and have an audience, you can begin to turn your writing into a business—that is, to build a name for yourself and start making money from your content. To do this, you’ll need to direct people away from whatever platform they’re reading your content on (for example, Quora or Medium) and toward your personal platform—for example, a website or book. In the following sections, we’ll discuss how to capture readers on your personal platform and how to profit from this.

(Shortform note: While Cole says you must have a presence online and redirect your audience to your own platform to start making money, this isn’t always the case. In On Writing, Stephen King discusses the more traditional method of submitting your work to publications and getting an agent. If you’d prefer to take this traditional route, King recommends reading Writer’s Market—a guide to publishing all types of content from novels to plays. This will direct you toward publications and agents that fit your niche and that are looking for writers. It also provides information on pay rates and short descriptions of what each publication or agent is looking for.)

Step #1: Endorse Yourself

Cole says the first step in directing people toward your personal platform is learning how to endorse yourself without being obvious about it. Being low-key is crucial, according to Cole, because the more you endorse yourself the less people listen. The key to endorsing yourself is doing so in a way that genuinely benefits your reader.

For example, imagine you’re writing a piece titled “5 Signs Your Depressed Partner Is Unhappy With Your Relationship.” You can subtly endorse yourself by saying: “If you recognize these signs, you may want to have a conversation with your partner about existing issues.” Within that sentence, you can hyperlink to another article you wrote about how to have a conversation about relationship issues, which both helps the reader and plugs another one of your articles.

Cole says it’s OK to be more obvious sometimes—for example, directly saying that you wrote a book that might help your reader, or mentioning you’re an expert on the topic and they might want to check out your library. The key to doing this is making it clear that it’s for their benefit.

Employ Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to Capture Readers

In Thank You For Arguing, Jay Heinrichs says the best way to subtly persuade people to do what you want (click your link) is to employ ethos, logos, and pathos. To make this technique most effective, employ it throughout your article, not just when you reference your source.

Ethos shows your audience that you’re inherently trustworthy and makes them want to listen to you. You can employ ethos by showing that you share the same values as your audience, demonstrating that you don’t have any personal stake in their decisions, and showing that you’re a practical person. This will make them willing to consider clicking your link.

Logos uses your audience's logic and beliefs to make your suggestion seem desirable. This is the technique Cole relies on when suggesting you make it clear how your link benefits the audience.

Pathos leverages your audience's emotions and is the most important aspect because it takes the audience from just agreeing with your offer to actually engaging with it; in other words, your audience will not only believe your link’s helpful, but they’ll actually click on it and read your content. You can employ pathos through storytelling or referencing shared identity that evokes feelings of tribalism.

Step #2: Pillar Pieces

Next, Cole says you must create “pillar pieces” that attract people to your personal platform. For example, if your niche is “relationship management for people with depression,” your pillar piece will be an ultimate guide to this topic containing all the crucial information you’ve written about in different articles. This piece might cover topics like how to know if you have depression when you're in a relationship, behaviors and feelings you might have, how to talk about relationship issues, and so on. Your pillar piece should include even more information and details than the individual articles combined—for example, additional research, personal stories, or interviews.

(Shortform note: The concept of “pillar pages” (pillar pieces) was popularized in 2013 by Rand Fishkin, the founder of SEO company Moz. One aspect of pillar pieces that Fishkin saw as crucial but Cole doesn’t discuss in depth is using keywords to leverage SEO (search engine optimization). One way to do this is to ensure your pillar piece and related articles use consistent keywords—for example, if you use the term “kitchen sinking” to describe an argument style, use that same keyword in all your articles when discussing the concept. This will also make it easier for readers to navigate your content.)

Once you have pillar pieces and start directing people onto your platform, says Cole, you should create even more in-depth content based on your pillar pieces, such as master guides, online courses, or newsletters. These resources should be free, but you should require the user’s email to sign up so you can capture them as “permanent” audience members.

(Shortform note: In Contagious, Jonah Berger argues that capturing your audience (through the quality of your content or having their email address, for example) isn’t enough to keep them engaged—they could easily stop being interested if their preferences change. One way to keep them around, according to Berger, is to inspire emotions that generate “physiological arousal.” The top five high-arousal emotions are anger, anxiety, awe, amusement, and excitement. If you can elicit these emotions when introducing consequent products (online courses, newsletters, and so on) your audience will be more likely to engage.)

Choose Your Money-Making Method

Once you have a solid audience visiting and utilizing content from your personal platform, you can start integrating money-making methods. Cole says there are three main methods you can use to start monetizing.

Method #1: Paid Access

The first method Cole suggests to make money off your content is to create even more detailed content from your pillar pieces, master guides, and free courses that you can sell to people. Everything up to this point should be free to entice people and gain their trust and consistent attention. Once you have this audience, you can create something that offers them even more than everything you’ve already combined. For example, you could offer a subscription-based newsletter, a paid interactive course, or a book (like The Art and Business of Online Writing).

(Shortform note: Once you’ve created paid content, how much should you charge and how many subscribers can you expect? Studies show that the average price for a paid newsletter is $11 per month and doesn’t usually go below $5. Further, you can expect roughly 5% of your subscribers to convert from your free content to your paid content. This means that if you have 1,000 people on your email list, only 50 of them will likely subscribe for paid content.)

Method #2: Employment

The second method Cole suggests to make money off your content is to use your proven skills to write for other people. Having a personal platform with your own content library and a stable and consistently engaged audience proves to people that you’re a successful writer. You can now offer to share your talents with others for a fee. For example, you can be a content writer for a company or a ghostwriter for individuals who have credibility through expertise but not the writing skills to share that expertise.

(Shortform note: If you want to work as a freelance writer using your content as a portfolio, you can advertise yourself and find jobs on popular websites like SmartBlogger, UpWork, Craigslist, and Flexjobs. To succeed on these sites, make sure you 1) regularly produce high-quality work for clients (this can win you awards and badges on the site that clients see), 2) write unique proposals explaining why you’re the best person to solve the client’s problem, 3) ask clients for feedback after projects, and 4) maintain relationships with clients so you can work with them again in the future.)

Method #3: Advertising

The final method Cole suggests to make money off your content is incorporating advertising into your personal website. This method works in a few ways. First, you can have companies pay you to allow their ads to appear on your content. Second, you can have brands pay you to directly endorse their products (for example, recommending users try a particular online therapy company in your relationship articles for people with depression). Third, you can become an affiliate—this is like the second option, but you make money through commissions every time someone uses your link to visit their platform or purchase their product.

(Shortform note: Be careful when advertising. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has strict guidelines you must follow whenever you provide an endorsement or testimonial for a product that’s not your own and for which consumers are likely to believe reflects your beliefs or experiences. According to these guidelines, you must “clearly and conspicuously” disclose your affiliation or you could get into legal trouble.)