The 6 Stages of Online Writing

Photo by Kanhaiya Sharma on Unsplash

When I started writing online, I saw it as an experiment at first. My primary goal was to learn.

• I wanted to improve my English (not my mother’s tongue).
• I wanted to learn how to build an audience.
• I wanted to learn how to create and host a web page.

And yes, over the past 100 posts, I did learn a lot.

Recently I read an article about that it takes you 100 posts until you figure out what you really should write about. I don’t fully agree with the number, but I have to admit: it does take time to get comfortable with writing, develop your style, and find your niche.

Stage 1: the first few articles

It definitely took some time.

At first, finishing a single article felt like it took forever. I would just jump in and write down all my thoughts on a topic. Then, I’d spend a lot of time organizing it into something worth publishing.

Back then, I wanted every article to be perfect, which meant a lot of proofreading and rewriting.

Writing online seemed like a huge commitment as I’d have to invest about 3-4 hours per article. How should I get to 50 or even 100 articles at such a pace?

Stage 2: 10+ articles

Luckily, my approach changed after the first 10-15 articles.

I began making outlines before writing a full article, which made things more efficient. Instead of writing everything in my mind, I focused on the key points and built the articles around them. With this change, I could keep the pace of 2 articles per week much longer.

However, my articles were pretty long for online reading (over 8 minutes).

So, I started cutting out the extra stuff. Writing list-style articles helped with this, like it did here. I would write 5 subheadings and try to keep each one to a maximum of 200 words.

Stage 3: 30+ articles

After I’ve published about 30 articles I started to write short-form as well on my quest to cut out the fluff in my writing.

Some of my articles were published in the Medium publications The Shortform & Short. Sweet. Valuable. Publishing there taught me to be more precise. If you just have 150 words you can work with, you must cut the fluff.

At that time I also found three pillars within my niche to write about:

• Sharing methods & approaches I’ve picked up
• Summaries of my reading (book deep-dives, quick summaries of concepts & ideas, …)
• Personal stories

Stage 4: 50+ articles

With 50+ data points, I started to analyze my articles more.

What headlines worked (views) and what topics made people stay (reads)? What kind of topics created discussions (comments)? The metrics provided by Medium really helped with that.

I also set up a publishing schedule to stay on track.

With work being busy, I didn’t have time to write twice a week. So, I started writing multiple articles whenever I had the time and inspiration, then scheduled them for later.

This approach kept things fresh, allowing me to mix up different types of content: short pieces, in-depth articles, summaries, and personal stories. It made writing more fun and less stressful!

Stage 5: 70+ articles

Around this time it was hard for me to keep my article output at 2 articles per week.

I was swamped at work and many other things were going on. What helped me was to use notes and book summaries I had written somewhere in the past as resources. It reduced the time needed for research and as another plus: I could revisit concepts I thought of being interesting.

Another thing that helped was splitting my ideas into several posts.

This not only let me create more articles at once, but it also allowed me to cater to different types of readers: longer posts for those who enjoy detailed topics and shorter ones for readers who just want a quick overview.

Stage 6: 100+ articles

Writing has become a habit for me now.

Most of the time, I enjoy writing and don’t have to force myself to do it. Having an “article backlog” (or buffer) helps, too. I write about four articles ahead of time, so I can publish them whenever I’m not feeling inspired.

And when inspiration hits, I make the most of it by writing multiple articles at once!