Top Lessons and Thoughts From Doing Content Right

Below are the highlights from the post I just published. To read the full post with highlights from the book go here

Summary

The book consists of five parts:

1. Your Personal Monopoly
2. Building Your Home
3. Distribution
4. Search Engine Optimization
5. Monetization

Steph is taking you on a journey from figuring out what you can write about all the way to earning money from it. Here are the key ideas that you will see in this book that will help you achieve your goals in writing.

• In order to succeed with your writing you either need to come up with something new and relevant, or improve something that already exists.
• Don’t write just to “make money”. Write to solve problems. Money should always be a byproduct of your creations, not the original intent.
• Start with something niche and branch out as you go along and make a good habit of writing and publishing.
• When it comes to your digital home there are many options, so try to keep it as simple as possible. Prefer to pay a little bit to own your content and your distribution. Ghost is a great option, you can pay $9/month and they will handle all the technical details. If you are at least a little tech-savvy, you can host your Ghost blog on Digital Ocean, this will cost you around $5/month. If you don't want to pay, Substack is probably your best bet.

These are my major learnings from all the chapters apart from Distribution and SEO. Unfortunately, there is no one thing that I can summarize about those chapters. The majority of the book is focused on those topics. A highlight of what you might see is below.

If I had to summarize, I would do it like this:

• Write and publish ofter.
• Keep the blog simple.
• Produce useful content.
• Talk to your audience to gather feedback.
• Think about your content, make sure it is discoverable via search engines.
• Don't charge until you gather a substantial following.
• Have fun.
• Own your content, then syndicate to other platforms.

My Thoughts

Doing Content Right by Steph Smith is not just a regular book and should not be judged as such. Think of it like a written course, where in addition to the "book" that Steph wrote you will get access to:

• live cohorts
• private AMAs
• bonus podcast events
• bonus podcast chapters
• private Telegram Community
• exercises that will help you nail down the main points
• various spreadsheets that Steph came up with to help her manage her life
• and all of this just to this date, who knows what she will come up with (as of December 2021)

For anyone remotely interested in producing written content, I strongly recommend you purchase that book.

One thing to note is that since I have purchased the book, the price has increased slightly, and it now costs $200. If you should still buy it or not, I can't say, it all depends on how much money you've got to spend. But what I can say is that you will enjoy reading and learning anything that Steph has to share.