The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention

by Nicolas Cole

The truth is, blogging, having your own website, and writing online are three completely different things. You can blog without having your own website. You can have your own website without ever blogging. And you can write things online that millions upon millions of people read without having your own website or your own blog. So, let’s start by defining what those three words really mean.

Now, most people hear the above and think, “Well, of course my goal is to make money from my writing.” But making money from your writing is not the same thing as 1) starting a website monetized through ads (which is a media business) or 2) starting a website that sells a product or service (which could be anything from a physical product to an

information product like an online course), which are all different variations of an e-commerce business. Either way, when you start a “blog,” you aren’t really in the business of writing. You’re in the business of ads, products, or services.

For the vast majority of people, the primary purpose of having a website is to quickly communicate who you are, what you do, and what you have done in the past. In short, it’s a business card.

Once these judgments have been made, and if you’re still curious to learn more, you’re going to then navigate deeper in order to find some of my writing. If I have a blog on my website, you might start there—and if I don’t have a blog, that doesn’t mean you’re just going to stop looking. Instead, you’re going to go back to your Google search and start clicking on other links in order to find what you’re looking for: my Quora profile, my Medium, LinkedIn, or Instagram profiles, my Amazon Author page, etc. In fact, even if I do have a blog, you’re probably still going to go through this research process—because what you’re really interested in is seeing my writing in the context of how other people feel about my writing too.

The way I define Online Writing is based on one variable and one variable only: Sharing thoughts, stories, opinions, and insights on a platform that already has an active audience.

If you are writing on your own platform hoping an audience will come to you, that’s Blogging. And if you are bringing your voice to a platform where an audience already exists, that’s Online Writing.

And how do you get traffic to your blog? A) Spend money on ads (direct people from other websites over to your website). B) Optimize your blog posts for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so they’ll appear on the first page of Google when people search certain keywords and phrases. C) Build a social media following on another platform (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) and direct people to your website via links.