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Episode 33: Exploring The Billionaire Mindset With Preston Pysh

March 15, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

I'm happy to see you around. You may want to subscribe to my blog. Thanks for visiting!

Welcome back! I am so happy to see that you have come back for more.

Preston Pysh is the founder of BuffettsBooks.com which deeply analyzes Warren’s favorite books. Preston’s journey began when he wanted to invest some of his earnings. He had no idea how to invest, and this was total guesswork for him. So he studied Warren Buffett. 

Studying Warren allowed Preston to become successful, and now he analyzes billionaires. He shared a few insights with us about how billionaires think and what it takes to become successful.

Preston also explains the importance of curiosity. To understand the critical variable in a situation, you must ask why five times. 

“By studying someone who is the best in the world at something, even if you are only 50% as good as them, you are probably still better than 99% of the rest of the world” —Preston Pysh

 

Learn

The critical habits that all billionaires live by

How to maintain simplicity in a complex world

How to turn knowledge into action

The difference between billionaires and people who aren’t billionaires (other than wallets)

 

Key Links From the Show:

The Investor’s Podcast — Preston’s podcast. You can also Google “We Study Billionaires” to find it.

Buffetts Books — Preston’s site detailing Warren Buffet’s favorite books

 

Mentioned books:

The Intelligent Investor

The Wealth of Nations

Security Analysis

Smarter, Faster, Better

Life After Life

Think and Grow Rich

The Power of Habit

Influence

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Episode 33: Exploring The Billionaire Mindset With Preston Pysh

March 15, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Preston Pysh is the founder of BuffettsBooks.com which deeply analyzes Warren’s favorite books. Preston’s journey began when he wanted to invest some of his earnings. He had no idea how to invest, and this was total guesswork for him. So he studied Warren Buffett. 

Studying Warren allowed Preston to become successful, and now he analyzes billionaires. He shared a few insights with us about how billionaires think and what it takes to become successful.

Preston also explains the importance of curiosity. To understand the critical variable in a situation, you must ask why five times. 

“By studying someone who is the best in the world at something, even if you are only 50% as good as them, you are probably still better than 99% of the rest of the world” —Preston Pysh

 

Learn

The critical habits that all billionaires live by

How to maintain simplicity in a complex world

How to turn knowledge into action

The difference between billionaires and people who aren’t billionaires (other than wallets)

 

Key Links From the Show:

The Investor’s Podcast — Preston’s podcast. You can also Google “We Study Billionaires” to find it.

Buffetts Books — Preston’s site detailing Warren Buffet’s favorite books

 

Mentioned books:

The Intelligent Investor

The Wealth of Nations

Security Analysis

Smarter, Faster, Better

Life After Life

Think and Grow Rich

The Power of Habit

Influence

 

Filed Under: Breakthrough Success

10 Ways To Get More Video Views

March 14, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

 

video viewsThe moment you publish your latest video, you’re hoping it gets as many views as possible. But as we all know, hoping isn’t enough. But hope built around action will create possibility and generates the results you want.

The more effort you put into video creation and marketing, the more visibility you’ll get from each video. If you’re not creating video, then you are missing out on an array of benefits. Consider:

  • Mobile video consumption rises 100% every year on YouTube
  • Including a video on your landing page can increase conversions by 80%
  • 90% of users say that a product video helps their decision process
  • 1/3 of all online activity is spent watching video

HubSpot compiled this information and more into a stunning infographic. Bottom line: video is engaging and has become an integral part of our culture.

If you’re not honing in on video views, here’s how to start:

#1: Tweet Your Newest Videos

While I encourage video sharing on all social networks, Twitter is always the platform I think of first. Why? Because it’s the easiest to use and grow on.

Every time you come out with a new video, share it on Twitter and your other social networks. But don’t mess up the sharing process like most people, who either share it once at the time it’s published, or forget about it for several weeks and then share it once more.

It’s actually worse to forget about the video and then tweet about it a few weeks or months after you’ve published it. Even so, if you only tweet about it once when it goes live, you’re missing out on valuable traffic.

The first 24 hours play a big role in how much visibility your videos will get later on. And regardless of your video creation tool, you’ll have more success promoting the YouTube version since YouTube is the largest platform.

Tweet about your newly published video at least four times on the day of its release. After that, you should continue promoting the video at least once every week.

Outside of Twitter, the rules are different. People won’t appreciate multiple posts about your video on Facebook, for example. The same goes for Instagram and virtually every other social network. Twitter seems to be the exception.

Regardless of which social network(s) you use to promote your latest video, you will likely generate some engagement. Furthermore, some of this engagement will evolve into potential conversations. Identify when people begin to engage, and respond to them in order to nurture the conversion.

Having conversations with people in your audience will increase your credibility and audience engagement with your content. Soon enough you’ll find that people are watching your videos whether you tweet about them or not.

You’ll no longer have to ask people to watch your videos: they’ll simply watch them on their own.

Of course, if someone engages with you in a negative way, ignore that person. Don’t try to sway them. If they are simply negative (which is different from saying they have a problem with your product), move along quickly.

You’ll also notice that every social network provides opportunities for promotion in your bio section. On Twitter, I strategically promote my landing page:

twitter bio example

If you take your videos seriously but don’t yet have a landing page, you can simply promote your YouTube channel. As your channel gains views and subscribers, your newer videos will get seen faster, and by more people.

In addition to linking to your YouTube channel in your bio, you can also spotlight your latest video (or your channel) by pinning a tweet of that video. Pinned tweets garner more engagement and clicks than your typical tweet.

While a typical tweet’s lifespan is short, a pinned tweet is immortal (until you unpin it). Pinned tweets always show up on the top of your profile, and that results in a continuous stream of engagement.

Here’s an example of one of my own pinned tweets:

pinned tweet example

More than 400,000 people have seen this tweet, and over 6,000 people have engaged with it. The result has been thousands of new subscribers.

I give priority to my landing page, which is why you won’t see my YouTube channel featured in my pinned tweets. But if your priority is YouTube, pin a tweet promoting your channel or latest video.

Confused about how to pin a tweet? Read this guide from Social Quant.

#2: Publish Videos On Multiple Platforms

YouTube isn’t the only video giant on the web. While it does overshadow Vimeo and Facebook, there’s no reason to ignore these two platforms.

Do I hear an objection such as, “What about my time? Why not just focus on the best platform?”

Arguments against putting your video on Vimeo and Facebook are the same as not putting your Udemy course on SkillShare.

Yet I know of at least one Udemy instructor who recently shared some of his Udemy courses on SkillShare. Remember, this is the same content. No additional work is required.

I’m sure this instructor, John Shea, is very happy with his decision. Here’s his income report from January 2017:

income report

In John’s case, the simple act of moving videos over from Udemy to SkillShare resulted in an extra $2,975.54 in just two months compared to his previous income report.

Imagine being gifted nearly $3,000 just for moving your videos from one platform to another!

John now creates SkillShare courses that are exclusive to SkillShare, but you get the point. Putting your videos on Vimeo and Facebook gives you access to thousands of extra viewers who prefer Vimeo and Facebook videos over YouTube videos.

Vimeo and Facebook are respected platforms unto themselves. And sometimes being overshadowed by YouTube is actually a good thing: if you publish the same video on Vimeo and YouTube, it will rank better (at least at first) on Vimeo than on YouTube.

The reason for this is competition. If I search for “social media marketing” on YouTube, a highly competitive niche, I get this:

youtube search engine

Nearly 3,900,000 videos are competing for my attention. That’s a big crowd.

Now let’s look at the same search for “social media marketing” on Vimeo:

vimeo search engine

I don’t know about you, but I feel much better about competing against 21,900 videos compared to almost three million.

Yes, YouTube is far more popular than Vimeo, but Vimeo is no slouch. According to Alexa, YouTube is one of the top three websites in existence. Vimeo has a place among the top 200 websites. And if you look at the graph, you can see that Vimeo is growing!

alexa vimeo

I can write an entire blog post about why you need to publish your videos on Vimeo. As for Facebook videos, the special advantage is that Facebook prefers posts with videos and ranks them higher in the News Feed.

You’re leaving thousands of video views on the table if you limit yourself to YouTube. I usually outsource the Vimeo work because of the time it takes to upload. But if you’re not able to do that, implement the Walk Away Method.

The Walk Away Method is exactly what it sounds like. You upload your videos to YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook. As the video uploads start to load, you simply walk away.

When I do the video uploading by myself, I always choose one day of the week to upload everything. Once I set everything to upload, I walk away. I may check the upload status once every 30 minutes, but no more. And I only check to be sure everything is still uploading.

#3: Optimize Your Video Description

The video description is perhaps the most under utilized part of video optimization. While YouTube allows users 5,000 characters to write the description, most people rush through them so they can get back to creating and uploading more videos.

But your video description gives people a reason to watch your video. A well thought-out video description that clearly conveys the video’s message will entice more people to continue watching.

You may not need a video description to get people to click on your video (although it helps for rankings), but you do need a description to keep viewers engaged.

You want to give your viewers EVERY possible reason to stick around. And your description will help viewers determine if your video is of high value or not.

Tubular Insights recommends a 200-500 word description for your videos, and these lengthy descriptions played a role in the brand’s own YouTube success.

Within your 200-500 word descriptions, you can also include links to your blog, your YouTube/Vimeo channel subscription links, your landing pages, and social media profiles.

Plus, once you write the description for one of your videos, you can just reuse it for all of your videos. If you feel overwhelmed just thinking about writing 200-500 word descriptions for your videos, hire someone to do it for you!

#4: Create A Professional Thumbnail

Regardless of which video platform you use, your thumbnail is critical. It’s the first thing people will see regarding your video. They’ll see the thumbnail even before they see the title. And if the thumbnail is good, people will also look at the title.

A professional thumbnail will increase the perceived value your video. A professional thumbnail looks good and conveys the video’s message in one picture.

It’s also a best practice to include some text within the thumbnail that lets people know what your video is about. Assume that your potential visitor will not read the title below the thumbnail.

I’ve created many thumbnails but wanted to provide two of them here. Which one looks more interesting? Which one would you click on?

Screen Shot 2017-03-11 at 11.29.44 AM

Screen Shot 2017-03-11 at 11.30.44 AM

You can tell which one required more effort. For the other thumbnail, I just used one of the three suggestions generated by YouTube. Those are get-by thumbnails. They aren’t professional.

So how do you create a professional thumbnail? My preferred tool of choice is Canva. It lets you preset the YouTube video thumbnail and gives you a bunch of other options.

canva thumbnail dimensions

Once you set the thumbnail, you can choose images from Canva’s library, add text, or upload custom images, all within the dashboard.

Canva pictures

I have an interesting approach to getting these pictures of myself. Rather than take an actual picture, I record a video. Within the video, I strike several poses. Then I view it on my computer, pause it at the ideal pose, and take a screenshot.

Then I crop everything out so I’m only left with my thumbnail, upload the picture to Canva, and add a bit of text and special effects.

#5: Create A Captivating Video

Your video’s quality determines how long people stick around, and YouTube takes minutes watched very seriously when ranking your videos. The longer your video, the more minutes there are to watch.

That’s why longer videos usually perform better than shorter videos. They get a boost from the ‘minutes watched’ ranking. And that makes perfect sense. YouTube wants people to stay on the site for as long as possible.

Youtube benefits more when someone watches five percent of an hour long video (three minutes total) than if someone watches 100 percent of a one minute video. So the longer your videos keep people on YouTube, the more you’ll be rewarded for it.

Of course, a long, poorly done video doesn’t add value for anyone. That’s why it’s important to prepare. I usually create an outline for each video I create in advance. Otherwise I make a video on a topic that I can easily discuss, spontaneously (it took several years for me to reach this point).

If you find it difficult to create lengthy videos, you can combine a series of short videos into a playlist. Putting your videos into a playlist makes it easier for you to rank each individual video. If each video in your playlist is 1-2 minutes long, people won’t mind watching dozens of your videos (possibly in one sitting).

This result in more views and minutes watched for each video in the playlist and the playlist itself. Not only do your videos rank better, but so does your playlist.

If you have a new channel and want to gain traction, you can create a playlist containing some of your videos and some of the most popular YouTube videos within the same stream. Since the playlist contains popular videos, it’s easier to rank the playlist.

If you strategically position one of your videos as the first video of the playlist, your video also performs better. While it’s better to create long videos packed with value, you can also create shorter videos and bunch them together in playlists.

In the playlist scenario, rather than share individual video links on Twitter and other social networks, share a link to the playlist. You can even determine which video gets played in the playlist first. Just click on the video within the playlist that you want people to see first. When people click on the link, they are automatically brought to the video you specified.

#6: Create More Videos

The more videos you create, the more views and minutes watched you can get. I know this sounds obvious, but hear me out.

Some of your subscribers will watch your videos the moment they come out. If you come out with a new video every day instead of every week, these core fans will watch you seven times every week instead of just once per week.

The result is an increase in overall views and minutes watched. Putting your YouTube videos on Vimeo and Facebook automatically triples the number of videos you produce (repurposing & re-uploading count as creating new videos).

There are two ways to establish this habit, and both work very well. The first is to create a set number of videos every day (set a minimum, not a maximum number). By setting and accomplishing goals, you will exceed your perceived limits.

The second approach is to go all-out for 2-3 days per week. In the past, I created at least four videos a day. Now I create at least 20 videos on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I also set two more days aside to create 10 videos.

By bunching up my work in this manner, I get more videos made in a shorter period of time. I also get three days to focus on other parts of my business. I advise trying both of these approaches before you commit to one.

Regardless of which approach you commit to, you’ll also need to publish and promote your videos. I advise outsourcing more of your video business as you grow. You won’t want to spend too much time uploading videos and writing descriptions.

Your focus should be on the marketing—scheduling the social media posts, optimizing for keywords, promoting the videos to your email list, and looking for more ways to expand your reach. Of course, some of these tasks can be outsourced, too.

In his book, Decide, Jim Palmer says, “Delegate or die.” It’s true. If you don’t delegate, or as I prefer to call it, outsource, then you’ll get overwhelmed by your work and lose the joy in what you’re doing. Make the choice to hire a freelancer and gradually expand your army.

#7: Advertise Your Videos

Advertising your videos will definitely get you more video views. There’s no reason to talk about how. When anyone thinks about advertising, extra visibility is a given. The challenge is optimizing the ad for costs and ultimate exposure.

If you want to advertise your videos, then you’ll need to keep track of your cost per conversion/view and how much revenue you make from a conversion.

For instance, if you pay $0.50 per view, and in the video, you promote a $47 product, then you’ll need at least one out of every 94 viewers to buy the product you’re showcasing in your video.

There are two ways you can increase your profit. You either lower the cost per view or you increase the conversion rate.

The conversion rate percentage for one out of 94 is 1.06%. And if you double your conversion rate, it will only cost you $23.50 for each sale. Doubling your conversion rate will do FAR MORE than simply doubling the amount of income you make from advertising.

At the same time, if you bring your costs down to $0.25 per view, you’ll need at least one out of 188 viewers to buy your product to break even, or a 0.53% conversion rate.

Don’t choose to do one over the other. Pursue both options so you can maximize your profit.

#8: Make Collaborative Videos

For a collaborative video, you join forces with another YouTuber in your niche. You each do 50% of the video and 50% of the promotion.

The final result is more videos and exposure for both of your channels. In addition to making collaborative videos, you can team up with other YouTubers, or create a channel with a group of people.

For channels like Dude Perfect, everyone has a responsibility. If you love the trick shots these guys make, you’ll also be interested in what happens behind the scenes. Each person on Dude Perfect has certain responsibilities for the brand.

Each person’s effort lets Dude Perfect showcase various trick shots to millions of people. You can collaborate to any degree whether it be in video production, editing, marketing, or any other area.

#9: Team Up With Other YouTubers In Cross-Promotions

If you prefer to stay in-house with video production, there’s still a way to team up with other YouTubers. The way this method works is to find a YouTuber within your niche, then contact that YouTuber and suggest that you cross promote each other’s videos.

If you strike a deal like this with 10 YouTubers, you’ll have lots of content to share with your audience, and 10 people will be ready to promote your video the moment it goes live.

To find YouTubers to cross-promote with, search for your niche in YouTube’s search results. Then scroll through the results and contact the channels that have an audience size similar to your own.

The bigger channels don’t agree to cross promote with smaller channels since the benefits are severely one-sided. Everyone wants to know what’s in it for them, and people with a similar sized audience will see the potential.

You can follow the same approach on Vimeo by finding people and channels that publish videos within your niche.

#10: Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is more often mentioned in blog post promotion, but it applies to YouTube, too. Here’s how it works:

  • Mention an influencer in your video.
  • Contact that influencer and let him/her know about the mention.
  • Don’t ask them to share your video (some will anyway).

Also, don’t mention the same influencers over and over again unless you want to annoy them. If you want to mention the same influencer many times, don’t let that influencer know about every mention.

To verify your claim (and boost their ego in a sense), influencers will skim through a blog post to find their name. Then they’ll read the portion of the blog post that was dedicated to them.

You can’t skim a video in the same way you can skim a blog post. But you can offer a time stamp. By letting the influencer know where you mentioned them in your video, he or she can more readily find the reference.

Some may decide to watch your video longer to listen to your other insights. Others will share it with their audiences right away.

My biggest tip for mentioning an influencer is to make sure it’s not artificial. Plan to appropriately mention the influencer in advance. If you don’t make that plan in advance, your delivery may be awkward.

For each of your videos, identify at least three influencers who you would like to mention. Follow up by identifying when you would like to mention these influencers. Finally, do the video and contact the influencers.

In Conclusion

Video is such a critical piece of our culture, and if your business isn’t leveraging video, you’re falling behind. Heck, even the businesses that leverage video are falling behind.

Your brand is no longer impressive simply because it produces high quality videos. Quality videos have become an expectation. But it is impressive when you are willing to work harder and smarter than anyone else, and spend more time marketing your videos.

So that’s how your videos reach more people and keep viewers engaged.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What are your thoughts on hosting a virtual summit? Which insight in this blog post did you find especially useful?

Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who might enjoy this post, please be sure to pass it on.

[Tweet “10 Ways To Get More Video Views.”]

Oh, and if you’re new here, don’t forget to join the mailing list to get a ton of free content just like this. The form is below.

image credit: Pixabay

Filed Under: Self Publishing, Subscribers, Traffic, Uncategorized, Video, YouTube Tagged With: video creation, video promotion, video strategy, videos

Episode 32: A Deep Dive Into Copywriting With Ray Edwards

March 13, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Ray Edwards is the best copywriting expert I know. He’s written the copy for several million dollar sales pages and has had clients like Tony Robbins, Jeff Walker, Michael Hyatt, Jack Canfield, and many others. He created the Copywriting Academy course which he filled up with his deepest and most powerful copywriting secrets.

I got to squeeze some secrets out of him in the latest episode of Breakthrough Success. Here’s the one-sentence summary: Know your customer and communicate why they need your services. Of course, we dive deeper within the episode. 

Plus, we talk about Ray’s biggest challenge: how he lives with Parkinson’s Disease. He talks about how he views this disease and how he continues to power through.

“You’re not training to get better at writing copy, you’re training your clients to trust that you know what you’re doing.” —Ray Edwards

 

Learn:

—How to know the person you’re writing for

—How to plan out your copy

—How to write emails that convert

—How to build trust with your copy in the beginning of your copy

—How to make six figures write copy for others as a side hustle

 

Key Links From The Show:

Rev and Go Transcripts — two transcription sites Ray mentions in this episode

Ray’s Website

Copywriting Academy — Ray’s copywriting course. It’s a very comprehensive course filled with the knowledge you need to take your sales through the roof.

 

Books Mentioned In The Show:

The Obstacle Is The Way

The Strangest Secret

Breakthrough Advertising

Tribes

The War of Art

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Episode 32: A Deep Dive Into Copywriting With Ray Edwards

March 13, 2017 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Ray Edwards is the best copywriting expert I know. He’s written the copy for several million dollar sales pages and has had clients like Tony Robbins, Jeff Walker, Michael Hyatt, Jack Canfield, and many others. He created the Copywriting Academy course which he filled up with his deepest and most powerful copywriting secrets.

I got to squeeze some secrets out of him in the latest episode of Breakthrough Success. Here’s the one-sentence summary: Know your customer and communicate why they need your services. Of course, we dive deeper within the episode. 

Plus, we talk about Ray’s biggest challenge: how he lives with Parkinson’s Disease. He talks about how he views this disease and how he continues to power through.

“You’re not training to get better at writing copy, you’re training your clients to trust that you know what you’re doing.” —Ray Edwards

 

Learn:

—How to know the person you’re writing for

—How to plan out your copy

—How to write emails that convert

—How to build trust with your copy in the beginning of your copy

—How to make six figures write copy for others as a side hustle

 

Key Links From The Show:

Rev and Go Transcripts — two transcription sites Ray mentions in this episode

Ray’s Website

Copywriting Academy — Ray’s copywriting course. It’s a very comprehensive course filled with the knowledge you need to take your sales through the roof.

 

Books Mentioned In The Show:

The Obstacle Is The Way

The Strangest Secret

Breakthrough Advertising

Tribes

The War of Art

Filed Under: Breakthrough Success

How To Write 10,000 Words In Less Than 12 Hours

March 11, 2017 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

blogging 10,000 words

What would you do if you could write 10,000 words a day to kick you content into high gear?

Would you write five lengthy blog posts? How about an e-book? Or maybe high-converting sales copy for multiple landing pages?

Writing 10,000 words a day seems more than challenging. Writing 10,000 words a day seems nearly impossible. However, it is entirely possible. I can write 10,000 words during most weeks.

When I’m feeling really good, I can write 10,000 words in one day. At that rate, I could write 70,000 words per week, or 3,650,000 words every year.

I don’t consistently write at this pace, but when I do write 10,000 words in a day, it’s an awesome feeling. If I manage to write 10,000 words in one day, I can dedicate several more days to content marketing.

With the right work ethic, you can write 10,000 words in less than 12 hours.

 

Not Your Everyday Writing Goal

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t write 10,000 words every single day of the year. I do it on occasion. The problem with a goal like this is that some people will get tempted to put off their writing and go all-out on one day of the week (or, even worse, once per month).

Writing 10,000 words in one day, but forgetting about the other days of the week, will set you up for ruin. You won’t develop a habit for writing, and you’ll grind through the process instead of enjoying the journey.

If you constantly pressure yourself with this goal, you risk getting overwhelmed and despising writing all together. Before you consider writing 10,000 words a day, you need an established habit.

Writing 500 words per day is a great starting point. As you establish the habit, you can look deeper at some of the other techniques writers use. Once you merge your own habits with the analysis of other writer’s habits, you’ll discover a magic formula.

My absolute minimum goal is to write 1,500 words per day, although I usually finish most days at 2,000-3,000 words. The reason I don’t write 10,000 words a day every time is because I have other responsibilities for my brand. Once I write the content, I have to spend even more time on marketing.

This is why I rarely type 10,000 words in a given day. If you have the writing habit built-in, then you’re ready for your first 10K word day. I advise making a goal for 10K words in a day only twice per month. If you do anymore than that, you risk burnout, but if it works for you, then more power to you!

 

How To Get The Writing Habit Down

If you don’t have a writing habit, you need to start developing it. Five-hundred words per day is a great starting point. But how do you reach it? For some people, writing 500 words seems just as impossible.

Up to now, I’ve written exactly 500 words and didn’t even notice. It took me just a few minutes. Writing 500 words isn’t that easy, but once you’ve been writing millions of words for your blog posts and books, writing 500 words in one sitting is light work.

Let’s get back to habit development. According to science, it takes 66 days for any activity to become a habit. If you write 500 words every day for two months, you can easily write 500 words anytime.

But instead of writing 500 words per day until it becomes a habit, you need to gradually increase your word count. After a week of writing 500 words, challenge yourself to go a little higher. Don’t make a big jump in the beginning. Choose a more manageable jump such as 550 words per day.

You could even increase your word count to 510 words per day. Small increases add up, and soon enough, you will effortlessly write thousands of words on any given day. It all starts with your daily habits.

Right now, you might be creating a mental roadblock in front of your writing habit. It’s something you know you want or need to do, but for some reason, you keep putting it off.

In The Productivity Project, Chris Bailey lays out six triggers for procrastination. When you look at this list, ask yourself if any of these triggers impact you when you write:

  • Boredom
  • Frustration
  • Difficulty
  • Unstructured
  • Lacks personal meaning
  • No intrinsic reward (it’s not fun)

You can change your results by making these unattractive triggers more attractive. For instance, if your writing lacks personal meaning, change what you write about so it aligns with your interests, which will make it easier for you to write 500 words each day (or more).

I write about topics that I care about, and enjoy writing blog posts like this because they help the people that I’m trying to reach. I don’t enjoy writing history papers, for example, because 99% of them are forced assignments necessary for the grade.

** Want to develop your writing habit and make money from your books and free content you put out? Schedule a free strategy call with me to see if we are a good fit. **

 

Calculate Your WPM

Let’s shift gears back to your first 10K word day. The next bit of information you’ll need is your WPM. This popular acronym stands for Words Per Minute in the writing community.

WPM is an assessment of how many words you can type in a given minute. Using your WPM, it’s easy to calculate your WPH. Just multiply your WPM by 60. For example, if you type at 40 WPM, then your WPH is 2,400 words.

With the average WPM lurking between 38-40, the 500 word goal is easily attainable. It’s an average WPM. For most people, it will only take 12.5 minutes or less to finish writing a 500 word blog post (assuming the idea and outline are already in place).

Knowing your WPH allows you to determine how much time you need to write 10,000 words. With the average being 40 WPM (and therefore 2,400 WPH), you only need to type for 4 hours and 10 minutes to reach the 10,000 word milestone.

Of course, this is assuming you consistently type at 40 WPM from start to finish. At some points, you’ll be thinking of different ideas and possibly doing research to verify certain facts as you write your content.

In that case, it will take longer than 4 hours and 10 minutes. If you factor in everything else that can possibly happen (including idea development while writing), you’ll find yourself at the 5-5 1/2 hour range for 10,000 words in a day.

Mathematically speaking, none of this seems as scary as before, right? I could literally write 10,000 words every day of the year, but five hours of writing each day without any marketing won’t bring forth a content brand.

This entire example is based on the average WPM. You may be slightly above or below the average WPM. The only way to determine your status is to start a typing test. Typing tests only last a few minutes; what type what shows up on the screen, and you get your WPM in real-time.

The typing test lasts for a minute, and then you get to see your results.

Here’s mine:

Screen Shot 2017-03-11 at 10.42.38 AM

For this speed test, I typed 95 words per minute, which came from countless hours of practice. At this rate, I could write 5,700 words in one hour and finish writing 10,000 words in just two hours.

While this data is skewed since the words are already provided (and you’ll have to think of fresh ideas to write about), knowing your WPM gives you a rough idea of how much time it will take for you to write 10,000 words. Just tack on an extra hour to factor in time for idea generation.

On this WPM test, you’re also likely to make mistakes as I did since the words are listed one after the other instead of provided in clear sentences.

While writing takes time, editing and revising can take even longer. You can hire an editor, ask a friend for help, or edit the content yourself. With all three of these approaches, there will be typos in your work. It’s practically unavoidable unless you meticulously look it over for several months or even a year depending on how long your content is.

At that point, it could have been published in an imperfect form but attracted more people to your brand.

Combining Attention & Energy

The timing of your work is just as important as the amount of time you invest in your work. Let me share an example with you:

Writer A goes through the entire day feeling exhausted. She still feels exhausted but pulls out her computer anyway and starts typing at 10 pm.

Writer B wakes up at 6 am and starts writing almost immediately. After some typing, she takes a break, eats a healthy breakfast, and then continues typing for another hour.

Which writer seems more productive to you? I’d go with Writer B any day of the week. Both writers are committed and willing to write for several hours. The difference is that one feels charged up while the other feels exhausted.

Your body and mind are part of you, and they play a big role in your productivity. If you feel distracted, that will negatively affect your productivity. There’s no question about it.

Most people focus on time as a measurement of productivity. If you worked for six hours today, you were more productive than when you only worked for five hours, right?

That approach is all wrong.

It’s not just a matter of how much time we put into our work, more specifically, it’s about what kind of time we’re putting into our work. Are you putting quality minutes into your work, or do you struggle through the day eager to boast about how much work you did later?

Circling back to The Productivity Project, Chris Bailey also mentions biological primetime. Everyone has a biological primetime, the timeframe in which it’s easiest for us to enter our working flow. For me, my biological primetime is early in the morning. For others, their biological primetime is in the afternoon or evening.

Think about how you work to determine your biological primetime. That is when you need to write your content. During this primetime, it’s much easier to write 10,000 words a day.

To actually find your primetime, you need to track your entire day, from what tasks you completed to how often you procrastinated. If you do this for a week, you will discover your biological primetime.

Once you know your primetime, you can reallocate your tasks so your high-value tasks (i.e. writing 10K words) get distributed within your biological primetime. That way, your attention and energy are properly focused on the work that matters most when you’re at your optimal level of productivity.

Not only should you track your time to discover your biological primetime, you should also learn a lot about yourself. You’ll learn how you spend your time and how you procrastinate. You can more easily weed out the bad activities so you can focus more of your time, attention, and energy on the tasks that create the biggest impact.

 

Space Everything Else Out Of Your Biological Primetime

When you keep track of your time, you’ll discover which tasks you do during your biological primetime. Most people discover that they’re making a big blunder within this golden opportunity.

If you check your stats, read the news, or scroll through Facebook during these golden hours, you are restricting your potential. That is the time you should focus on writing content.

Based on how you track your time, you’ll determine different distractions that can get in your way. Email and the internet are two of the many distractions that call us when we are trying to pursue our work. Anticipate distractions like these and eliminate them.

When I write a blog post, I’m almost never on the internet. The only time I use the internet while writing a blog post is when I’m doing research. I find the right time to mention someone else’s article. All I have to do is get the link, and that’s the only time I use the internet while blogging.

Oh, and I never see my Mail icon when I’m writing blog posts. I remove that app from my dashboard and only bring it back when I’m done writing.

 

Plan Out Your Content In Advance

I keep score of my blog posts’ lengths as I write them. Right now, this blog post is a little over 2,000 words long. In the past, I would struggle to get past 1,000 words with a blog post like this.

I might get past 1,000 words on a post, but not by much.

I always planned out my content in advance, even when it felt like writing massive blog posts was challenging. Back then, my outline was limited. I identified the blog post title and which tactics I would discuss.

Now I use the Socratic Outline for all of my blog posts. The Socratic Outline is like a traditional outline with a twist. You act as the reader and type questions the reader would have. For each tactic I discuss, I type at least three questions that the reader might ask.

For a blog post on getting more Twitter followers, one tip would be “Interact with your audience.” Here are some questions people may have:

  • How do I interact with my audience?
  • What do I say?
  • How do I continue the conversation?

Instead of having five ideas within a blog post containing five tactics, I now multiply that total to 15 ideas within the same blog post containing the same five tactics. The more ideas you have to play with in your writing, the easier it is to write 10,000 quality words each day.

Anyone can type “very, very, very” 10,000 times. Planning out your content in advance allows you to develop the skill of writing quality words in massive quantities.

The Socratic Outline makes long-form content much easier to produce.

 

Change Your Environment

The tactics mentioned so far will give you the skills and mindset needed to write 10,000 words in under 12 hours. However, your environment is also a critical factor. When I first wrote this blog post, I mentioned that we all have a biological primetime. We are more productive during certain times of the day than others.

I want to take biological primetime one step further. Your biological primetime differs based on the environment you are in. At home, my biological primetime is the morning. Towards the evening, especially after 5 pm eastern, my productivity drops.

The biological primetime for my productivity at home is in the morning.

That’s why I interview most of my podcast guests in the evening. I’m not as productive at writing in the evening, but I can hold great conversations during that time.

Sometimes, when I don’t have an interview, I’ll go to a local bookstore in the evening to become more productive.

My productivity spikes in the new environment because my environment has changed. Your environment affects your biological primetime. I’m more productive at a local bookstore during the evening, and I only create content in that bookstore. I’m not doing anything else at that time.

I do all of the tech related work in the morning (create landing pages, check email sequences, etc.) and create as much content as my heart desires.

If your productivity is lagging at certain times of the day, the best solution is to change your environment. Then, you change your results.

 

In Conclusion

Writing 10,000 words a day is a daunting task, especially if you do it consistently. However, if you write 10,000 words two days each month, you’ll add an extra 20,000 words to your monthly total.

Those 20,000 words can provide you with several blog posts, books, and other forms of content. As you continue writing every day, you’ll have an easier time writing high quality words in massive quantities.

 

Share This Post With Your Friends

How many words do you write each day? What are your thoughts on the 10K word day? What’s your plan to write more content? Have a question for me?

Leave me a comment. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who needs this burst of insight, make sure you pass it on.

[Tweet “How To Write 10,000 Words In Less Than 12 Hours.”]

** Want to make money from your writing? Schedule a free strategy call with me to see if we are a good fit. **

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blogging, goals, productivity hacks

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I am a content marketer and personal finance writer who produces content for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. My content will help drive engagement and sales to your business. I have produced content for several publications, including…

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