On thick skin, volume, listening, and putting yourself out there

I was sitting in my high school’s computer lab, English class, third period, spamming the refresh button on this website called GameRiot.

I was supposed to be working on my paper. It was about a book I hadn’t read.

I hit refresh again, and a whole new page of comments appeared. My World of Warcraft blog had hit the front page of the website and my most recent post was blowing up.

My teacher walked down our row and said, “Ten minutes! You have ten more minutes to finish your papers.”

I quickly alt-tabbed to my Word document to make it seem like I was still working. I pushed my face real close to my screen as if I was contemplating hard about my classwork. Truthfully, I couldn’t have cared less.

As soon as she turned to walk down another row, I was back on GameRiot, reading the comments on my blog.

“This is the worst blog I’ve ever read in my entire life. You write like a third grader you flaming faggot. Learn the difference between you’re and your.”

“I love your blog! I read it every morning with my cup of coffee. Don’t stop writing!”

“Seriously, how do you live with yourself you narcissistic asshole. I hope you get hit by a car on your way to school tomorrow morning you pathetic loser.”

“Bro, you just said everything I’ve ever thought about the game. You’re an awesome writer. I can’t wait to read more of your stuff.”

“This kid needs to get laid so bad. What a loser.”

Etc.

Good, bad, sarcastic, humorous, demeaning, encouraging, verbally abusive, uplifting, and motivational, I experienced it all as a teenage blogger.

• Some of my blogs were focused around the strategies of the top players in the World of Warcraft — I, myself, being one of them.
• Some of my blogs were funny stories about what it was like being in high school, trying to get attention from girls, hoping to be accepted, etc.
• Some of my blogs were rants on the gaming community.
• Some of my blogs were heartfelt expressions of how I felt about gaming, my own journey, and the career I ultimately hoped to build in the eSports community.

By the time I turned 18, I had one of the most popular World of Warcraft blogs on the Internet.

At a very young age, I learned what it means to be a successful writer online — what truly makes a popular blogger.

If you get intimidated or testy when someone tweets you and says, “I didn’t like this post,” just imagine being a 17-year-old where I literally had people (other gamers) commenting on my blogs encouraging me to run into traffic and die a painful death.

The gaming community is one of the most vocal communities on the internet, and not always in the best way. Growing up and being exposed to that sort of feedback at such a young age gave me a different level of tolerance for what people say and how they respond to my content.

You have to have tough skin if you want to express yourself, period.

I wrote a blog a day for almost two years straight. No matter what. It didn’t matter if it was three in the morning and I had to wake up at 7:00 a.m. for school.

I still grabbed my laptop, sat up in my bed, and wrote the next day’s blog.

That sort of consistency really showed me that it’s the consistency readers vibe with, and your level of output ultimately attracts your loyal audience. You can’t spend two weeks working on a blog post and then expect it to hit the internet and instantly garner a ton of attention. Blogging doesn’t work that way. You need to be posting — not just writing, but posting — content on a daily basis, or every other day, if you want to be successful.

I pivoted the focus of my blog many, many times as a teenager.

I was constantly in search of what people wanted to read about and what value I could provide them on a regular basis. It’s a balance between not caring about what people think, but also taking the time to really hear them and find ways to speak their language more directly.

A lot of bloggers struggle to listen, and as a result, they never really “find” their audience.

For me, now 10 years later, Quora and Medium are those communities.

At the time, GameRiot was a blogging site sort of like Medium is today, except entirely focused around gaming. Anyone could start a blog, and the most popular bloggers had their blogs featured on the front page. Since the community and reader base was already there, it was much easier for me to tap in and gather an audience — as opposed to what most people do, which is to start a blog on their own website (which no one knows exists).

Especially with how big social media platforms are today, you should always start sharing content somewhere social first. The reader base is already intact. Then, once you have an audience built up, you can start directing them to your personal blog.

I started blogging when I was 17.

Now, I’m 29 and I’m essentially a full-time writer (which we could call “blogger” in some cases, “content writer” in others). I’ve built a very large reader base on Quora and here on Medium. And 100% of my income is based on either my own writing or ghostwriting opportunities that are almost always generated from someone reading my writing online.

1. Thick skin.
2. Volume (write every day).
3. Listen to your readers (to figure out what they want to read about).
4. Start in a social environment (Medium and Quora are both great).