Monetising Your Writing - Adopt A No Pressure Value First Approach

Build an Income with your writing without creating constant offers

You are a writer; you love writing, but you want it to earn you an income.

If you are like me, you are thoroughly fed up with most sales tactics and hard selling; it’s not what you want to do.

For years I battled with the desire to earn money from my content (I hate starvation!) and helping my audience to succeed and achieve their dreams without having to constantly pitch my offers.

Luckily there is a way that you can balance both and earn an income without having to sell your soul to the pitch!

While aggressive sales tactics and constant promotions may seem like the quickest routes to profit, they often come at the cost of trust, sustainability, and audience loyalty.

Let’s look at a better way.

So, How about a no-pressure, value-first approach?

A strategy that prioritizes genuine engagement and education over hard selling, paving the way for consistent earnings with less effort.

In this post, I’ll break down how this method works and how you can use it effectively to build an income stream that thrives with minimal time investment.

Understanding the No-Pressure, Value-First Approach

At its core, the no-pressure, value-first approach means giving away high-quality, actionable content for free without pushing a direct sale. This goes against what most marketers have been told and yet it’s the approach most of us on the receiving end like.

There is nothing you can’t find for free online with a little bit of searching so why not make it easy for your audience and earn their trust to start with?

This approach positions you as a trusted authority, creating a sense of reciprocity and loyalty among your audience.

Instead of feeling sold to, your readers or followers feel educated, helped, and connected to you.

Key Components of This Approach:

Consistent Value Creation: Focus on producing content that genuinely helps solve your audience’s problems or teaches them something new.

Engagement Without Expectations: Engage with your audience without expecting anything in return. Comment, share insights, and offer feedback on their content where applicable.

Educational Offers: Provide detailed advice, case studies, or walkthroughs that showcase your expertise, leaving your audience wanting more.

Soft Call-to-Actions: Use subtle invitations rather than hard pitches. For instance, “If you found this helpful, you might enjoy my newsletter” is more inviting than “Sign up now for exclusive access!”

Here is an example from one of this weeks Medium articles:

Why Does This Work?

The no-pressure approach leverages the psychology of trust and the principle of reciprocity.

When you provide genuine value, people naturally feel inclined to support you or seek more ways to engage with what you offer.

This approach also bypasses the discomfort that aggressive marketing can induce, making it easier for your audience to follow through with purchases or subscriptions when you eventually present them.

Whose newsletter are you most likely to open?

The person who sends you good advice without a hard sell or the one who will use clickbait headlines followed by an offer?

Benefits:

• Builds Trust: Free content that teaches or helps builds credibility and positions you as an expert.

• Creates Loyalty: An audience that feels seen and valued is more likely to remain loyal, interact regularly, and eventually convert.

• Reduces Time Investment: Because your audience willingly engages with your content and shares it, the effort required to reach new potential subscribers diminishes over time.

Real-World Example - Monetizing Your Substack Account

Consider a creator using Substack to share insights on building a positive mindset.

By posting helpful, thoughtful content on the platform’s Notes feature, engaging with others’ work, and offering constructive comments without self-promotion, this creator builds visibility organically.

Over time, followers start recognizing the creator’s expertise and look forward to new content.

When monetization is introduced—say, a subscription for premium content or access to a special community—the audience feels comfortable investing because they’ve already gained so much for free.

This makes it easier for the creator to convert without the high-pressure tactics.

Monetization Strategies That Align with This Approach:

1. Tiered Subscriptions: Offer various subscription options with added value at each tier. For example, a free tier, a monthly access option, and a VIP membership with exclusive resources. This is already built into substack so is easy to implement.

2. Community Access: Create a space where subscribers can discuss and implement what they’ve learned. This fosters further trust and willingness to pay for long-term value.

3. Soft Introductions to Paid Content: Slip mentions of your paid offers naturally within your free content. For instance, at the end of a helpful post, add, “If you’d like personalized guidance, consider joining my premium group.”

Minimal Time Investment - How to Make It Work

The value-first strategy doesn’t need to be time-intensive. Here are tips to make the most of your time:

• Repurpose Content: Take one topic and break it into smaller, digestible pieces to share across various platforms.

• Automate Where Possible: Use automation tools to schedule posts, manage newsletter sign-ups, and handle routine interactions.

• Create Evergreen Content: Content that stays relevant over time allows you to continue gaining traction and earning from past efforts.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

While this strategy is effective, it comes with potential pitfalls to watch out for:

• Giving Too Much Without Boundaries: Ensure your audience understands that while you offer value for free, more in-depth guidance or personalized services are available at a cost. Be clear that you are availble to help your audience implement what they have learned from you.

• Impatience: This approach can take longer to show financial results compared to aggressive strategies. Trust the process and remain consistent.

• Neglecting Offers: Don’t get so caught up in offering value that you forget to present your monetized content. Soft calls-to-action are necessary.

Building A Sustainable Income

A no-pressure, value-first approach may not bring instant results, but it can lead to consistent, sustainable income with time.

By prioritizing value over direct sales, you build an engaged audience that trusts you enough to invest in what you offer.

Your offers should revolve around helping people to implement what you’ve taught, so for example, if you’ve read this and thought, “I want to build a business based on this model” then opt into the VIP membership tier and I’ll give you access to all my courses, training and the Community where I’ll help you create a business based on this model.

Alternatively, you can get the same access with my Get Everything Bundle (there’s no difference between the bundle and the VIP Tier. The bundle simply explains what you are getting better!)

This type of business model is built with minimal daily effort and a strong understanding of long-term content strategy, becomes a solid foundation for consistent earnings without the overwhelm of constant promotion.

Begin with your audience in mind, prioritize genuine value, and watch as monetization naturally follows.

That’s almost it from me this week, have a great weekend and create value next week!

Mark

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Next Week’s Community Challenge

Next week in the Inner Circle, I will be running a new type of challenge.

On day one, we’ll find some existing content (Long Form or Short Form) and analyse it for “knowledge gaps”. We’ll then aim to fill those gaps over the coming days.

This will give you lots of value-based content based on existing content.