I wrote 365 blog posts in 365 days. What I learned:
1. Writing solves problems.

When things got hard, I pulled up a blank Google doc. When depressed or frustrated, I used writing to

(1) get it out of my system, and
(2) reason through solutions

Not only did writing solve personal issues, but business ones too...
In the last year, I’ve doubled revenue and tripled web traffic. This is not luck! It’s from writing (example).

Would I have figured these things out on my own? Yes, but slower. By writing, I was able to think and move faster. Probably 2-3x faster.
2. Writing builds real-life confidence.

Some people are “talkers”. They’re innately smooth and charismatic.

I’m not one of those people. But I’d like to be better.
Writing helps.

In real-life situations, I found myself mentally referencing back to my writing.

My blog posts were like nodes in my brain, helping me express myself better.
3. Writing is a skill

Now, writing feels more like an extension of my body.

Like writing code, or proficiency in Excel.

Compared to a year ago, I write better, faster, and with more confidence.
This has translated to other domains:

- emails
- texts
- tweets
- and so on

Yesterday, my friend told me I should write an important email instead of him: “because I’m the better writer”.

*That felt good*
4. Writing forces you to be vulnerable

Throughout the year, I dug deeper into topics. I peeled back the onion more and more.

I shared some things I thought I never would. But pulling these out led to my best writing, and my biggest progress IRL...
Being vulnerable is essential to great writing, because it’s accessing your true feelings.

Whenever I do this correctly, I get emails and DMs where people say “Damn I can really relate to this”.
5. Accountability

If I miss a day of writing, I have to donate $20. I knew I needed this accountability to really get better.

Two things:

(1) the thought of losing money got me to write every day
(2) doing it in public forced me to polish and refine my writing
This forced over a thousand hours of (often painful) writing and re-writing.

That’s what really pushed me this year.

Nobody read my daily blog for months. Now it has 1,000 daily readers!
Thanks for reading!

I write every day at patwalls.com

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Pat Walls

Pat Walls Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @thepatwalls

17 Sep
Last month, 250k people visited starterstory.com, mostly from Google search.

Here are some things I've learned about SEO:
1. Second-and-third-order consequences

SEO is a "mind game" of second-and-third-order consequences. The work you do today will not yield results immediately.

Write an article, publish it, and then get no results. This makes you think you "did it wrong". Most people quit here.
Just go in with the expectation that you won't see results for six months after publish.

Instead of getting discouraged, just write more and publish more. By the time you published your 20th article, you might start finally seeing the results of your first.
Read 12 tweets
30 Jun
A simple A/B testing setup for developers, a thread:
Lately, I’ve been experimenting and learning about AB testing!

In this post, I’ll walk through how simple it is to do AB testing with Google Analytics and a bit of custom code. I'll show you an example of a successful AB test and some things I learned.

Inspired by @levelsio
I don’t use Google Optimize, Mixpanel, etc as I found them to be way too clunky and hard to figure out.
Read 14 tweets
22 Aug 19
How I auto-share ~120 blog posts to Reddit every month, reached 35k karma, and gotten millions of views.

And why I love building automation so much!

A thread!
I have hit the top of Reddit hundreds of times.

Through all of the love and hate that I get on the platform, I think I've found that it's here to stay.

After years of posting on Reddit, I've slowly built an automated system that is now 100% hands off.
This is my Starter Story backend, where I save the content of my stories in a markdown format.

This is great for Reddit because Reddit is also in a markdown format!
Read 15 tweets
1 Mar 19
Feb 2019 #openstartup report:

Revenue: $3,740
Visitors: 42K
Mailing List: 4K

A reflection on (1) the business & (2) nomad life.

👇
(1) THE BUSINESS

Search traffic continues to rise.

There are now many days where the site gets 1k+ visitors from Google Search.
I tested a slide-out email subscribe CTA - I thought I would NEVER do this.

My email opt-in rate has always been pretty low. The results were phenomenal.

I implemented Feb 19, you can see the massive spike below.

Shoutout @Klaviyo for allowing me to do this so easily.
Read 31 tweets
4 Jan 19
1/ My #openstartup and life update...

December 2018:

💵 Revenue: $3,595
📈 Uniques: 34,537
✉️ Mailing List: 3,488

Lots of fun stuff happened this month.

A thread 👇
2/ This month started out in Thailand! I flew out to Bangkok and traveled with my mom and sister for two weeks.

Although I enjoyed traveling, it is hard to not work for that long... towards the end I started getting antsy - squeezing in a few hours of work every couple days...
3/ I got to Chiang Mai mid month (where I am now) and still struggled a bit to adjust. Wasn't sure what to expect... What's the life of a digital nomad like?

Turns out they just work a lot 😂

Was also lucky to find a few @wip'ers in CM - so that's been nice to have some friends
Read 16 tweets
30 Dec 18
2018 was easily the best year of my life.

After getting rejected from YC, I went soul searching and found a community of people building indie startups.

A year later, I've quit my job and going full time on this!

Here's my personal story - in tweets :)

patwalls.co/the-best-year-…
Hope you guys enjoy this one - spent a lot of time on it!

Some things I talk about:

- Spending 6 months on a product and getting rejected by YC
- Discovering @IndieHackers & @levelsio
- The early days of Starter Story
- Making my first $3
- My first big breaks
- My first @ProductHunt launch
- My first haters
- Finding @wip - the community that changed my life
- My long struggles to focus and be productive
- My health & running
- Meeting @CaseyNeistat
- Getting the biggest check of my life
- The craziest idea of my life
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!