Nathan Barry wrote an essay about writing and attention and, from there, getting freedom and money.

The reason is simple. Writing is how you get attention. And in todays world attention is the most valuable resource. Major companies spend billions of dollars on advertising each year in order to interrupt people for a chance at getting attention for their products.

Writers get that for free. They have tens of thousands of people raising their hands to say, “Sign me up. I want to read everything you write. You have my attention.”

Then when the writer uses a small portion of that attention to promote something else that will benefit the reader, hundreds or thousands of them buy it. Writers can gather attention better than anyone else. And in today’s business world attention is the most valuable resource.

His plan is deceptively simple.

Unless you’re writing a novel, good writing is about teaching. Most of my friends who make their living from writing wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves writers. Instead they are developers, freelancers, hobbyists, marketers, designers, and business owners.

They just realized they had valuable skills and started teaching them to anyone who wanted to listen. When you start writing you don’t have to worry about crafting perfect prose. Instead you just need to focus on teaching useful skills. Do that and you’ll build an audience. Then write a book or course that is a more complete guide to your topic.

Charge for it. Use the attention that your audience gives you each week from blog posts and a newsletter to promote the new product.

And that’s how you join the rest of my writer friends in the highest paid group of people I know.

It makes me wonder what valuable skill I have that I can teach others, create a book and course, and charge real money for it.