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When a person can see the finish line, they’re far more likely to start.

Take a look at what happens when you google “From 2,500 to 1 million fans in 2 years”.

Ask yourself if you can add either a quantifiable benefit or a specific time frame to your post.  Can you tell the story about how you got more readers to your blog in 30 days?  Or can you tell the story about how you helped a friend drop 15 pounds without starving herself?

Once you’ve found a few keywords that might work, modify your blog post’s title to include it if you can.

Do what you want. Self-publishing simply means you write a book and you figure out how to get it into the hands of other people. It might just be you sell it on your email list. Congrats! You're then a published author. In my post "How to Self Publish a Bestseller" I write about the details and the numbers.

This seems opposite of what I said above. But blogging is not such a bad idea. How come? Because it makes you write every day. And it also is fun to build friends and community around your blog. But if you want to blog, don't just register a domain name and start blogging. You won't get any traffic.

There's a thousand ways to build community and practice writing on the Internet. Blog is one of them but there are many others. My #1 suggestion: first practice on Quora (cc Marc Bodnick) If you go there, follow me and say "Hi!".

If you don't write every day, you won't know what your potential skill level is. You will be producing sub-par work. And in a world where 15 million books will be published this year, your book will have little chance to shine.

Do the math: if you just write 1,000 words a day that are publishable then you have a book every two months. 1,000 words a day is not easy. But it's not hard either.

No. You used to be able to make a living writing articles. Just a few years ago. In 2005 I made a good living writing about 3-4 articles a day for different publications while I was running my fund and before I started and sold Stockpickr. But those days are over. People just don't pay for content. And there are too many writers. It's a supply and demand thing.

ou have to write more than one book. And for most people, you have to write dozens of books.

Minimum requirements: A word processor like Microsoft Word, Apple Pages or OpenOffice Writer is sufficient for creating a simple cheat sheet, but for a more sophisticated end product, you might require a desktop publishing package such as Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, or QuarkXPress. Alternatively, you can use a cheat sheet tool like Cheatography to generate cheat sheets based on a default template.

Of course the other thing to do when you’re resharing the same piece of content is to mix up the timings of your updates. If you first tweet a piece of content at 9am – at least wait a few hours to reshare it so that others in different parts of the world are likely to be online. The same thing applies to other networks (although I’d wait longer than a few hours to reshare on networks like Facebook or Google+). Also consider avoiding sharing during those times of the day that are particularly ‘noisy’. Sometimes sharing during times that you’d think your audience isn’t online is actually best. Dan Zarrella calls this ‘contra-competitive timing’ and has some great data on the topic here.

Make sure a clear connection exists between the opening of your post and the headline.

If a sentence, phrase or word is particularly important or significant, use bold or italics to add stress. But don’t overdo it.

Always be consistent with your terminology.

If a point is worth making, it’s worth making twice. Or even three times.

Only tell them what they need to know to follow your argument. Share the minimum you need to convey the desired message.

Clear examples help readers understand difficult concepts.

Concrete language describes something detectable by the senses. Something you can see, feel, hear, smell or taste. Abstract concepts are much harder to imagine.

When you provide specific detail in your writing, there’s less room for ambiguity. Your reader is far more likely to end up with the same idea in their head as you have in yours.

Clarity does not tolerate “might,” “may” or “possibly.” If you can’t say something with certainty, perhaps you shouldn’t be writing about it at all.

if you’re in the business of spreading ideas, you must make friends with bullets.

Bullets are a valuable tool, but you should never drop your reader into a list without first setting the scene.

make sure each point is recognizably related to the others.

If you were giving your reader a list of steps, you’d present them in the order they needed doing, right? Obviously. But if the items in your list aren’t steps, they often still have a natural order – even if you didn’t have one in mind when you wrote them.

always supply everything the reader needs to fully understand your points within the post itself.

You think you’re being generous but truthfully you’re being greedy. Greedy with your reader’s time, their attention, and their patience.

include a clear call-to-action. Tell your reader what you want them to do.