“The ultimate goal of writing online is to build a Personal Monopoly. It’s your unique intersection of skills, interests, and personality traits where you can be known as the best thinker on a topic and open yourself up to the serendipity that makes writing online so special.”

–David Perell

The process of identifying your personal monopoly can paralyze you from online writing. By taking small writing bets, you can move faster towards figuring this out. This is similar to how VCs invest in startups and how startups identify product direction. They do small experiments and double down on what works.

Making small writing bets require little risk. It’s something that can be time-boxed, the losses are so small that they don’t count, and the wins pay for all the losses. A few strategies to accomplish this include writing Twitter threads, sending out digital postcards, and measuring the engagement for each post. By placing enough small writing bets, you can identify and feel confident about the pieces that create your personal monopoly.