Steph Smith's Advice on Writing: How to Make Your Writing Stand Out

Steph Smith wrote a book called Doing Content Right, priced it at $10, and raised the price by $5 for every 30 sales until it reached $200. She hosts the a16z podcast. She built the paid product Trends at The Hustle to millions in ARR. Her personal blog has been read by over half a million people.

She treats content as a system, not an art. The system has inputs, processes, and measurable outputs. That is what makes her advice different from most writing guidance.

Her process draws from Doing Content Right, a Become a Writer Today interview, and a Coffee & Pens distribution analysis.

Voice Over Topic

Smith's core argument: differentiation comes from how you write, not what you write about. "There's enough business newsletters, there's enough true crime podcasts. It's often how it's done." If a friend recommended a podcast, they would not say it is about a specific topic. They would describe the depth, the elegance, something about the way the host engages.

She encourages writers to find one adjective that others would use to describe their work. For Smith, the word people keep using is "approachable." She did not choose it. Readers told her. She writes about coding and projects and startups in a way that makes everyday people think: actually, I could learn to do that.

This emerges only through practice. Tim Urban wrote 250 blog posts before his first stick figure drawing - the thing he became famous for. Mr. Beast made silly counting videos before he cracked the YouTube algorithm. The distinctive voice is always a discovery, never a design.

The Personal Monopoly

Smith's starting point for any writer: what can you do better than everyone else? Not different. Better. The attention economy punishes second place. "If you're not first, you don't exist."

Find your monopoly by asking three questions. What have you done that 95% of people have not? What unique insight do you possess? What have you spent five or more years mastering?

The monopoly does not need to be a novel topic. It can be a novel angle on an existing topic. A contrarian perspective. A distinctive voice. Superior research depth. Better data visualization. Any axis of differentiation counts, as long as it is genuinely superior.

Smith struggled with writing in school because she did not care about the assigned topics. "When you have something to say about a topic, writing is much more enjoyable." Expertise generates the motivation that willpower cannot sustain.

Distribution Is Half the Job

Most writers spend 95% of their effort creating content and 5% distributing it. Smith says the ratio should be closer to 50-50. "Without intentional distribution, the content ends up sitting there, just taking up memory online."

She evaluates distribution channels using a framework called CODES: Cost, Ownership, Dependability, Effort, and Scalability. Each channel gets scored on these five dimensions. The channels that score highest across all five earn your time.

Her recommended tiers. Tier zero, the essentials: SEO, newsletter, referral program. Then viral channels like Hacker News, Reddit, and Product Hunt. Then social channels. Then syndication. Then targeted communities. Then paid advertising.

The critical insight: blogging distributes more easily than newsletters. Blog posts rank in search. They get shared on forums. They compound over time. Newsletters disappear into inboxes. Smith recommends writing several SEO-optimized blog posts as the foundation of any content strategy.

SEO as Compound Interest

Smith treats SEO as the most underutilized growth channel for writers. Social media posts have a half-life measured in hours. A well-optimized blog post generates traffic for years.

Her approach: validate demand before writing. Use Google Trends and Keyword Planner to confirm that people are actually searching for the topic. Target keywords that match your domain authority. Prioritize informational search intent over commercial intent.

The goal is not to game search engines. It is to answer questions that people are actively asking. If you write a genuinely useful answer to a question that gets searched 10,000 times a month, the traffic follows without tricks.

Ali Abdaal uses a similar strategy for YouTube, optimizing for searchable topics rather than trending ones. The principle transfers across platforms. Evergreen content that answers real questions outlasts content designed for today's algorithm.

Active and Passive Creation

Smith distinguishes between active and passive phases of writing. The passive phase is accumulating: noting observations, dropping quotes into a Google Doc, jotting down connections as they appear over days or weeks or months. The active phase is sitting down to shape that raw material into something publishable.

Her "How to Be Great" article exemplifies this. The initial idea ruminated for weeks. She threw quotes and observations into a doc haphazardly. At some point she did keyword research - not to game SEO, but to understand what people were actually searching for. She discovered that a surprising number of people were literally typing "how to become great" into Google. That became the hook and the title. The SEO insight was not the origin of the piece. It was the packaging for an idea that already existed.

She uses a Chrome plugin called Draftback that replays the version history of a Google Doc. You can watch the entire writing process unfold. She uses it to study her own creative patterns - where she gets stuck, where the flow picks up.

Writing the Book in 49 Days

Smith wrote Doing Content Right in 49 days. She credits this to years of accumulated expertise. "It was more like seven years and 49 days." She started with a 3,000 to 4,000 word outline discovered from previous notes. The structure already existed. Writing was execution.

She does not complete drafts in one sitting. Multiple sessions of varying lengths allow ideas to mature. She incorporates quotes from other sources where appropriate. The book reads like a comprehensive guide because it was built from years of structured thinking, not 49 days of frantic typing.

Value-Based Pricing

Smith's pricing strategy for Doing Content Right broke every convention. She started at $10 and raised the price incrementally, eventually reaching $200.

The reframe: "Are you starting a blog or newsletter? $9-answer: 'Here's my book.' $200-answer: 'What if I could save you 100 hours?'"

The lesson is not about pricing. It is about positioning. A $10 book competes with other books. A $200 system that saves 100 hours competes with consulting. Same content. Different frame. Radically different perceived value.

Write to Solve Problems, Not to Make Money

"Don't write just to 'make money.' Write to solve problems. Money should always be a byproduct of your creations, not the original intent."

Smith draws a hard line here. Content created to extract money from readers produces extractive content. Content created to solve readers' problems produces useful content. Useful content earns money as a side effect. The order matters.

This applies to blog posts, newsletters, and books equally. Before writing anything, ask: what problem does this solve for the reader? If the answer is unclear, the content is not ready to be written.

Find Your 100 True Fans

Within your niche, write for your 100 true fans. The people who love your content. Learn everything about them. What do they read? What frustrates them? What do they search for? What would they pay for?

One hundred passionate readers who share your work, buy your products, and tell their friends are worth more than 10,000 passive subscribers. Build for the hundred. The ten thousand will follow.

Multiple Launches, Not One

Smith does not rely on a single launch event. She executes multiple launches across different platforms and audiences over time. Product Hunt on day one. A Twitter thread on day seven. A guest post on day fourteen. Each launch reaches a different segment of the potential audience.

She also runs an affiliate program so other people help sell her book. This extends distribution beyond her own reach. Every affiliate becomes a micro-marketer with a financial incentive to promote quality content.

Design as Differentiation

Presentation matters beyond aesthetics. Smith argues that visual quality creates emotional associations and builds a memorable brand. Chartr's infographic-heavy newsletters stand out in a crowded market not because the information is exclusive but because the presentation makes complex data immediately digestible.

For writers, this means considering the format of your content as carefully as the substance. The same insight presented as a wall of text versus a clean, well-formatted post with pull quotes and clear headers produces radically different reader engagement. The writing might be identical. The experience is not.

Key Takeaways

• Find your personal monopoly. What can you do better than everyone else?
• Split effort equally between creation and distribution.
• Use SEO as your foundation. It compounds over time.
• Validate demand before writing. Confirm people are searching for your topic.
• Write to solve problems. Money follows usefulness.
• Price by value delivered, not by category convention.
• Build for 100 true fans. Depth of loyalty beats breadth of reach.
• Launch multiple times across multiple channels.

Smith proves that content creation is a discipline, not a gift. Systems, distribution, and problem-solving produce more durable results than talent alone.

Sources: Smith's Doing Content Right summary, her Become a Writer Today interview, and Coffee & Pens distribution analysis. Athens is an AI writing editor.