List of 10 Bad Habits that Make Your Character Overly Self-Conscious
Use this list to make your character overly self-conscious.
Write some of your fictional characters with these bad habits in order to make them appear overly self-conscious.
Why you would want to be thinking about bad habits for your fictional characters that you are writing?
Bad habits help your audience resonate with your characters.
They make our characters more believable.
Adding a few bad habits to our characters will make them more enjoyable to our readers. After all, no human is perfect and that should include not all but most of our fictional characters.
List of 10 Bad Habits Fictional Characters Need Help Breaking
This a continuation of a series on bad habits for fictional characters.
We made lists of habits for fictional characters to help inspire writers to write more dynamic characters.
Habits like these help bring our characters to life and help our reader resonate with them on an emotional level.
We’ll be adding new content often, check back for more ideas.
List of 10 Bad Habits Fictional Characters Need Help Breaking:
Abusing prescription medications
Easily aggressive, angry, and violent (possibly abusive)
Smoking 10 packs a day (not just casual smoking. A severe addiction to nicotine
A drug addiction (heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines)
Uncontrollable alcoholism
Having affairs
Addiction to fighting
Cleptomaniac
Chronic Mental Abuse
Physical Abuse
List of 10 Bad Habits Fictional Characters Need Help Breaking
You might ask yourself why you would want to be thinking about bad habits for your characters that you are writing.
Bad habits help your audience resonate with your character.
They make our characters more believable.
Adding a few bad habits to our characters will make them more enjoyable to our readers. After all, no human is perfect and that should include not all but most fictional characters.
Check out these FREE trial resources from Amazon for when you work from home (or are stuck at home 🙂 ) As an Amazon associate, if you do sign up or buy anything using Amazon links from our site we make a commission at no extra cost to you.
It is the Amazon you love, for work. Make workplace procurement easier with convenient delivery options, simplified purchasing workflows, multiple payment options, and a competitive marketplace with business-only pricing and quantity discounts. Anyone who makes purchases for work (eg. procurement specialists, office administration, IT departments, etc.) can create a FREE account for their business. Customer must be from a verified business in order to successfully create their Amazon Business account.
Writing Tips that you MUST Use From the Writers of Stranger Things!
If you love writing and Stranger Things then you will love reading this post.
No Spoilers! Don’t worry, but by now you’ve DEFINITELY binged the entire thing 😉
What writing tips can we gather from the screenwriter’s of Stranger Things without giving any spoilers away?
They bend Time to their will.
They use Conflict to keep your Brain Hooked.
They Keep You Guessing with the Mysteries of the Universe.
Did you Notice How the Dialogue made you Feel?
They Manipulate you with Character Relationships.
They Make You Hate the Right People and Love the Wrong People.
They Don’t Promise That Characters You Love Will Survive.
Every year, I for one look forward to what the writers of Stranger Things are going to give to me.
Honestly, this year I was a bit disappointed that they decided to wait till summer to give us another nail-biting story, but hopefully, it’ll be worth the wait.
While I watch things I look for writing tips and tricks. Hopefully, you get writing inspiration from these and are able to make great use of them in your own writing!
#1. They BEND TIME to Their Will.
Have you ever noticed that in suspenseful stories the writer uses time to their benefit?
Stranger Things is no different.
I took a Class from Dan Brown and in that class, he revealed a writing technique for suspense that is genius and that I found so helpful!
Bend time to your will.
Stranger Things, Dan Brown, and other great suspense writers all use this same writing technique in one way or another to help their writing be more suspenseful.
How do we as writers bend time to our will and use it to keep our readers at the edge of their seats turning page after page after page without thinking about it????
We create a “ticking time bomb.”
This can be a literal time bomb, but that’s not what we mean here.
You can and need to create a time sensitive event that if the main protagonist doesn’t accomplish in time then “THE WORLD WILL END!”
Haha! The world ending doesn’t always have to be the big bad ending if they don’t make it in time.
It could be a loved one dying.
It could be a world ending. (usually the case in Stranger Things and Marvel)
The main character dies.
The town dies.
Half the Universe disappears 😉 Thanks, Thanos…
The house explodes.
Mom and Dad find out the kids are up to no good if they don’t hide the mess in time.
A monster is hunting them.
An alien race is chasing them.
I think you get the idea.
It could be a massive consequence or a “smaller” consequence depending on how old your audience is and how big you want to make the stakes of this one dire event, but it is up to you how you want to use this tool and how much you want to use it.
You can make it one big thing that the protagonists are trying to accomplish the entire journey or a series of little time-sensitive events along the journey to one big one. Build up and misdirection are always good tools.
Either way, if you want to turn up the heat this summer with extra suspense in your writing you need to create time-sensitive events that if not done something about…BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN!
2 things to keep in mind:
It has to be believable. Don’t go overboard.
Don’t use it so much that the reader gets sick of this technique without thinking about it. (He keeps defeating the bad guy, but then a bigger worse bad guy comes along too quickly, and oh look, he wants to blow up the world too…boring.)
#2 They Use CONFLICT to Keep Your Brain Hooked.
The writers of Stranger Things use conflict to keep you hooked.
As a writer of stories when you create a conflict your readers become curious about how the conflict will be resolved.
Conflict doesn’t work all by itself. You have to care about the characters in order to care about the conflict they face and whether or not it will be resolved.
The writers of Stranger Things know that you care about the characters and they use the conflict they put the children into to keep your brain hooked from start to finish. They also do a great job of first making us like the kids and characters they create before they create problems and danger for them to go through.
Create characters and help your readers like them. Make them like them for many reasons. Make them vulnerable, cute, admirable, funny, misunderstood, or likable and then create danger for them and some sort of conflict and your readers will be instantly hooked and keep reading out of curiosity as to how they’ll make it out alive.
#3 They Keep You Guessing with the Mysteries of the Universe.
The writers of Stranger Things have done an amazing job of creating their own universe.
It carries original ideas and original monsters. That leaves us curious for more. Such questions boil over in our minds. What are the demi dogs? Why do they hunt people? What is the underground really? What is the Mind Flare and what does it want? Are there creatures more powerful than the Mind Flare?
By creating this universe and creating it well they have given us all kinds of mysteries to keep us guessing and intrigued.
If you can create curiosity and intrigue for your readers than you can create something interesting for them. When you create something that keeps your readers guessing in a good way (not because they are confused) you have done them a service of keeping them entertained and intrigued.
The writers of Stranger Things do this time and time again, season after season by slowly introducing more characters, more creatures, and more problems.
Make your universe full of intrigue and wonder, and make sure, if you create a question for your characters to solve make sure that you answer it at some point. Give them a question and then give them resolution. By doing this the right way, you keep them interested and intrigued and then satisfied when you answer the question for them.
Create a good universe and create good questions and problems for your characters and you’ll be taking tips from the writers of Stranger Things.
#4 Did You Notice How The Dialogue Made You Feel?
Have you ever analyzed the dialogue in Stranger Things?
The writers do an AMAZING job of making you feel certain emotions they want you to feel through the dialogue.
When the boys are playing D&D you feel like a little kid again by what they say, how they say it, and the emotions they are feeling while they talk and play.
Dialogue planned well carries the story along, but mostly reveals to you who the characters are. When you see who they are through how they act and talk you feel certain things about them whether you relate or not.
Notice the dialogue between Nancy and her couple of relationships. Depending on where they are at with their relationship the dialogue changes and as it changes we feel differently about them, their relationships and ourselves. We can feel happy for them, mad at them, sad, jealous, angry, worried, concerned. The dialogue between Nancy and her relationships makes us feel this way depending on where we are at in our relationships and life.
To take these Stranger Things writing tips to the pen and paper, learn how to use dialogue the way they do.
Use dialogue to:
Reveal character
Show character vulnerability
Show character growth
Show character immaturity/ maturity
Reveal character relations to other characters
Carry the story along
Make sure you know what types of emotions your readers will be feeling through your dialogue.
That brings us to the next Stranger Things writing tip.
#5 They Manipulate You With Character Relationships.
Take it from the writers of Stranger Things, if you have the ability to write relationship conflicts into your stories, DO IT.
We as readers and watchers eat up relationship intrigue and conflict. We are relational creatures so any type of relational conflict we can watch and be a part of is extremely fascinating to us.
Think about how you feel when the kids are getting into arguments. You feel bad, you don’t want them to fight or dislike each other. If you care about their friendship you want to see it resolved. Or at least you want to see if it resolves at all.
Do the same thing with your stories.
Think about your different characters and how you can create bonds in their relationships and how you can create conflict in their relationships.
Whatever you do, don’t make everything rainbows and roses all the time. It’s not real life and it’s not really interesting either.
The writers of Stranger Things know how to put our heartstrings by creating character relationships and by creating conflict between them.
#6 They Make You Hate the Right People and Love the Wrong People.
Think about your characters in your stories. Do you make them likable? How? Do you make them disposable?
Think about ways you can make your characters likable and hateable. Use the traits and dialogues you can think of to give your readers twists and turns with the characters you create.
Start off making your villains likable and don’t tell them it’s a villain. Give them a twist and inner turmoil when they realize the charming cute guy they like is a sinister evil man up to no good. Likewise, you can make your good characters do stupid things that make them despicable at first until they grow up a little.
Take it from the writers of Stranger Things, keep your readers guessing and interested by not revealing everything at first but making them read to get the answers.
#7 They Don’t Promise That Characters You Love Will Survive.
It’s hard to do and it can be hard on your audience, but it’s true to life. If all your characters always survived everything with no consequences eventually your readers will lose interest because they know nothing bad will happen to the characters in your stories.
Pick characters that you will eventually kill and do what you can to make their deaths worth it.
Make a death worth it by either killing a character they love and will miss or by killing a character they hate.
Don’t just kill random characters they have no emotional feelings towards.
The writers of Stranger Things have shown us from the start that characters we like might not make it to the end of the story.
They’ve done this many times with both characters we love and characters we love to hate. You may think that by killing off a character we like that you will lose the audience. This is true in fewer cases than you might think. Most times the audience feels the sadness but is even more curious to see how things turn out because it’s not easy to guess anymore. When death is a possible scenario, no character is safe. That means more curiosity and intrigue for your readers.
Do your readers and viewers a service and include these Stranger Things writing tips into your stories.
What did you notice that you can add to your writing from Stranger Things?
Did you binge watch it the 3rd season? How many days did it take you? I watched it in 3 days.
Have you gotten creative writing tips from other shows?
What would you recommend watching to get great writing tips?
You might be wondering, “Why aren’t my emails getting opened and read?”
Hopefully, with this list, you will get better open rates and more people reading and clicking your emails in no time.
You can’t just send your list anything.
You have to know your list and know their problems so you can send them something they are interested in reading.
If you are trying to tell your list about great kitchen products, don’t just tell them about how great the item is.
Make sure to say what PROBLEMS the item solves.
Things to think about when creating emails that will get open and read:
Put your best foot forward.
Who are you writing to?
What will make them open the email?
Tell me about my problem, not your product
Make your text easy to skim through
#1 Put Your Best Foot Forward
First impressions are extremely powerful.
In all aspects of life if you give a bad first impression it is unlikely the person will give you a second chance.
This is escalated with email. If you land in their inbox with junky info or annoying them…unsubscribe, delete, done, bye.
The same goes for a good first impression.
If you give a great first impression, but mess up later on down the road, they are likely to give you a 2nd and maybe even a third or fourth chance before they hit the DREADED unsubscribe!
Use this knowledge to your advantage.
When you have 1st-time subscribers, make sure to welcome them and give them something SO AMAZING that they’ll be looking forward to your next email with excitement.
Give them a reason to want to open every email and keep you in their inbox for years to come. But the first opened email is one of the most important.
If you want your list to look forward to seeing your emails in their inbox then you need to know them.
What are their doubts, worries, and fears?
Go to forums, FaceBook groups, and places like Amazon reviews to see what your audience has to say and think about products like yours and the problems they are facing right now.
Try to notice patterns in what they say and do your best to use wording and phrasing the same way the majority does.
This will help you resonate with most of your audience and they will be thinking “It’s like you read my mind!” “You must have the answer to my problems!”
If you can resonate with them, they will likely try your product or listen to you and if you solve their problem the first time, they will very likely come back for more.
#3 What will make more people open the email?
How do you get potential readers to open your emails?
Make sure you are capturing the RIGHT audience. If your lead magnet is drawing in people that care about blogging and you’re trying to tell them about cars, you aren’t going to get many openings.
Focus on your headline. Create email headlines that make people curious and have a promise to make their life better if they open it.
Use stories. As humans, we are obsessed with stories. If you can promise a good story with an open, you are much more likely to get it.
Think about what questions you can answer for them.
VERY IMPORTANT: IF you make a promise to deliver an answer to a problem, MAKE SURE YOU DELIVER. Clickbait will get good openings once, but after that, you are the boy who cried wolf, no one will listen to you.
If you want to get your emails read you need to make sure that you know what your subscribers’ problems are.
Once you know their problems, you can talk about their problem and tell them about the solution to their problem.
If you talk to them about their problem and you are spot on they will read on or skim through to find an answer.
Only highlight the benefits of your product after you’ve covered all their potential problems.
Change your mindset. Right now you are thinking, “how can I get them to buy this product?”
That’s the wrong question.
You should be asking, “What are the problems this product solves for my reader?”
Spend most of your time writing to them about their problemsand then you can tell them about how your item, service, or product solves their problems and they are going to read and be curious.
It is great at this point if you can tell them how the product solved your problems or if you have customer testimonies to talk about how it solved their problems.
If you are able to do this effectively and they don’t seem to be interested, maybe it’s time to upgrade the product or make sure you have captured the right email audience.
#5 Make your email text simple and readable.
This should be obvious, but you’d be surprised how many emails get opened and skipped because the content was too much and too “blocky” for the recipient to even want to try to read, let alone get any enjoyment out of.
Make your email text readable by creating 1 to 2 sentences per paragraph, instead of creating a BIG BLOCK of text.
Which is easier to read?:
I went for a walk. It was nice. I saw a dog and a cat and my next door neighbor. I said hi and they said hi. It was a nice walk on a sunny day. The temperature wasn’t too hot or too cold. While I was walking I saw a snail. The snail said hi, I said hi back. It was clear that he didn’t want to see me, so I quickly walked on. I almost stepped on him, but I didn’t, I’m glad I didn’t as his mother might have sued. I’m glad I didn’t get sued on my morning walk on the nice warm sun shiny day in October.
Or this:
I went for a walk. It was nice. I saw a dog and a cat and my next door neighbor. I said hi and they said hi.
It was a nice walk on a sunny day. The temperature wasn’t too hot or too cold.
While I was walking, I saw a snail. The snail said hi, I said hi back. It was clear that he didn’t want to see me, so I quickly walked on.
I almost stepped on him, but I didn’t, I’m glad I didn’t as his mother might have sued.
I’m glad I didn’t get sued on my morning walk on the nice warm sun shiny day in October.
Use this technique and pla around with it to create emails that are easy on their eyes, easy to skim, and easy to read.
You should make your writing easy to skim and lead them to what you want by using Bold, Italics, underlining and colored text.
By making certain text pop out you can draw their eyes to the main things you want them to read.
Take and use these 5 email marketing tips and get more opens and reads with your emails.
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
What “Detective Pikachu” Can Teach Us About Exciting Effective Writing Prompts: Spoiler Alert!
What’s ahead in exciting effective writing prompts:
Begin your story with a good hook.
Make every second count
Don’t try to catch them all
Keep them guessing
Don’t push the twist
If you haven’t seen Detective Pikachu yet, I recommend it. It was family friendly and one of the best gaming movies made yet.
The writers of the movie did a good job using exciting effective writing prompts in the screenwriting.
How can writing in a movie help with your writing overall?
The simple answer is stories.
Good stories make for great exciting effective writing prompts, blogging, and copywriting.
If you learn how to use storytelling in all of your writing niches you will immediately be a better writer and see better results.
Begin Your Story With a Good Hook
At the very beginning of the movie we see Mewtwo bust out of science facility and shoot energy at a car and explode it.
At this point, we as an audience are waiting with curiosity to see why he did this.
Here’s where good writing comes in.
Instead of revealing anything right then the movie changes scenes and we are left curious to find out what happens.
You can call this is a hook.
If you can add a good hook to your blog post or writing prompt (especially marketing material), this will help your readers stay curious and want to know more about what you are saying.
This will keep them curious and engaged in your writing instead of zoning out while reading your material.
Make Every Second Count in Your Writing Prompt
In the movie, they don’t waste time with meaningless scenes or time to just roll the film.
In the same way, you shouldn’t waste words or sentences that don’t carry your reader to the next sentence of your writing prompt.
Write a sentence and make it count.
If it doesn’t make the reader curious about what is coming after it, consider revising it or cutting it out altogether.
Lead them to your next scene or idea.
Don’t Try To Catch Them All
Something I found humorous and entertaining about the main character of the movie is that he didn’t like pokemon.
People in his society considered him to be an oddball because he didn’t have his own pokemon companion and didn’t bother with trying to catch them all.
In like manner, with your writing prompt, you shouldn’t try to catch every person that could come across your writing or blog.
You should aim for the right people for your niche.
Try to resonate with your specific audience and don’t worry about pleasing everyone.
Just be sure to entertain the right people and your following will grow.
Throw out too many pokeballs and you might just lose followers in the process.
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
Detective Pikachu does a good job of keeping you guessing.
You’re not sure if the main bad guy is the father or the son.
There’s even a moment when you think Pikachu may have betrayed his owner.
This is great writing.
If you are able to keep your audience guessing in a good way then you can make your writing prompts much better.
Keep them in suspense. Keep them on their toes. Keep them on the edge of their seats waiting for your big reveal.
BEWARE: when you are writing in a way to create curiosity don’t overdo it.
Any questions you create for your readers you must answer them and deliver on the questions you make.
If you make too many questions and don’t answer enough of them you leave your readers feeling tricked or duped. This is a bad strategy.
They did all that work reading through your material and then never found out what they were looking for.
Don’t to that to them. Just don’t!
Don’t Push the Twist in Your Writing Prompts
A good twist is never forced.
Do your best to make it natural.
In Detective Pikachu, the twist would have been more predictable but at the last minute they tricked you with a Ditto pokemon clone of the son which made you think, “well I guess he really is the bad guy.”
But they kept the Ditto a secret until the big reveal.
That was their big trick and they did a good job keeping it from the audience.
They didn’t tell you there was a Ditto and they didn’t let you know that it could turn into humans and this made for the perfect way to hide the twist and the true villain.
You also need to figure out ways to create a good twist and don’t force it in your writing prompts.
Find new and innovative ways to hide the BIG SECRET that is the key to unlocking your suspenseful BIG REVEAL.
Look for great writing prompts in all the content you see, read, review, and take in every day.
It may be lunch with a friend, or something your child says to you.
Creativity is in abundance all around us, we just have to train ourselves to be looking for it and grab it when it comes.
Be sure to keep an eye out for great material and inspiring ideas whether you are watching a movie or reading a great writing prompt.
Did you get exciting effective writing prompts idea while reading this post?
Have you seen Detective Pikachu, how did you react? How did your kids react?
What movie have you seen lately that made you think of great exciting effective writing prompts?
What exciting effective Writing Prompts can you come up with?
5 Exciting Effective Writing Prompts From the movie “Detective Pikachu”
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, here are some Other Post You Might Love:
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy exciting effective Writing Prompts, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
How to Know What Your Readers are Thinking: What Do They REALLY Want?
When you are writing any type of copy, know what your readers are thinking and what they desire. It’s a BIG DEAL!
It’s important to take time to think about this every time you sit down to write, but especially when blogging, freelancing, and doing client work.
What do you need to ask yourself when sitting down to write to know what your readers are thinking?
Here are some profitable questions to ask yourself:
What is my brand?
What products are you using and love?
What are other writers in your niche writing about and promoting?
Did you Google it yet?
What is going viral in your niche?
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: What Is My Brand?
To know what your readers are thinking, you need to understand who you are as a brand.
This may seem like backward thinking, but in order to know who you are attracting with your writing, you need to know who you are.
And it may be obvious to you what your branding is, but you’d be surprised how many blogs and websites are unsuccessful because they are a cluttered mess of every affiliate offer and ad under the sun.
You may be thinking, I need to cast a wide net to get more.
BEWARE of this common MARKETING TRAP!
Stay true to who you are and who you are writing to. Loyalty to your readers is more important. By maintaining a straightforward voice and being open about who you are and who you are writing to from day one you will start to build a loyal audience instead of a fair-weather audience that is not connected to what you do.
The big question you need to be asking yourself is WHY?
Why do I do what I do and why should anyone else care?
If you don’t know your “why,” you will communicate that to your readers without even thinking about it.
Your why will help you focus down and see a clear path from where you are to where you want to be.
Do you want readers to come to you because they are looking for a certain product?
Are they looking for information from you? What type of information? Get specific.
If your why is “I want to make money selling people something.” You probably won’t gain much traction or sell anything for that matter. So you are going to have to be a bit deeper than just “selling stuff.” (This isn’t always true as we have places like Amazon. It is probably pretty hard to compete in that space though.)
Try to have an important purpose. Something only you can help readers do or learn. In the process of trying to help them first instead of yourself, you will find helpful products to tell people about what they will enjoy and they will come back to you to find out more.
And when you do your best to help them succeed in their goals that will, in turn, help you succeed as well.
He’s an inspirational speaker and a thought leader on marketing and branding. I have gotten a lot of inspiration and ideas from his talks.
To know what your readers are thinking, know: Why do you do what you do?
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: What Products are You Using and Enjoying Yourself?
To know what your readers are thinking you need to analyze what you like personally and the type of personalities you want to attract with your writing.
If you are writing about something you love and enjoy already in your daily life, it’ll be easy to see if your audience will love to use it too.
For me personally, I love finding things that save me money passively in my daily life, I wrote a post about it and actually found out that most of the things I enjoy using daily have referral offers and affiliate programs. I have no problem promoting them because I love them and save hundreds of dollars using them every year anyway, so I hope that others will be able to save hundreds every year by using them too. And ALL of them don’t cost money to start using which is convenient, because everyone likes FREE 🙂
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: What are Other Writers in Your Niche Writing About and Promoting?
To know what your readers are thinking, analyze what other writers are having success with.
The last thing you want to do is copy someone else’s work. Don’t do that; not classy and not worth it. But taking time to look at other blogs that are succeeding in your subject area can really help give you some ideas of what similar readers to yours like, want to hear about, and want to use. It never hurts to look outside the box for help.
Don’t hesitate to look outside yourself for help and inspiration.
Buy some books, take some online courses and invest in yourself.
There is TONS of good free info out there, thanks to bloggers, YouTubers, and influencers, so there is no excuse not to be able to find what readers are interested in hearing about.
If you enjoy Know What Your Readers are Thinking, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: Did you Google it yet?
To know what your readers are thinking, Google it. Period.
Google is a writer’s best friend. I don’t care if you have a human best friend. It’s not true. Google is actually your best friend, you just don’t know it yet. Whether it’s using google analytics to see why people visit your site or whether you are Google researching if you haven’t used Google yet you are leaving valuable insight out of the equation.
Some simple things to search for:
Forums
Reviews
Competitors in your niche
“Your niche” affiliate program
Go out there and see first hand what readers like yours are ACTUALLY saying. This will be gold for your Brand.
Most times when you are staring at a blank page and wondering, “What do I write next?” It’s because you haven’t done enough research.
You’ll be shocked to see how quickly words fly onto your page with a simple Google search. Do your best to stay original while doing your inspirational research.
And definitely take the time to search google’s keyword planner to see what users are typing into their search engines.
Know What Your Readers Are Thinking: What is Going Viral in Your Niche?
To know what your readers are thinking, check out what is going viral in your niche.
Go on social media platforms and see what pins and posts have and are going viral.
Seeing what’s going viral in your genre can help you decide on what you should write about or promote on your next blog post.
Maybe it will inspire you to write a post on something you haven’t thought about yet.
Or maybe you’ll discover that something you already use and love is going viral. If you know it’s going viral you can know what your readers are thinking and then you can quickly punch out a quick meaningful post on why you love it so much and why your readers might enjoy it too.
Know What Your Readers Are ThinkingBonus: When finding out what your readers are thinking, the gold is in their OWN words.
To know what your readers are thinking, find their own words and write in the way they talk.
The best places to find your readers’ own words are in forums, FB groups, and product reviews.
Start with something simple.
For example: Let’s say you are promoting hair straighteners.
Look on Amazon (I can’t tell how many bloggers miss this key opportunity) for hair straighteners just like yours and start mining the reviews.
You should be looking for patterns.
Look for phrases and statements that are common among many of the comments.
You read 100 reviews and you start to see that many reviews are saying “I love how this straightener doesn’t burn my head.” BOOM.
You just discovered 2 things.
A common problem is that people burn their heads with other straighteners.
The one you’re looking at on amazon solves that problem.
If you write in a hair product niche it will be helpful for you to tell your readers about this straightener, (maybe try it out yourself first) and you can feel confident to say “this straightener is great because it doesn’t burn your head easily like others” knowing full well that your statement will resonate with a lot of what your readers and potential readers are thinking about and by providing useful trustworthy information you will build good rapport with them.
You can do this type of research with any product and any niche to know what your readers are thinking. You just have to find where they are talking about what you are trying to write about and look for common repeated problems and solutions.
Rinse and repeat this type of word research for any product or niche.
What is your blog about?
How are you finding out what your readers are thinking about and want to hear?
Do you need help finding out what they want to read?
Do you need help finding the right words or phrases for your niche?
If you enjoy Know What Your Readers are Thinking, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy Know What Your Readers are Thinking, Storytelling, and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
It is the Amazon you love, for work. Make workplace procurement easier with convenient delivery options, simplified purchasing workflows, multiple payment options, and a competitive marketplace with business-only pricing and quantity discounts. Anyone who makes purchases for work (eg. procurement specialists, office administration, IT departments, etc.) can create a FREE account for their business. Customer must be from a verified business in order to successfully create their Amazon Business account.
How to Save Extra Money Doing Normal Daily Tasks, Passively
I don’t know about you, but I love the word Passive.
I love the idea of Passive income.
Do you normally make money while you’re sleeping? Unless you fall asleep on the job (which I don’t recommend) then no.
Do you normally make money while you are sitting at a movie?
Do you normally make money while you are out with friends?
Passive income allows you the freedom to make money 24/7.
My favorite passive income is Blogging. If you want to know more about that prospect, you’ll love this post: How to Become a Blogger in 2019
It gives you the freedom to decide when you work and why you work and why you say yes to certain engagements and the freedom to say NO. That’s a big one, The ability and freedom to say no.
Not so you can be some big shot that doesn’t do anything, but so you can decide what is important in life and prioritize that over other obligations, like money. Don’t be a slave to money, make money work for you…
One sure fire way to make money work for you is finding passive ways to earn more and save more. This means you don’t have to think about it or do much to get it. You might have to do some initial setup, as in signing up for something or applying for something, but after that you can go about you life and save money doing things you would normally do, like shopping 🙂
So, what if I said you could be doing almost the exact same thing you do every day and be saving hundreds more than you are RIGHT NOW?
How can I save money passively doing everyday things?
I like Ebates because my wife and I personally do a fair amount of shopping online. We aren’t shopaholics but we do have a set budget of weekly “fun money” that we can shop with. (Yes, we are nerds that have a budget and yes one of our categories is definitely called “fun money.”) Nerdish, I know, but actually, it is EXTREMELY helpful when it comes down to making sure you live within your means and don’t rack up foolhardy debt. (let me clarify, I know some fams have to make ends meet by borrowing money to survive. I’m not talking about that. I’m saying “foolhardy debt” would be two 70″ TVs, all the shoes, shirts, video games, tech stuff (I love fun smart tech), junk food, etc.)
You can get at least 5% off or more on many online stores including Amazon, Walmart, Eddie Bauer, Under Armour, etc. There are MANY options to choose from.
It used to just be online, but nowadays you can link a card and shop in store too! Which is the BEST!
I have Cash Back Credit Cards that get 1.5% cash back and they literally save me hundreds of dollars a year off of just 1.5% so just imagine the 5% and 10% possibilities you could be getting with Ebates.
It’s not just money you could be saving, it’s money you could be earning WHILE SHOPPING! What better excuse do you have to shop than to make money while you’re shopping?
My family does a traditional Christmas thing where every year we all make our Wish Lists on Amazon and then share those lists with each other so that it is easier to shop and get each other what we would want instead of guessing, so for me that is a time of year where I am able to save a good amount by having cash back from my credit card and from Ebates.
If you use this link “Jeremy’s Ebates Link” you get $10 when you make an account as well as you can refer an unlimited amount of people and get $25 dollars for each referral!
Let me make this simple:
Right now you could use my link: “Jeremy’s Super Awesome Ebates Link” and get $10 as well as you can turn to your friend, spouse, mom, dad, niece, nephew, or the guy sitting next to you at Starbucks and share your referral link with them and instantly get another $25 on the spot.
So EVEN IF you never use Ebates again, at this exact moment you could take 2 minutes and 27 seconds, sign up for Ebates and get $35 altogether in about 4 minutes and 52 seconds or less.
You know those shoes you’ve been thinking about getting on Amazon? You could get them right now for free with a little 5 minute Ebates Hustle. The choice is yours 😉
But on a serious note, if you do any online shopping whatsoever, the Ebates app makes it super easy to earn cash back while you shop. I already got my first 2 Ebates checks mailed to me, around $44 dollars. You should get one for yourself too.
Okay, you may think this is relatively dumb, but I love the Cash App!
I can’t say enough good stuff about the Cash App. I completely love it and look for daily opportunities to use it.
As a money saving nerd I geek out over percentages saved and Cash App’s incentives right now are HUGE!
10% might not sound like much to you, but I don’t know of ANY credit cards offering that much in cash back, NONE.
And their incentives won’t be this high forever! They are high right now because they are using them to grow their customer base. They COST NOTHING to start using and they give you $5 just for signing up using this link: “$5 for signing up”
Cash App is like Venmo and paypal but better in my opinion.
Here’s why:
Free Cash App card
No fees for normal bank deposits or withdrawals
Anyone that has Cash App can receive and send money to you in a .01 seconds, Millisecond.
You can request pay from others so you and they don’t forget who owes who what
$5 for you and the person you refer
$1 off ANY COFFEE SHOP! That’s WAY more than 10%. If your drink costs a $1.50, that’s 66% off and now your drink only costs you .50 cents and you can do this every hour 🙂
Their 10% off rewards at various places and restaurants
Free Cash App Card
When you sign up, they allow you to choose a free cash app debit card. The card is awesome looking and you get to sign it and add the emoji of your choice if you want to. It’s like being able to customize your own debit card.
The card allows you to turn on bonuses for purchases that are applied to your account through cash app instantly!
No fees for normal bank deposits or withdrawals
They allow you to transfer money to the cash app and to your bank without fees (unless you want to expedite it) otherwise it takes a couple of business days to finalize the transfer.
Anyone that has Cash App can receive and send money to you in a .01 seconds, Millisecond.
Much like Venmo and PayPal, there is the convenience of being able to send and receive money instantly from anyone that has the app. All free of charge for the moment. Not sure if they’ll change that as they grow, but right now it is free.
You can request pay from others so you and they don’t forget who owes who what
There is a simple request function so that when you are out with friends and you have to cover someone’s bill you can instantly make the Cash App Request and no one will forget about owing or the amount that is owed. Avoid friendly and awkward arguments.
$5 for you and the person you refer
If your friend that owes you money doesn’t have the Cash App, that’s a win for you and them. Get your referral link easily from the App and text it to them and have them sign up to send you the money. Within minutes you’ll both be $5 richer and you’ll be paid back!
$1 off ANY COFFEE SHOP!
With the free Cash Card they give you, you get many perks.
One of my favorites is the dollar off and purchase at any coffee shop!
Starbucks, Dunkin, mom and pops coffee, doesn’t matter if it’s a coffee shop you get a dollar off.
You say “Too good to be true!” I say there are a few stipulations: your purchase has to be at least a $1.50 and you can only use it EVERY HOUR. hah! As if either of those were a down side.
I look for 5% off, 10% off, but a $1.00 off my $1.50 purchase? That’s 66% right there.
Which makes me a 🙂 customer, personally.
Their 10% off rewards at various places and restaurants
Not the least important but also with the Cash Card you get 10% off bonuses at various restaraunts right now.
Food places including but limited to Chick-fil-A, Buffalo Wild Wings, Panera, and Kroger just to name a few.
10% off any of these places add up for me because I’m a fan of these places. It might be a big deal for you, but I’m gonna eat here anyways so I might as well enjoy saving money while I do. Save money with 10% off Cash Card from the Cash App.
Swagbucks is an easy way to sit on your couch, watch tv, and make a little money while you’re doing it.
Not only that, here are some other ways you can use SwagBucks to save money:
Swagbuck exclusive activities (subscribe, download, try something for free.)
SB for signing up for something (credit cards, subs, etc.)
SB for taking trips
SB for booking hotels
SB for shopping online
SB for doing your taxes
Most anything you can think of doing SwagBucks might have an incentive for you and they may pay you $25 to do something you were already planning on doing.
So if you’re thinking about taking a trip, shopping somewhere, getting a flight or hotel, applying for a credit card, trying a new subscription, etc it’s worth your time to see ifSwagBucks might pay you to do itand you could save money in the process.
This is one of my personal favorite ways to passively save money. Having a cash back credit card is like having a discount on life. I use Capital One and Chase currently and I get 1.5% Cash Back on everything I buy with them. This is like getting money back on everything I buy that I was going to have to buy anyway.
If I buy gas, I save money, if I buy food, I save money, if I buy clothes, I save money. Anything I would normally have to buy or buy for fun I get a 1.5% discount.
Now, you might be thinking 1.5% isn’t that much. Okay. But think if you are spending $20,000 a year, which is a relatively small amount for yearly expenses for most Americans.
1.5% of $20,000 is $300. Adds up quickly when you put it that way.
Needless to say, using cash back credit cards for all my purchases passively saves me hundreds of dollars a year.
I don’t have to do anything extra, it’s a completely passive way to save money for me at this point. Once you’re approved you just swipe and save.
If you keep your credit card balance at $0 and only spend what you have you won’t get yourself into credit card debt.
Be money smart with your credit card. Some people think that having a credit card is “bad” and that you’ll just end up in debt, but it’s really a matter of will power on the hand that holds the card. If you spend it like you would spend cash and only spend what you’ve got in the bank you will save money and not get into debt.
With my credit cards like Capital One Quick Silver and Chase Freedom, I feel like I get a discount on life.
Let me restate, I get a percentage discount on EVERYTHING I BUY. Did you catch that? Every day I have to buy stuff. Food, Gas, Food, Gas, over and over again buying stuff, bills, gifts, etc all of it I get a discount if I can swipe my credit card to pay for it. Stuff I was gonna pay for anyways, if I am able to use the credit card, I get cash back and that saves me hundreds of dollars a year.
Now some people are VERY against credit cards. The percentage on owing them money is terrible. Do your best to never get into credit card debt.
For me personally, I just don’t overspend. I don’t spend money on my credit card that I don’t have in my bank account. Simple as that.
If I don’t have it, I don’t get it.
And I try to always stay up to date with my bills and pay on time. Realistically, I like have a balance of $0 when statement time comes around each month. These two good credit habits also help my credit score stay higher.
Capital One has it’s incentives, but Chase offers a few more, especially for signing up right now.
Check out these additional money saving benefits Chase is offering right now:
3% cash back the first year for new applicants
$100 referral bonuses
No Annual Fee
Unlimited access to your credit score
Purchase protection
And extended warranties
1.5% cash back on all purchases year round
No minimum to redeem cash back
Out of all of the above, the simple best way to save money passively this year is the 3% cash back. In the fine print they say that 3% is only for the first $20,000 you spend, but still it’s a no brainer deal.
That alone is roughly an extra $600 back in your pocket for doing little to no work. You just buy what you normally do, make regular payments to your account and you’ll be able to save more money.
Be sure to be advised on good credit building habits and be sure not to get into debt on any credit card as their interest rates are mostly destructive to your finances, but when handled correctly they will save you hundreds a year and thousands over your lifetime.
Using credit the right way will save you hundreds of dollars a year and thousands over your lifetime…
Also to be mentioned is chase rewards program.
When you use their app to manage your account (it’s the fastest and easiest way to do it) you can activate certain rewards depending on what they are offering.
They usually have a Walmart pick-up incentive.
This year I used their Turbo-tax incentive and Chase gave me $20 to use Turbo-tax. I was already going to go with turbo-tax so this was just a nice extra $20 for me. Thanks, Chase for the extra date night for me and the wife 😉
6. Bonus: percentage HACKING:
This is my favorite hack to save lots of money over each year.
And not many people talk about how to save money this way, so I’m excited to share it with you.
I call this percentage hacking or percentage stacking.
It’s simple in theory, but it does take a little prep work.
Let me lay out the an example scenario:
I want to buy a pair of shoes off of Amazon.
I look at all my options to get discounts and percentages off those shoes.
I use Ebates to get 5% off Amazon. I use my Chase Card to make the purchase giving me an extra 1.5% added to the Ebates discount. I check SwagBucks to see what percentages they are showing for shopping on for their site.
So either way I decide to go about it, instead of just using one of the save money techniques I talk about, I use as many as possible and that will allow me to stack and save money by stacking increasing percentages. That’s stacking percentages. This can also work with discount codes and promos that you can find online to go even further to save money. This does take a little extra work, but it’s fun and worth it.
I also join incentive programs for places I enjoy, like Eddie Bauer. They have an awesome reward plan and they have already given me $35-45 dollars worth of free gear since November.
Take action: If you only joined Ebates and Cash App from this post, which are both totally free to start, you would instantly make $15 just for signing up right now. And it would only take about 10 minutes. $15 for 10 minutes, that’s over a $1 a minute. That’s like making over $60 an hour!
What do you do to save money?
Do you have a save money tip that wasn’t discussed here?
What’s the most you’ve saved on a single purchase?
