How To Build A $500/Hour Writing Coach With AI In 30 Minutes
Today I’m going to blow your mind.
Get a pen and paper.
First, let me tell you a story.
How I Got Into Medium’s Biggest Publication As A 23-Year-Old Loser
Back in 2017, there was this publication on Medium called The Mission. It was the biggest publication on the platform with over 500,000 followers.
Back then I was averaging 3,000 views a month, and I realized pretty quickly that writing for publications on Medium was the only way to get views there..
SO I set out to write for the Mission.
The only problem was, folks who wrote there were CEO-types who had MBA’s and stuff. I was a 23-year-old kid making $500 a week.
But I did just go on a 4-month road trip, made money freelancing, and was a full-time digital nomad.
Maybe I could find a way into the pub..
So I made a spreadsheet.
I copied The Mission’s last 100 articles into it, along with titles, intros, likes, comments, and anything else I thought pertinent.
Then I did a word analysis of the headlines. There was a tool that counted how many times a word, or phrase, showed up in a given body of text, and I found certain words and phrases that were repeated in these 100 headlines.
‘Cool,’ I thought. ‘So if I work these into my headline, it’ll already “look” Mission-ready.’
Then I analyzed the introductions. After a few hours, I found numerous patterns.
I also studied the word count of a typical Mission article, and how it was structured. I scienced the crap out of it, y’all. I really did.
And then I took time to think, carefully, about what kind of article I could write, and I came up with this one: 6 Surprising Advantages Traveling Gave Me In The Job Market.
Most Mission articles were listicles.
“Surprising” was used A LOT in the 100-article sample.
So was “Advantages”
So was “In The Job Market”
I gave The Mission exactly what it wanted, and a few weeks later, they published this article. It got 2,000 views and 80+ likes in mere hours.
Once I got into The Mission, my career on Medium took off, and I became somewhat of a recognized name on the platform as I sent in a new article to them 2-3 times a month.
I made a full-time living on Medium from 2018-2021, and it started right here—by getting into The Mission.
To Get Better, Try Studying What Works
My point is, understanding what works is very important.
Some of you might say “No Tom! I just want to write like I want to write!”
If so, you might be misunderstanding me a little..
I’m not saying you need to copy every aspect of people’s strategy online…
I AM saying that this game we’re playing is based on attention, and knowing how other people get it can be very helpful.
It’s kind of like a “know the rules so you can bend them,” type deal.
Maybe you tweak your headlines slightly to get more clicks, or write your introductions a little differently to hook folks more while keeping 90% of your style in tact.
I mean, if you wanted to write Fantasy books, wouldn’t you read and study Stephen King or Tolkien just to understand what they’re doing?
I don’t see why that same principle can’t be applied to writing online.
Which brings me to AI..
How To Do An Analysis Of Popular Substack Newsletters In Mere Minutes
It took me 25 hours to do an analysis of The Mission’s content.
But you’re in luck…
There are AI tools, right now, that can automatically do all the analysis I did in 10 minutes.
And what’s cool is you can then take this analysis and use it to improve your own writing.
Let me show you.
How To Use Manus To Analyze Popular Substack Newsletters
Manus came out a few months ago, and it rocked the AI world. It’s an AI Agent, and can do complex, multi-step tasks in minutes.
To give you an analogy, ChatGPT is like a textbook you can talk to, while Manus is like an intern who can go off and do stuff for you.
Great.
1. Create A Free Account On Manus
Okay, so go to Manus for me.
You can sign up for a free account, and they give you a bunch of credits at sign up you can use to do your first analysis.
Manus runs on credits, and you get 300 new credits a day on the free plan.
If you want more credits, you can sign up for the Basic, Plus, or Pro Plan which gives you a monthly stipend of credits in addition to 300 new credits a day.
Great, so the other day I tried it out for the first time and used it to analyze my friend Landon’s Substack.
His articles seem to be doing really well, and I wanted to understand what audiences resonated with most.
I wasn’t sure how good Manus was, so I gave it this (very basic) prompt to test it out.
2. Give It This Basic Prompt
I want you to look at Landon's Substack publication, take a look at his top 30 articles in terms of like counts, and create a document breaking down what his most popular content types are. Analyze his blog post headlines, introductions, and the actual focus of what he's writing about. Create a document I can download with all the relevant information.
https://landonpoburan.substack(.)com/For you, you could just use this template and copy/paste whoever you like reading in your niche into the specified lines below..
I want you to look at ______'s Substack publication, take a look at their top 30 articles in terms of like counts, and create a document breaking down what their most popular content types are. Analyze their blog post headlines, introductions, and the actual focus of what they're writing about. Create a document I can download with all the relevant information.
__(Substack URL here)__I really wasn’t expecting much, but I was blown away by what happened next..
It immediately accessed Landon’s Substack and started reading his top-performing articles.
Within minutes, it wrote up a 10-page document listing off his 30 most popular articles, along with top content trends, and analysis of his introductions and blog structure.
Here’s a few of his Top 30 articles.
Here’s the content analysis, listing off the kinds of things he typically writes about, and what percentage of the time he does so.
It’s pretty dope, and it saved me at least 10 hours of researching work.
Important Notes on Manus
This one action took up about 1,000 credits.
If you use your credits little by little, you can do 10 or so of these analysis per month on the free plan alone.
If you do this, continually, for a few months?
Yeah, you’d probably be more of a blogging expert than 99.9% of people.
Also, I wanted to let you know you can now do this with Claude. You don’t necessarily need Manus. But Manus CAN get the job done well.
How To Write Better Substack Articles With These Research Documents
Now that we used AI to research our peers, here comes the fun part..
We’ll use these documents + AI assistance to help us:
Get better ideas
Write better headlines
Write better introductions
Write better articles
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: I AM NOT ABOUT TO TEACH YOU HOW TO USE AI TO WRITE FOR YOU.
I’m going to teach you how to use AI as a guide AS YOU WRITE your own article.
“What you talkin about, Willis Tom?”
Let me show you.
1. Use AI To Analyze How Your Writing Differs From Others
Go into Claude, or any AI of your choice, and share some of the research documents you just made (and downloaded) by dragging them into the chat window.
Now go into your own article archive, and copy/paste the last 15 articles you’ve written into a Google document.
I’m talking headlines, likes, comments, and the full blog post text.
Name the document something like ‘My Articles,’ download it, and drag it into the chat window to attach it.
Now ask AI some version of..
“How do my articles differ from the articles of my peers on Substack? Analyze them from the standpoint of headlines, introductions, blog post structure, focus, and general ideas.”
It will give you a goldmine.
This alone will be worth $1,000+ of coaching you might pay a ‘Substack Expert’ for.
2. Use AI As A Coach To Help You Write Better Articles
Here’s the fun part.
Other AI-obsessed people would probably teach you how to auto-generate blog posts right now.
But me? I want you to turn AI into your own writing coach. I want it to GUIDE YOU to write better articles.
So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to ask AI stuff like…
“Given what I write about, and the patterns that show up in my writing, how can I blend what I’m doing with some of the ‘growth strategies’ you see my peers employing in a way that feels natural and organic to how I write and present myself online?”
After it responds with whatever it’ll respond with.. ask it..
“Okay cool. Be my writing coach. Can you ask me some questions that you think could guide me towards an idea for my first blog post that combines my own unique writing style with the strategy of others? And after I respond, can you help me polish my raw thoughts into a single great idea for a blog post?”
Respond to it, and watch the magic happen.
Great.
After it gives you an idea, ask it something like..
“Cool, be my writing coach again. I want you to help guide me through making this idea into a full blown blog post in the style of the peers I’m trying to emulate a little more. Can you help guide me towards writing an introduction for my article by asking me certain questions, and reminding me of certain things my peers are doing to keep in mind? After I respond, can you do the same thing as I write out the rest of the article?”
If you pay attention, you’ll notice that AI is not writing anything for you.
It is simply trained on the strategies of writers who you look up to, and helping you implement and internalize those lessons via coaching, questions, and even some light editing.
It is not writing anything for you.
My friends, I’ve helped you build a $500+ per hour writing coach that knows all the strategies of your peers on Substack, and helps you implement them flawlessly.
Use This Workflow Sparingly
I must say something important.
Use this workflow sparingly.
This can help you incorporate other people’s strategy, but the main objective is to help you improve as a writer.
I still want you to innovate, explore, and test random ideas and hunches. That’s what makes Substack diverse and fun to come back to every day.
Now, these prompts SHOULD just help you blend your style with other’s strategy—not just replicate other’s strategy—but still.
I think it’s not a good idea to become overly reliant on this workflow.
Save this article. You’ll probably need to come back to it. Let me know how it works for you if you’ve tried it!
Thanks for reading!
Tom Kuegler
Amazing. A very well-guided approach. Thanks for sharing.
I've been using ai as a user research tool on a project. These tips will allow me to go deeper and ask better questions than I have been, to get even more accurate results. Thanks.