I went to the oldest city in Europe

The stone ruins of Knossos glinted in the misty morning sun.

I arrived just after opening time, and barely anyone else was there.

The sky was cloudless and blue, and the air was crisp in late January in Crete.

Knossos is a 4,000-year-old Minoan palace that inspired the myth of the Minotaur and its labyrinth. It is a palace, but large enough to be considered a city - the oldest known city in Europe.

What’s cool about much of my work is that the small adventures I take, whether palace visits or trips down the road to get milk, inform much of the content I create for my business.

I write emails with stories about what I get up to, I share a lesson if I can, and I promote tools for a price at the end.

This way, I’m monetising my walks, trips and my everyday encounters.

Doing this creates leverage. And it lets me explore my dream of writing fiction, which I've only started doing seriously a few months ago. I'm in Crete right now working on my first novel, about a man living in the woods of northern Finland in post-collapse Europe. It also features huskies.

This would not have been possible without the work I put into generating attention with my writing and attracting subscribers.

It took me some years of writing consistently online to build this newsletter of people who trust what I say and enjoy what I share. Though it doesn’t need to take this long when you create with intention.

When you have a newsletter, particularly one in which you share regular personal stories, you can monetise your daily experiences and personal expertise.

Whether you're talking about what you learned as a leader in business, a UX designer, a parent, or someone who overcame anxiety, you can create leverage and freedom through remote income creation.

Do things you enjoy, write about them online, and offer your readers tools like courses or coaching to help them do similar things. That's a paying income stream with impact.

This starts by creating an online publishing habit.

I learned it’s much easier to form a habit when I know how to create things that engage people.

If you want help writing things that make people actually want to subscribe to you, my course Online Writing Alchemy shows you exactly how.

It covers 16 secrets for writing that grabs attention, builds trust, and gets shared, plus writing guides, prompts, and a 6-month roadmap.

I'm dropping the price for a special end-of-January sale.

It’s $147 today, down from $397. The sale ends this Sunday, February 1st, at 3 pm ET.

Get Online Writing Alchemy here.

Alex