Why Originality Is Overrated
Especially if you want to make money from your writing
There’s a version of the “Be original” advice is true… and another that is mostly useless.
“Write something nobody has written before. Find your unique voice. Don’t just do what everyone else is doing.”
Fine.
But ask the person giving you this advice how much money they make from their unique, original, never-been-done-before work.
The answer is usually not much. Also, is there really something “original” left to create?
The Samwer brothers built a billion-dollar company by copying
Oliver, Marc, and Alexander Samwer looked at successful American internet businesses and replicated them in Europe before the American originals could expand.
Groupon became CityDeal. eBay became Alando. Zappos became Zalando. They didn’t even pretend otherwise. The strategy was to take a proven model, execute it in a new market faster than the original company can move. And sell!
Rocket Internet, their vehicle for this, was worth $3.6 billion at its 2014 IPO.
Nobody in Silicon Valley gave them credit for originality. Nobody needed to. The results were the results.
SEO doesn’t care about originality at all
If you’re a blogger writing for search traffic (which is important even for Medium and Substack writers), just know that Google doesn’t reward novelty. Mostly.
It rewards relevance, authority, and match to search intent.
The most traffic-driving articles online are often the tenth version of “how to do X” or “best tools for Y.” Because those are the things people are searching for. Still.
Writing a beautifully original essay that nobody is searching for will get you beautiful, original crickets.
Writing a well-researched comparison of three tools that 50,000 people search for every month will compound for years.
The numbers behind what that traffic pays: How Much Does Medium Pay For 1000 Views. I’ve mapped out exactly how SEO works as a traffic source in practice: How I Made SEO My #1 Traffic Source on Substack.
Novelty-seeking
Writers who spend their time trying to find totally original topics often end up writing about nothing anyone cares about.
Writers who take something people are already interested in and bring their specific, irreplaceable perspective to it are often the ones I keep reading.
That business is still a b*tch.
Writing is hard regardless. But “find a topic only you can write about” is a much more actionable goal than “find a topic nobody has covered.”
One of those is possible. The other really isn’t.
The Bottom Line
Copy the format. Copy the topic. Copy the structure if it works.
Don’t copy the voice, the experience, the specific details that make it yours. AI can’t copy that either.
That’s the version of originality that matters. The rest is just anxiety wearing a creative hat.