My 1 Mistake That Cost Me Serious $$$ On Medium
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I’ve been writing on Medium.com since February 2022. I wanted an easy entrance into the world of online blogging, and to make some cash on the side, too.
Pretty quickly, I was able to reach the 100 followers threshold so that I could apply to the Medium Partner Program. I was ecstatic! It only took me 2 stories from the start of the program to go viral. My story earned me 5k+ views and $163.
Afterwards, my stories rarely saw below 200 views, with another 3 stories ranking anywhere from 1k — 12k views. In the spirit of full transparency, I’ve made over $1,000 on Medium — not too shabby!
But then I started traveling around the country working remotely. Aaaand I found excuses not to write each Monday night like I had been for weeks. What can I say — exploring a new city was more exciting than writing my next article! Skipping my weekly Medium articles went on for 3 weeks.
I was excited about my next article, and thoroughly thought through the content and how it would appeal to my audience. Unfortunately, I’m absolutely sure that taking a few weeks off from writing allowed the infamous Medium algorithm to punish me.
My last 3 stories have only seen about 60 views, which is the same quantity as the first stories that I wrote, when I only had 100 followers versus the 1,500 I have now.
One might argue — hey! Maybe it’s not the Medium algorithm, but the quality of your stories that have changed. It’s possible the titles of your stories aren’t as intriguing as they once were. This is definitely possible, however considering how much I’ve learned from myself and other writers on Medium over the last few months, I at least expect my views to stay the same or slightly increase.
So what does this mean for you and me?
I am making it my personal mission to share this fatal mistake with my Medium followers, to make sure that if you’re on an upward path with your reads and earnings, that you continue writing consistently to continue to see success.
I’ve seen other writers share that they do whatever it takes to stay on their writing cadence — even if it means pumping out a B+ quality story in 30 minutes. Something is (in this case) better than nothing.
Speaking of finding and keeping success on Medium, I’ve only written in 1 publication, and I found that it had no impact on the success of my blog post. Has anyone else found the same outcome? Or when you write for publications, do your articles receive higher number of views? Let me know in the comments!
