1 Year on Medium — The Joys, Tribulations, and Results of Solopreneuring
Also — I’m back, baby! Did you miss me?
What a year it’s been! I first decided to pursue Medium earnestly around the end of September 2019, and I’m glad I did.
At the time, I had taken about half a year off to travel around the world, visiting friends, family, and discovering new ways to be lazy while walking around paradise islands.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life — other than the simple idea of not having to work for someone else ever again (if possible).
And 1 year later, I’m still wondering what to do!
But I have figured out a few things in these last 18 months:
- Habits are everything in life — and it sucks that they’re so easy to break while being unnoticeable when successful
- If you want high-quality results, you have to make high-quality decisions
- Health is something to be cherished and worked at every day — even if it’s just a little
- 35 isn’t too old to start another career
- Relationships are incredibly important — new or old, they always seem to pop back up unexpectedly wherever you look
- Peanut butter burgers are becoming more popular all over the world — and this brings me joy
1 year on Medium as a full-time job
This is my first time writing here in about 5 weeks, so I may be a bit rusty. But let me start with some juicy stats of what I achieved over the first 13 months on Medium.
- 260,000 article views, with 71,000 reads (seems like a bad ratio!)
- 46,000 comment views
- 2 ‘fast’ viral articles (48,000 and 16,000 views)
- 2 ‘slow’ viral articles (54,000 and 15,000 views)
- $4,200 earned in total (full-time hours ≠ full-time pay — welcome to entrepreneurship!)
- 6,000 followers on Medium, 4,500 on FB, 3,000 on Twitter
- 1 publication with 1,040 followers
- 3 podcast invitations, 4 requests to work together, 1 contract job offered
Depending on who you are and where you’re at in your own Medium journey (assuming you’re a creator) — you may think these stats are high or low.
The keen-eyed among you more seasoned Medium vets might’ve noticed those viral article views vs my total earnings is a bit — off.
That’s because they mostly went viral outside of Medium. A massive difference! Nonetheless, I still think it’s amazing to see that many people read my whacky creations.
1 Month off of Medium
Back in August, I decided to challenge myself to something I saw Shaunta Grimes mention a year or so ago.
She proposed simply publishing 1 article, every single day for 30 days — with an expected large increase in views afterward.
So, for the first time, I tried and mostly accomplished it (I think I missed 1 day).
And her theory definitely helped, although I didn’t achieve a huge increase. Looking back on it, my total views trended up about 20% that month. Which is great!
What I am sure of though, is that if I could keep that pace up indefinitely, the snowball effect would take hold and you’d eventually be reading the next Tim Denning’s writing here.
But I don’t think I have the state of mind to keep at it that much. Articles can take a lot of time to write if they aren’t just thought pieces.
And since most of my writing (probably about 80%) involves research and collection of data, I the amount of time to continue that pace leaves me with little room for other ventures.
Partly because of that, and partly because of some awesome festivals here in October (I live in a place with no COVID, don’t worry) — I took a break after getting a bit burned out.
And that 1-week break turned into 5 weeks with the flash of an eye.
But it was a nice break, I guess I needed it.
‘Cuz now I’m back with a renewed focus on what I want to work on and achieve over the next 12 months.
And an even stranger thing occurred while I was absent from Medium. My views actually went up — a lot. In the past 30 days my stories have been seen almost 80,000 times!
Compare that to just under 40,000 in September, not bad for 0 continued effort.
To be fair, that’s probably mostly thanks to Mr. Google — one of my articles went viral the last few weeks (a political one about news bias).
And Mr. Medium did not choose to reward me for that one — for 48,000 views I’ve received…drumroll please…$39!
Just remember going viral internally vs externally is a massive difference.
The 30-day earnings also only slightly dipped — which I expected to go way down.
Either way, I’m back and ready to jump into all these new changes I see on the platform. (Now where’s my Table of Contents function?!)
Lessons learned from 1 year on Medium and online
Perhaps you’re wondering why Kim Jong-un is dressed up as Superman and riding a rocket in the header image?
The ‘simple’ explanation is because — he’s in my first ever book!
I took the time off from Medium in October to work with an amazing local illustrator here and put the final touches on our silly creation.
It started as a bit of a side hobby project back in August, and as the ball got rolling I realized I needed to focus more on completing it.
It’s always a weird experience when something goes from a thought bubble in my head to something forming slowly on paper and screen.
And now, I have a physical copy of this weird satire creation being sent to me in the mail. Crazy!
But it was the start of a new recollection of how I want to proceed going forward.
You see, as much fun as I have writing on Medium, it’s not really sustainable unless I write what you want.
I’ve been a greedy boy this year. I only ever wrote what I wanted to write. What subject I was interested in that day, that week, or month.
I hear about something interesting, I read into it like a madman, then I’d curate the information and put it into a form of writing that I’d hoped could be useful to other crazy people with my interests.
And it worked — sometimes.
But it didn’t really work for earning any money — most of the time.
I realized that if I want to continue this non-corporate lifestyle, I have to move more towards the middle ground.
Where passion meets income.
I still believe I can find that sweet spot — and I set about creating massive charts to help me figure out just what that is.
So over the next 12 months, I’ll definitely continue writing on this amazing platform we call Medium — but I’ll be doing it in a more focused manner.
And I’ll be doing it less.
My obsession with researching and writing here kept me from pursuing some of the other amazing goals and projects I wanted to try this past year.
And although I did do a lot of cool things like create a webcomic and lose 50 lbs of fat in the gym — I left a lot of stuff on the table because of my habits.
And if you remember at the top of this story, the #1 thing I realized this year is that good habits create amazing results.
So Medium, I’m looking forward to seeing the results of another year of effort here. Just much more focused and not as much headless-chicken-running-around-with-a-keyboard style.
And hopefully, it’ll be more useful (and amusing) too!
So thanks for reading, it’s good to see you again.
P.S.
If you’re wondering about the book, feel free to check it out!
A bit of a warning though, it’s a weird one with some dark humor (to some).
It’s an adult children’s political satire book written and illustrated on the premise that Trump could read and write the ABC’s.
I also scheduled a few free download days over the next week for anyone that’s keen to take a look (and maybe leave a nice review?)
Here’s a few pages just to get the idea:
Keep up with my nutty writings on my free newsletter. As always, thanks for reading!
