WRITING

100 Days of Writing: Day 20 — Getting to 100 Followers

A glimpse into my writing journey

On Feb 1st, 2022, I embarked on a 100 days writing challenge, where I aimed to write one story per day on Medium.

I’ve decided to do a check-in every 10 days. The last one was here. And today, I will give you my progress on day 20.

Still on track

I have managed to write 20 articles in 20 days. And that makes me very happy, as the quality is still there, and I managed to produce articles of over 500 words.

There have been days when I had to go to sleep late. But the point was to produce one single article per day, and I did it.

Wrote an About me page

I also created an about page that I’m proud of.

Full disclosure, I had written a lengthy one last year that I never published. It was an endless series of events from my childhood to the present year. I guess I had confused the article with a full-fledged memoir!

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I like to read long “About me” articles. But I had several people read mine, and they gave up reading after a few paragraphs, plus it was a little depressing at times.

So I took as a model an article structure used by an experienced writer (unfortunately, I lost track of the author's name). And it seems I managed to make my story entertaining enough since many people have enthusiastically commented on it.

Started a series on my productivity system

I also started a series of articles about my paper-based productivity system, which I call “Daily Done”.

It’s probably not for everyone since many people prefer to use digital tools right now. But it is a time-tested system that I still use to this day.

Here are the advantages of a paper-based system in my opinion:

1. You can’t write a thousand tasks on it, so it tends to maintain a reasonable number of tasks, simply for lack of space.
2. It is very flexible, you are not constrained by the limitations of a given software.
3. It is a physical presence you can’t ignore

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t manage tasks exclusively on paper. I like to use Google Calendar to organize meetings, and during my work, we have a system of support tickets to collaborate with my clients.

But I also write down a lot of my personal daily tasks on paper, which helps tremendously!

Started working on my lead magnet

Yesterday, I did this cover (see below) as I want to create a free gift for my upcoming email newsletter.

But I got some feedback telling me this is not catchy enough, so I’ll probably change this (you can still tell me what you think about this in the comments).

Getting to 100 followers

On the last check-in, I said I had done nothing to get followers, and I admitted I might need to work on it.

As a reminder, the “100 followers” milestone is critical on Medium as it allows you to get accepted to the Partner Program, which allows getting paid for your articles.

So what I did was search for articles with the tag “100 followers”, who are looking for followers.

It seems I’ve been lucky as this month, Medium sent a warning email to every people who are a partner but don’t have 100 followers. How is it possible that some partners have less than 100 followers? This is because the 100 followers threshold was not a criterion to get accepted as a partner a few years ago.

The deadline to get a hundred followers is March apparently, which means many Medium users are trying to get a hundred followers at the moment and create posts asking for followers.

So what I did was to search for the posts with the tag “100 followers”.

Then I followed people who commented on these posts. I did not follow everyone but many of them. For each follow, I tried to read one or two of their articles when I could and leave some comments, as I do prefer to know someone before following them.

Then, the writers I had followed subsequently followed me back. And this has boosted my follower count.

I also met many great writers and read some brilliant articles that inspired me.

My statistics

Now let’s see my statistics.

First, the story stats:

As you can see, my views improved last week. And the number of views exploded today.

This is because I spent a lot of time commenting on other writers’ posts, and these writers returned the favor by reading my articles.

I’ll admit it’s a little artificial at times, but it helps develop your audience.

Now let’s see the audience stats:

As you can see, the count of followers is 54 on this chart. But this count is not up to date.

Right now, the actual number of followers is 89:

And I will probably have reached the hundred followers milestone by the time you read this article.

It surprised me how I increased the number of followers so fast.

I hope these new followers will be engaged in my content. But obviously, I don’t expect many of them to become my true fans.

My secret sauce

Once again, this is not really a secret sauce since I posted this plan right from the beginning.

But here’s how I’m doing with the habits I had in mind while starting this challenge:

Developing consistency and motivation

• I will develop a habit of writing for one hour each morning when I wake up. This one is still going strong, I’ve been writing for more than 1 hour of course since I’m so much engaged in that challenge.
• I will do calls with my accountability partner to help me stay focused on my goals. I still don’t have my new accountability partner yet, I need to work on this one.
• I will actively participate in various writers’ communities — currently, I’m part of the Write Useful Books and ILLUMINATION slack workspaces. I still participated in these communities but a bit less, as the rhythm of writing quality articles was challenging.
• Other than that, I keep using a spreadsheet to keep track of my articles, and I keep refining my writing process.

Finding inspiration

• I will read medium articles and follow interesting writers that I enjoy. I kept reading a lot of articles thanks to the Medium app on my smartphone. And I’ve found new great writers thanks to the “100 followers” articles I read lately.
• I will read a book each day for at least 30 minutes. I still did not finish the book Contagious, I’m about 67% in the book right now. I will post an article about it once it is finished.
• I will do daily walks in nature. Yes, I did that again.
• Other than that, I tried to generate content sometimes by dictating the content, but I’ve not yet refined the process.

Avoiding burnout

• I will do meditation or take a nap each morning after publishing my daily article. I’m often doing a relaxation technique called the Body Scan, using a voice recording by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It helps!
• I will do vigorous exercise during my walks in nature. Still doing it!
• I will write articles in advance. I still don’t have that many articles in advance, but I’m working on it.
• Other than that, I like to have extrovert neighbors coming home sometimes and having a good laugh together. It helps to get in a positive mood!

Ensuring I write quality articles

• I will never publish an article the same day I wrote the first draft so that I can edit it properly. Still disciplined with this, while it’s sometimes hard (sometimes I go to sleep late).
• I will use Grammarly to spot my grammar mistakes. Still using it, and it’s a great tool.
• I will practice writing exercises, such as studying my favorite authors and reusing their writing plans. As I said, I did reuse a writing plan. This was the one for my “About me” article. And the structure helped me to write a great article.
• Other than that, I try to think about what I’m going to write well in advance to increase the insight density of my articles. It’s not always easy to do.

The 10 posts I wrote since the last check-in

Lastly, here’s the list of stories I wrote since the last check-in in case you’ve missed them:

11. Stop Agonizing Over Painful Problems With the Minority Report Principle 12. Friday Evening Hangover — How to Get Productive When You Don’t Feel Like It? (not published yet, submitted to “The Startup” publication) 13. About Me — Alex Philippe 14. Daily Done: Part 1 — A Sustainable Productivity System 15. Daily Done: part 2 — The Daily Review 16. Daily Done: Part 3 — A Simple Prioritizing System 17. Daily Done: Part 4 — The Daily Plan 18. How Jon Kabat-Zinn Saved Me From Stress and Burnout (not published yet, submitted to “Better human” publication) 19. How to Stay Focused at Work Despite Constant Online Interruptions (finished but not published yet) 20. Break Free From Procrastination by Washing Your Hands (finished but not published yet)

Also last Friday, I published my article number 8 : 12 Fascinating Facts About Jack Ma and the Rise Of Alibaba (I think it’s a great one, but sadly, it got rejected 2 times in major publications “The Startup” and “Making of a Millionaire”).

Also, the story “Unstoppable Writing: 3 Easy Hacks to Unleash Your Creative Writing Flow” (article number 6) got rejected by major publication “The writing cooperative”, and I’ve now submitted it to “The book mechanic”.

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I hope you enjoyed this article. As you can see, many things happened during these last 10 days, and I’ve had a fair share of discoveries. I hope this inspires you on your writing journey!