30 Articles in 30 Days: The Results

I pledged to write an article every day in April. Here’s what happened.

Whew. I made it. By the grace of God and the skin of my teeth, I made it. Articles #30 and #31 were published, respectively, at 11:45 pm and 11:50pm on April 30.

So why did I immediately sit down to write a results article on May 1? Didn’t I want to take a well-earned rest before diving back into the daily grind?

Over the course of this challenge, I learned that consistent quantity matters. I am not going to lose the momentum I worked so hard to gain by slacking off, just because the month is over.

In the following article, I’ll:

• Reveal if I met my goals
• Show you the proof
• List all of the publications I used, and which are best for new writers
• Detail my top performing articles
• Wrap up with the lessons I learned

Did I meet my goals?

I had four goals for the challenge — other than the challenge goal itself to write and have published 30 articles in 30 days. I met three of the four goals.

1. Get 50 followers. ✅ 370% as many as in March! I started April with 17 followers, and ended with 74 followers, a net gain of 57 followers. Additionally, I also picked up 6 new followers for my publication, making a total of 63 new followers.
2. Connect with other writers. ✅ 850% as much as in March! Thanks to David Majister for creating a group specifically for people who have completed a 30-in-30 challenge. Since hard numbers are the goal of this results report, I wrote 95 responses during the month, up from 11 in March.
3. Increase my income by 8.5x. ❌ 3x as much as in March! I did increase my income — by almost three times! However, my goal was to increase it from $13 to over $100. I didn’t make that goal. I finished a little under $39. Still, not too shabby for my second month on Medium. And I’ve learned a lot about how to increase income.
4. Raise my visibility and reach. ✅ 265% as many views as in March! This was the goal I’m most happy about achieving. I published in 6 new publications, including heavy hitters like Curious and Start It Up (previously The Startup). My views jumped by about 265%, my reads jumped by 370%, and my fans jumped by 580%.

The Proof

I don’t expect you to take my word for it. Plus, I want to include the screen shots I went to so much trouble to make. First I’ll show you March, then you can see the improvement in April.

Views, Reads, and Fans

Average views in March: 16/day Highest views in March: 57 views on March 19 (article published in The Writing Cooperative) Lowest views in March: 1 view on March 2 (no article published)

Average views in April: 43/day Highest views in April: 134 views on April (2 articles published, in Start It Up and The Brave Writer) Lowest views in April: 5 views on April 2 (no article published)

The average number of views rose to about 275%. The high water mark for views rose to about 235%. The low water mark for views rose to about 500%.

Income

Here’s the statement from the Medium Partner Program, showing the income in March and April. Technically, I started writing in February, but that article was published on February 28 and earned 3 cents, so I count March as my first real month.

If you want to be official about it, April was 279% of March. However, if you call March “a little over $13” and call April “a little under $39”, you get a nice round 3x.

Publications

During the month, I had 15 articles published in 6 new publications:

• About Me Stories (1)
• Feedium (2)
• Writers’ Blokke (4)
• Start It Up (1)
• ILLUMINATION (6)
• Curious (1)

I also wrote for 3 publications I’d written for previously:

• The Brave Writer (3)
• The Writing Cooperative (1)
• Getting Ready for the New Day (12, my publication)

Of those, I highly recommend About Me Stories, Feedium,Writers’ Blokke, ILLUMINATION, and The Brave Writer for new writers. Curious and Start It Up share the same editor, who is wonderful, and are excellent publications for experienced writers. The Writing Cooperative gives preference to people who are paying members of their cooperative organization, so you’ll have to wait a while to hear back from them (or join their cooperative). It’s well worth it for the exposure if you have the time to wait.

Best performing stories

Here are my four best performing stories, in terms of total revenue. If you want to see all 31 articles, they’re at the bottom of the original pledge article.

This was a March story, published in The Writing Cooperative on March 19. It continues to be my best performing story, earning $6.51 in April. It’s an evergreen story, that continues to attract readers. I can only assume people like reading true stories of writers behaving horribly to editors.

This was published in my publication on April 25, close to midnight, then distributed on April 26. On April 26 and 27, it got nearly 2 hours of member reading time, and ended up earning $4.25. (By comparison, from April 25 — April 30, “Three Types…” only earned $.50. So had this been published earlier in the month, it would probably have been my best performer.)

This was published by Curious on April 17. Two days later, they made it an editor’s choice. At that point, it got distributed. It was later included in the Curious newsletter. It earned $3.80. The editor at Curious was wonderful to work with, and very helpful making this article shine.

Published by ILLUMINATION late on April 11, it was distributed on April 12. It was also included in the ILLUMINATION newsletter. It earned $2.94. This one also has the potential to be an evergreen story, as there are a lot of people out there self-conscious about their lack of math skills.

Lessons learned

I learned many things during this challenge. And I wrote about most of them, in my daily search for articles. Unlike many people who take the 30-in-30 challenge, I did not start the month with a backlog of articles to submit, or a plan for what to write when. I wanted to write approximately one article for my publication for every article published elsewhere, but other than that, I had no guidelines. I wrote as the spirit moved me.

I learned:

• Cover photos matter
• Writing a good intro matters
• Publishing consistently matters
• Doing cool things with Medium’s editor improves your read numbers
• Appealing to external views earns you more
• Keeping your stories in the sweet spot of 5–10 minutes gives the best engagement
• Finding your voice is crucial to finding your readers

Also, I can’t prove it, but I suspect that publishing articles during the daylight hours puts them in front of more readers than consistently publishing between 10pm and midnight. Once I’m not forced into the 1-article-a-day mode, if I finish an article for my own publication late at night, I’ll schedule it to publish the next morning.

Conclusion

The 30-articles-in-30-days challenge was exhausting, but totally worth it! I increased every metric I cared about, even if I didn’t increase them by as much as I’d hoped. (And I now have even more respect for the people earning the big payments from Medium!)

I learned lots of good information to improve my article writing. I also upped my game with regard to the quality of my writing, and found a consistent voice.

If you’re considering participating in the challenge for May, you should totally go for it. It will give your writing a rocket-powered boost.

Ready to have a better tomorrow?

I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you increase your confidence and get control of your life. If you follow this daily, you will level up your life very quickly!

Get the cheat sheet here!