Focus on Incremental Growth, Not Overnight Success
You wouldn’t expect to lose weight in a week, so why have that expectation for money?
We live in a time where everyone craves instant gratification. But you can’t build muscle overnight, and you certainly can’t lose 50kg overnight either, so why should it be any different for making money on Medium?
If there’s one thing history has taught us, it’s that small, consistent increases always beat sudden gains. Take Warren Buffett, for instance, who, in 2013, made $37 million every single day!
Now compare that to a lottery winner, who has a 70% chance of going broke and a 30% chance of going bankrupt.
Which would you rather be?
When it comes to Medium, you cannot rush and expect to win the lottery by going viral. Instead, you should be like Waren Buffet and play the long game.
Don’t underestimate the power of incremental growth. It’s not going to be quick and easy, but it is far more rewarding in the long run.
Tracking Your Metrics
Medium stats are one thing, but they don’t tell the whole story as they only reveal the number of views, reads and fans each story has gained daily.
But what about the number of articles published or the number of followers gained over time?
If you were to compare your performance with last month, then I can guarantee that you’re at least performing better now in one of those areas than you were previously.
There’s no point complaining about lowered views if your writing output has increased or the number of organic followers has increased. (I want to stress organic because there’s a difference between a person following you for the sake of it and a person that’s interested in what you write about)
Besides, thinking about lowered views isn’t going to help, but writing good quality stories will.
So what have I done differently? After reading an article from Michelle Loucadoux, MBA, about how she tracked some of her Medium metrics, I thought it would be a good idea to do the same.
To keep things simple, though, I only selected four:
- Number of Articles Published
- Number of Views
- Number of Followers
- Earnings
Of course, working in tech, I love a good graph that can tell a story, and after my fifth month of writing, I started to see progress!
My earnings increased from $1 in January to $63, while the number of followers went from 8 to 150. That’s a 6200% growth in earnings and a 1775% increase in the number of followers after only four months!
The beauty of visualising your metrics like this is that it’s highly motivating. I’m aware that I’ll see diminishing returns over time, but I’m pleased with the data for the time being.
I’m confident that if you were to create a graph with your metrics, you’d see a similar trend too.
Is Quality Still Important for Incremental Growth?
When it comes to Medium, quality always trumps quantity. I know this because I can see that when I’ve put a lot of thought and research into my stories, they get chosen for further distribution.
I’d rather have three stories that consistently make $1 a month than to have nine that no one will ever see.
Although I don’t directly track how many of my stories get chosen for further distribution, I was fortunate enough to have twelve out of twenty-two curated in April and ten out of eleven curated in March.
A lot of this comes down to taking the time to edit and rewrite drafts. Treat them well, and they’ll reward you long after getting published.
Older stories that are high quality don’t disappear. If they’re interesting and relevant to readers, they’ll continue to get views and generate earnings.
Imagine writing 100 articles that continuously generate $1 a month. It’s no longer a side hustle but a real source of passive income.
This is the power of incremental growth, and it’s a shame that many new writers forget about it.
We all want fast results, but as with anything in life, it takes time and effort. Don’t treat Medium any differently simply because you’ve seen someone else doing well.
Writing is a job, but unlike a job where you have a manager who can coach you and give you feedback, you are your manager. Start owning the responsibility to give yourself feedback, and the results will come.
Writing high-quality content all the time isn’t easy, and you’ve got to put in the work. But when you do, and you can visually see it, it’s like being hit with the biggest dopamine rush you could ever imagine.
Here are some lessons I’ve learned from writing on Medium: