Summary

A Medium writer concludes a two-week experiment comparing niche writing to generalist writing, sharing insights and personal reflections on the effectiveness and enjoyment of both approaches.

Abstract

The author of the article has conducted a two-week experiment to compare the impact of writing within a specific niche versus writing as a generalist on the Medium platform. The results, presented in the form of Medium stats and personal experiences, show an increase in views and engagement, partly due to a higher volume of work, cross-promotion, and getting published for the first time. The author expresses mixed feelings about the experiment, noting that while the niche topic of Mindfulness did not perform as well as hoped, the experience has provided valuable insights into personal writing preferences and the potential for success through repetition and time investment in a niche. The article concludes with the author's decision to stop the challenge, having learned that both niche and generalist writing have their merits, and that the choice between them depends on individual interests and goals.

Opinions

The author initially believed in the necessity of finding a niche to succeed on Medium, especially after changes to the payment model.
The experiment revealed that the author's niche articles on Mindfulness did not perform as well as expected, which could be due to various factors including the author's skill in writing about the topic, its popularity, or the interests of the author's followers.
Despite the perceived failure of the niche experiment, the author acknowledges that given more time, there could have been improvements in performance within the niche.
The author enjoyed the freedom of generalist writing, which allowed exploration of various topics and led to discovering new interests.
The author suggests that the decision to write in a niche or as a generalist should be based on personal interest and writing goals, with success potentially coming from consistent effort and high-quality output in any chosen approach.
The author emphasizes the importance of writing about topics that bring joy and personal satisfaction, advocating for a philosophy of doing what makes one happy to ensure repeated effort and potential success.

General vs Niche Writing Challenge With Medium Stats and Results

My Medium stats and results from week 2 of a pseudo experiment testing niche writing vs generalist writing

This is the second week’s wrapup of my current pseudo experiment to compare niche writing to generalist writing on Medium. For those curious, the idea came up as a counter to other Medium writers’ stance that creators on Medium can only succeed by writing in a specific niche, after the recent payment method changes.

Below are the three original stories:

Week 2 performance

I went into a deep rabbit hole of blogging over the last week and managed to write 19 articles — maybe a bit too much.

12 of the articles I published in https://medium.com/med-daily (go join it if you’re looking for a very positive author-editor group made by T.S. Johnson!)

2 articles I published in my new publication I called Bettering Business Rants, where I’m accepting all writers to come rant about anything related to business or workplace culture!

The other 5 articles, I finally tried submitting to publications as I’m trying my best to break out of curation jail.

I’m glad to say I’ve had a big leap in my stats this week! I’ll show those below in a moment.

I also got published for the very first time from applying, that was a pretty cool feeling for a new writer!

Be Careful What You Wish For In a Career — It Just Might Come True

My experiences after achieving many of my life goals by 35 — and how I had never been unhappier

medium.com

Summary of results

Compared to the 1st week’s result:

You can see the total views are much higher than before, which is likely due to several reasons:

My volume of work was much higher
I cross-promoted the other lists in each Medium list, it helped boost them a bit (that link contains most of my lists that help fellow Medium authors)
I got published for the first time (outside of Med Daily that is)

Takeaway

As T.S. Johnson pointed out in my last article, the above articles show that I’m doing two niches. It wasn’t my intent when I first set out on this mini-challenge, but I followed my instincts on what I wanted to write when I was in the mood.

For me, I enjoy sharing the research that I do, and I’ve spent an abundant amount of time (way too much) these past two months researching the subject of Medium — so I started sharing about that.

I do feel a bit disappointed with the results on the subject of Mindfulness, which was the ‘niche’ for this experiment. Perhaps I’m not good at writing on the subject. Maybe it’s just not a popular topic (although it has 48,000 tag hits, not huge, but it’s still in the top 100). Or maybe my followers just aren’t interested that much in the subject.

I’m not sure.

Challenge finishes

I am going to stop the challenge at this point, as I’ve learned a few important things from it.

These statistics don’t mean much because of the different posting times
I enjoy reading about mindfulness, and now hope to practice some forms of it, but I don’t enjoy writing about it
I tried writing about many other topics to get published and to be more ‘generalist’, in doing so, I’ve found other areas that I’m much more interested in — and can thus keep my new hobby rolling along

I’m glad I did it though and am looking forward to similar ‘experiments’ in the future.

My thoughts

I wish I had more definite, statistically backed conclusions to share with T.S. Johnson, but my experiment failed.

I won’t sit here and take the point that my ‘niche’ articles performed the worst, and therefore generalists can succeed. That’s not what happened.

My niche didn’t do well, but it was only for two weeks. If I had tried for 6 months straight, I bet the results would’ve improved quite a bit. I would’ve slowly gained followers that are interested in that subject. My writing in the area would improve. My research and knowledge would expand. I could become a mini-expert in the topic and then share that information.

I didn’t do that, but I am willing to try that for areas that I’m more interested in.

Time + Repetition = Success

I will follow the above adage and I’m sure I’ll continue to see results (I’ve had 2,500 views this month verse 700 last month already!).

Niche or generalist?

This experiment taught me the true answer to this question:

It depends.

If you need to write about many different subjects and topics to keep up with the writing habit, then the answer is ‘generalist’.

If you’re an expert in a field and want to grow a huge following over a few years like Ayodeji Awosika, then ‘niche’ is the answer.

If you want to write about several areas, that may or may not be connected, you can still grow huge followings if you are prolific at writing high-quality pieces. Just look at Shaunta Grimes or Tim Denning.

If your goal is to make a little bit of coffee money here and there, I’d say write whatever you want!

Actually, that’s my philosophy about most things in life.

Do what makes you happy and you’ll end up repeatedly doing it!

‘Rant’ over.

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