Here’s Why Your Personal Story FLOPPED on Medium
Just tell us about yourself!
There is some common wisdom on Medium that suggests that simply sharing your personal life stories is all that you need to do to make an impact and create successful stories.
However, that is simply not the case, and I recently discovered this truth yet again.
When I published a story about a recent trip downtown to a dog parade in which Lily dog participated, I knew that there was at least some chance that it wouldn’t be a smash hit.
That said, I wanted to test the waters with this type of story and see what people might think of it. So, I plunged ahead.
The results… Well, they were even worse than I expected.
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Why I Suspected it Might Not Perform Well
I had my suspicions that this article wouldn’t do as well as normal.
The timing was off when I published it (late on a Saturday afternoon) and I wasn’t on for nearly as long as I would have liked to interact and engage with other writers.
My gut feeling was that both of these things would cause the article to underperform.
Additional reasons for this belief include:
- The article was NOT about writing on Medium
- The article was NOT my usual style of writing
- My audience is typically not as online in the later afternoon, and particularly on a weekend
Still, I was a bit surprised that this piece performed as poorly as it ultimately did.
The Earnings Are Less Than a Dollar
Sadly, this piece has brought in less than a dollar.
In fact, I have only seen earnings of $0.55 on the piece to date.
That’s definitely a rough outing for one of my pieces.
I am for $10 or better per piece, and it is certainly not heard of for some of my pieces to earn $15-$20 regularly.
I have even had a few that crossed over the $50 mark. So, a $0.55 piece is definitely something to avoid.
Are There Any Positives from This Experience?
There are a couple of lessons that I took away from this experience.
First, it is NOT true that your personal stories will always do well on Medium.
People like to say this because there are a number of personal stories that have taken off on Medium, but don’t anticipate that this will always be the case for your work.
Secondly, I learned that I should stick very carefully to a publishing schedule that involves putting work out only when I know that my audience is likely to be around and when I am able to engage with them.
Finally, I did take away the experience of getting to share my work more broadly with my loved ones.
I sent a friend link to the story to my dad, and he ended up posting it on his social media account.
Friends and family got to see it (for free), and that is still valuable to some extent in my book.