How I Got My First 1200 Views During My First Month on Medium

The secret is in leaving thoughtful comments on the articles I read

When I decided to start writing on Medium, my goal was to simply get a few people to see my work. I’m a very goal-oriented person, so I usually set specific goals for myself when I do something. But with Medium, I didn’t set a specific goal for myself. I didn’t have an exact number of views, claps, or followers that I wanted to get. I simply wanted to share my work with others.

I learned about Medium through a YouTube video from Shelby Church. I love writing and I’ve always wanted an audience to share my work with, and Medium would be the perfect place to do that. I would not only get to share my work with others, but I would also get paid for it.

I joined Medium on May 9th and started writing immediately. My first article was called “Life is a Mission” which I had written a few days before joining Medium. I published the article and shared it with one of my friends who read it, giving me my first view. And let me tell you, getting that first view felt incredible. I was so excited about Medium and all the stories that I could share with others on here. But, I never expected that my story would start getting views organically right off the bat.

The next day, I started to read a couple of articles from Sean Kernan, Tim Denning, and others. I fell in love with Medium even more. I wasn’t planning on subscribing to Medium at the time, but I ended up doing it because I loved every story that I read and I wanted to get the full experience.

As I was reading articles, I started leaving responses on them, which is how I got exposed to the community and started gaining my first views and followers.

The $1.80 strategy from Gary Vaynerchuk

Leaving responses and comments on the content that I consume is something I learned from Gary Vaynerchuck. He calls it the $1.80 strategy which consists of leaving your 2 cents on the top trending pieces of content on a social platform. He suggests that you leave comments on 9 of the top trending pieces of content across 10 different hashtags or niches every day. That totals to leaving your 2 cents on 90 pieces of content every day which amounts to $1.80.

I first started using this strategy to grow my Instagram account where I post videos of myself playing guitar. But then I started using it across other social platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn. And it wasn’t so much about gaining exposure anymore, it was about participating in the community. By sharing comments on the content that I consumed on a daily basis, I started to feel like I was giving back to the community.

By sharing comments and responses, you support the creator, you provide them with thoughtful feedback, and as an added benefit, you get more exposure to your work.

For that reason, I got into the habit of sharing comments and responses on almost every piece of content that I consume. Having said that, you don’t have to read 90 articles on Medium every day and leave one-liner responses on all of them.

That would take too long, and it wouldn’t be sincere.

Responding to articles is about participating in the community by leaving thoughtful comments, and supporting the creator by giving them constructive feedback.

This is one of the best ways to put yourself in front of people and gain exposure to your work.

Not only are you supporting the creator, but you also get to share your thoughts with others on the topic being discussed in the article. When people see your responses and engage with them, they could potentially check out your articles and start following you as well.

Here is an example of one of the responses I’ve left on an article:

The most important thing is to try to add value with your responses. I usually share what I like most about the article and a point/message from the article that stuck out to me the most. I then think about any other valuable points that I could add to the topic being discussed and share them in my response.

Pro tip: I always end my responses by thanking the author for sharing their work and I usually mention their name somewhere in the response — either at the beginning or at the end.

The amount of organic growth you get on Medium using this strategy is incredible. By sharing only a few responses on different articles, I started gaining traction and that translated into followers and views on my stories.

Over the past month, I’ve left more than 150 responses on articles that I’ve read which have been viewed more than 1200 times. From those 1200 views, 94 of them have been on my published stories, which might be a small number, but it’s a great start.

These are some of my highest viewed responses:

The takeaway

I consider my first month on Medium a success. I now have more ambitious and specific goals for my second month and the next year to come, but for now, I’ve exceeded my expectations and I’ve definitely achieved my goal of getting a few people to see my work.

Finally, if there’s one thing you should take away from this story, it’s that being sincere and participating in the community is the most important thing. You might not get tens of thousands of views on your articles and make thousands of dollars from your articles during the first couple of months on Medium; but if you’re sincere, if you keep persisting and participating in the community; if you keep engaging with other creators on Medium and value every person who reads and engages with your work, you will reach the goals that you have for yourself on Medium.

So, I encourage you to start getting more involved with the community by leaving thoughtful responses on articles that you read.