MEDIUM
How My Attempts To Emulate the Success of Others On Medium is Going
I made one dollar… nearly
When Burk wrote a story about what is attractive according to science, he got 1000s of views and earnt a few hundred dollars for his piece. His success inspired me to write my own story based on one of the studies he’d quoted...
That didn’t do well, so I tried a more provocative and controversial approach…
It did slightly better, but neither earned even one dollar.
Moving on…
When Edward John questioned the wisdom of Eckhart Tolle, his story got thousands of reads and earned a three figure sum. So I thought I’d write my own story about Eckhart Tolle.
It garnered 75 views and earned $2.54. Oh well.
I don’t give up easily!
When Mike Lewis wrote about how much money he made self-publishing 8 books on Amazon, getting thousands of reads and earning three figures for his story, I was inspired! I wrote my own story about how much I made self-publishing 10 books on Amazon KDP.
It received 400 views, mostly external, and earned $1.45. Disappointing. But who knows… maybe someone bought a book!
When The Garrulous Glaswegian wrote about a blogger who was sued for using images off the internet without permission, it reminded me of the time I received a £1000 fine for a former colleague’s error at work. The Glaswegian’s story had done very well, attracting lots of claps (and presumably decent earnings), so I wrote my own story.
It got 160 views and earnt $3.09. Well, it did better than the others, I guess, but it didn’t earn as well as I’d hoped.
The moral of the story
Apart from the obvious answer, don’t give up the day job… the moral of the story is that trying to write your own version of someone else’s concept is not necessarily going to emulate their success. It seems these stories are often doomed to fail.
Sometimes it’s just luck that theirs got traction and yours didn’t. Other times, it might be that they have a unique way of telling it, and sorry, but you just don’t. A hard lesson.
Anyway, there’s still time. Perhaps my $1 stories will pick up in 2022.
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