6 months on Medium — how I got 50,000 views

Lessons from 6 months of publishing several times a week on Medium

Today marks my 6-month anniversary with Medium. In those 6 months, I’ve accumulated more than 50,000 views.

This is the story of how I did it.

What getting 50,000 views looks like

Here are my stats over the last 180 days:

As you can see, growth has been pretty steady, coming in a few spikes.

This is typical stuff as far as growth goes. Not so smooth, but coming and going, with bigger and bigger spikes as time goes by. One day, the algorithm gods decide to pick up a few stories, and a spike forms.

Another typical component is the correlation between the number of fans (760) and the amount of money ($781).

In the end, that’s the goal of the platform, to push content that makes people engage. And so, the more engagement you create, the more you are rewarded by the platform, the more money you make.

Something else that’s typical, but that you can’t quite read on this graph, is the spread of views per article.

If you are familiar with the law of Pareto (the 80/20 rule), this is another example: 80% of my views come from 20% of my stories. Actually, more than half of the total views come from a single story. But as I’m adding more and more articles, I see this trend going down a bit, as some of my most recent pieces also start getting more views.

Overall, this makes me happy.

Especially when I remember all the SEO work I did for my blog, and never getting near those kinds of results, even after a couple of years. This month, I’m confident I’m going to hit 20,000 views.

Here’s what I did to get those results

Analyzing a graph is nice and all, but I’m betting you are dying to know HOW I did it, and how you can do it too.

Well, it all comes down to one thing: I write a lot.

There are currently 54 stories published on my profile. That’s 9 stories per month, 2 to 3 stories per week. And my idea list is filled with 72 ideas for the future, 13 of which I am currently drafting, 2 are just waiting for me to add the finishing details, and 1 is currently being reviewed by a publication.

Yeah, it’s a lot of writing. About 15 hours worth every week. That’s without counting the writing I do for my other online projects.

I write when I wake up, before I go to bed, and when I’m on the bus. Writing is almost my baseline at this point.

The bottom line is: write and publish.

Then you can worry about…

What works on Medium

Unless you are already writing a lot, what I’m going to say next won’t be useful.

But when I said ‘I write a lot’, I don’t mean I just… type a lot of words on my keyboard. There’s a bit more thinking involved. Specifically, what I’m trying to do every time I write is improve.

Improve what?

Depends on my mood, the piece and the weather. But mostly, I like to concentrate my energy on the aspects of my stories that give me the best return on investment:

• the idea
• the title
• the subtitles
• the structure
• the value
• the personal touch

Notice I didn’t say grammar, spelling or length. Those are not as important.

The stronger the idea, the easier the writing is. The better the title, the more eyeballs you’ll attract. The better the subtitles, the more people will read. The better the structure, the more easily your idea will get across. The stronger the value, the more engagement you’ll get. The more on-point the personal touch, the more people will remember you and come back to read more of your stuff.

And yes, when I look back, it’s when I was good at all of those that the magic happens and stories are picked up by the algorithm.

Once you nail this part, views follow.

But…

There is one thing I wish I started doing much earlier

I knew about this. But I didn’t quite know how to do it. And I let this small inconvenience get in the way for months.

Submitting to publications.

If you are new to Medium, know that you can submit your stories to publications. Which are like curators of Medium stories that people can follow. The story you submit, if accepted, will be published on the publication profile AND on yours. You’ll still keep the benefits, but you’ll get more eyeballs on your content.

I started submitting stories at the end of February. Two of my stories have been accepted so far. That’s free eyeballs for me.

It’s not completely revolutionary, though. Your writing is as strong as your writing. No matter the amount of people it is put in front of, if your title is weak… your title is weak and won’t get many views. Even if it’s accepted.

So you really do have nothing to lose by submitting.

Just remember to find, read and follow the guidelines for each publication.

No matter the HOW though, what matters, in the end, is what you get out of the whole experience:

What getting 50,000 views gets you

781 dollars in 6 months has potential, I’ll give you that, but it’s not exactly what’s going to get you to get up next week and keep writing 15 hours a week. So it’s a good thing writing here gets you so much more than just the opportunity to publish and make money.

You should treat Medium like a training ground where you get to pursue ideas, think out loud and develop your skills.

Writing here is not my sole online project. I have an online school of French called Just French It, and I also help French entrepreneurs learn to manage online tools. For both these projects, I have to write. Newsletters, podcast episodes, guides, workshops, even stories to use as material for French lessons.

So everything I’m learning here is applicable elsewhere.

And I see direct results from it:

But that’s not all. I can also see how much more articulate I am on the topics I chose to write about here.

The other day, I was at a dinner with a few friends. And came the topic of AI. Those friends don’t use AI at all, they are in their 50s and 60s and barely can handle an iPhone. The word AI scares them. Finding common ground would have been difficult, would I not have been writing about AI so much. I had already written the words, so the conversation was not only smooth, but I also managed to picture a much more realistic view of what an AI is and what it can do. So they were a lot more chilled about it by the end of the night.

Or as Neil de Grasse said:

Hardly any sentence that comes out of my mouth, I have not written before — Neil deGrasse Tyson

Writing really is thinking. And in my opinion, it’s also learning and creating. And there are not many activities that will allow you to work on all three in one sweep.

So, will I keep writing on Medium?

Hell yeah.

But hear this out…

I’m not new to writing. I’ve been publishing all sorts of content online for years, and I already have a successful online business.

So I did not jump in this adventure naively. And if you are reading this story to know if writing on Medium is worth pursuing for you, don’t take this as a definite story of what will happen to you.

You could be much more successful than I was, or far less, or in a totally different way.

But I’ll tell you one thing : if you don’t try, you won’t know. So better test this out and see for yourself. Then you’ll be free to try something else if it doesn’t work out.

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