I wrote 50 Responses to Stories in … One Day and this is what Happened

For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about my journey. To the fact that I wrote 40 stories in the beginning and only had 37 followers and that everything came unstuck when I started commenting on other people’s stories.

After all, it makes sense

If you just write a story, it’ll go into the deep end of the algorithm and if you don’t have anyone to read it, clap and comment on it, it’ll go into oblivion.

The only way for a story to start being highlighted by the algorithm is if there’s some initial engagement. And with few followers, that’s unlikely to happen.

You want to get noticed, to get your work noticed, and one way to achieve it is to comment on other people’s stories.

The primary reason : all writers love to have their work notified and receive feedback on it. He’s taken time (sometimes hours) to craft a story and every comment is a gift that he will cherish.

What’s more, the way Medium works means that if it’s member content, you’re a member, you’ve clicked, read and commented, you’ve made him money, and who hates people who make us money?

It took me a while to understand, but the weight of a comment on medium is far greater than on any other platform out there.

With this in mind, and loving a challenge, I thought I’d try to answer a few questions:

• How many followers can 50 comments on stories get me?
• What’s the average number of followers per comment?
• Is it possible to have a formula that allows us to estimate the time it takes to build an audience?

My experiment took place over the course of one day. I activated the timer on my first comment. I stopped it 24 hours later.

My experiment started with a lot of enthusiasm. I had no idea how long and difficult it would be to do it.

I added a few constraints because the experience would be useless without them.

The first constraint was to leave a quality comment. If you’re just going to leave “nice reads” or generic comments, you’re wasting your time and I think that hurts your brand more than anything else.

The second constraint was to find good content. My niche being productivity, philosophy and writing. I opened the three “latest” tabs and started reading the headlines one by one.

The third constraint was to find articles where my comment would have an impact. If an article has already been commented on more than ten times, I don’t think there’s much chance of my comment getting much read. If an article is too old, ditto, you need fairly recent articles. If an article is created by someone with few followers, it will also be less interesting as the article will get fewer views.

Your perfect target. A big audience. A fresh article. An article in your niche.

The results

I’ll spare you the narration of this demanding day, as the mathematical part is already boring.

I had 822 followers at my comment 1. 823 at comment 10. 824 at comment 20. I took a break at 25 and it took me almost 3 hours to write 25 comments. I had 830 followers at comment 30. 832 at comment 40.

And today, 24 hours after the first comment: 841 followers.

841–822 = 19 followers Total time to write 50 comments: about 5 hours.

“Yes, but not all your followers are coming from your fresh comments.”

Fair enough. I gained 197 followers in May, which makes a total of about 6 followers per day on average.

We can deduce that on that day, the 50 comments brought me 13 followers more than my average.

What can we learn from this?

If 50 comments in 5 hours brought me 13 followers, that means :

• I gain a follower every 4 comments or so.
• a comment takes about 6 minutes to write.
• virtually, if you want 1000 followers, you can write 4000 comments.

In terms of time, 4000 x 6 minutes = 24,000 minutes = 400 hours = about 16 and a half days of actual work.

My stats are biased for several reasons: - I may have a better or worse conversion rate than others - It may have been a very good day - I may write a comment faster or lower than you

The only way to really know your numbers is to do your own experiments, and I strongly encourage you to do so because it may help you in the direction you need to take.

My experience is just a benchmark with figures that are reliable only for me.

Keeping these statistics conservative, we could imagine writing 12 comments a day (which would take about 1 hour). That would bring us to an average of about 3 followers a day. x 365 = 1095 followers

In one year, and spending an hour a day on this side hustle, you could eventually build up an audience.

Would it be profitable? I don’t know. I suppose it would depend on your niche, your products and your ability to leverage your audience. Not all audiences are the same, and this is new science.

Anything else i learned ?

1) Writing a large number of comments is mentally exhausting.

In the end, I wrote some really poor comments, for which I apologize to those who received them. I (really) wanted to finish my experience and started writing generic things to end the day.

2) There are treasures on medium

I’ve found some incredible, funny, interesting, captivating writers. One story from them was enough to convince me of their talent. If you spend time looking for content, you’ll also find raw gems and inspiring content. People you’ll love to follow and consume content.

3) There isn’t a lot of really good content

There is some clearly GPT-generated content. Others are read and reread lists. A lot of baits about money / side hustle. There’s plenty of room to grow if you have original, authentic stories or if you know how to treat subjects with an interesting angle.

4 ) You’ll find inspiration

I’ve added an incredible number of new ideas to my to-do list. If you are seeking for new content ideas, it’s the thing to do.

Conclusion

I’m definitely going to spend more time commenting. It was what had unlocked my growth curve, I had stopped doing it but it’s time to get back on that track.

On twitter, I had made the mistake of stopping commenting after 1000 followers and simply concentrating on my content, which had hurted my growth.

On medium, unless you have at least 10k followers, engaging with other writers is vital for continued growth.

How often? That’s up to you. The limit set by medium is 100 comments a day. I’m going to concentrate on a minimum of 12 and be very selective, which is a good compromise between time invested and return.

If you reproduce some of this experience and find that your comment/follower conversion rate is too low, I can only encourage you to read this other article.

And if you’re wondering how to build a good comment, this is the place to go.

It took me about 1 hour and half to write this article. If you enjoyed it, the claps helps a lot. If you’d like to say hello in a comment, now’s the time. I love meeting new writers and friends. If you have any question, feel free. If i can help, i will.

PS: I’ve launched a newsletter specifically dedicated to tips for building your audience and your writing career. You can click here to join. First mail soon.