I’ve Been Writing On Medium For 6 Months. Here’s What I’ve Learned

Am I living a dream? My tips, earnings, insights, and stats

Exactly 6 months ago I discovered a platform that changed my life, I was excited to try it. So I came up with a lot of ideas and started writing articles. I never thought that I would like to publish anything online. I thought that my life is boring to share, I can’t write engaging stories, and I am too shy to put anything on the internet anyway. But I just sat down and started writing to see what happens. The third article I ever wrote was curated and is still read by people, I was off for a good start. After several days my other article got curated, I started getting views. “Is it really going to be that easy?”,- I said to myself. Well, after 6 months I can confidently say that it’s not.

I decided that I am going to stick with it for 3 or 4 months to see what it’s like, but I ended up writing here for way longer. Here, I will talk about what it takes to become a writer on Medium, my stats, best stories, and of course, lessons learned. I am not a productivity machine pumping out an article a day, I am a casual writer with my own flaws, but I think my experience here is worth sharing. When I started as a writer here, I was interested in other people’s journeys so I’d like to share mine.

Articles

Let’s talk about the stories I’ve written. I’ve published 53 articles and got 11.25K reads, I am surprised that as the laziest person in the world I basically published stories two times a week. The biggest publication I got into was Better Marketing, despite all of my efforts, I couldn’t go any higher than that, however, getting into BM was an important achievement.

Here are my best pieces so far:

1K reads and 2K views. This was my first article in Better Marketing and I was surprised that so many people wanted to hear my personal experience.

2.4K views, 1.6K reads. I wrote this story spontaneously, it didn’t gather any attention at first, but at the end of the year it ranked high in Google and a lot of people saw it. Honestly, I just wrote my thoughts and didn’t expect that anyone would read it and now it’s blowing up. Unfortunately, it only made me $0.29 because of the external traffic, even though it got a lot of impressions.

1.8K views and 1K reads. This one is special. It’s literally one of the first articles I’ve ever written, but it got curated and read by more than a thousand people. That’s insane to me. You can see how my writing has changed since then, but I should honestly learn from this guy… the story is pretty engaging.

It got 9.4K views and 5K reads. This article is ranking first in Google, and getting hundreds of views every day. Almost all reads are external which means it doesn't make much money.

But don’t assume that every article I write is a banger (actually 2k views on an article is not that much). From the last 7 stories I published, only 2 of them got more than 10 reads. Sometimes it seems like Medium likes me, but sometimes it absolutely does not.

A frequent debate in the writers' community is whether to concentrate on quality or quantity. Honestly, I don’t have enough story ideas, so I just try to write every day and start a new story whenever I have an idea, so I am focusing on the quality of my pieces. My most productive month was my first one, I wrote 20 articles but it was very hard, so now I write less often.

Inspiration is hard to find for me, especially when I am mostly sitting at home all day. It caused a little burnout in the third month, but I am okay since then. Fortunately, I’ve developed that creativity muscle, and I have a bit more ideas now. I think it’s important to understand that there are no bad stories that you could write. Every single one, even if it got 5 reads, has something to teach you because I believe that no time writing can be truly wasted.

I just calculated my rate of successful articles and it turns out that 24.5% of my stories get more than 100 reads which is pretty high considering how many times I feel like a bad writer.

Stats

Even though I write slightly less every month, my stats are growing. I noticed that after my 5th month, I started to get consistent views every day, this is how my stats looked in November:

And this is how they look now:

They are a lot more stable (100–200 views a day) because of the 50 published stories that work like a fundament. But unfortunately, my earnings also went down even though more people started reading me.

It’s important to understand that stats do not represent your effort or the quality of your work in any way. We should remember to only care about things that are under our control- writing the best story possible, stats we get are mostly decided by the algorithm and the platform itself.

I also noticed how Medium’s algorithm works, but I am not 100% sure. Here is my first curated story, if you look at the stats, you can notice spikes every several days:

It looks like the Medium algorithm shows an article to a certain amount of people, measures the click-through rate, and if it’s high enough, it will do it again and again. After the first six spikes algorithm started showing the story less often. I also heard that the algorithm starts showing your story to people who read less (more valuable reads) after the article proved itself to be good enough.

Earnings

That’s the part that probably a lot of people are interested in. So did I make any money? Yes, I did, but it takes way more time to earn a living, so don’t hope for quick money. Everyone’s writing is different, therefore earnings too, here are my earnings:

I think that anyone would expect more from half a year of writing, but that is the reality. However, I will still continue writing here because that’s what I think I can do well. Maybe if I published more stories and made the quality better, I would have made more. But for now, money is not that important. Of course, I want more, people who make $100k a year want more. It can be difficult to concentrate on the craft, not the money, but that’s what challenge you take when pursuing this kind of career. I won’t say that I will be here forever and I will never give up publishing articles, it’s entirely possible to find something more interesting, but writing for as long as I can is my plan for now.

Depending on the algorithm to measure stats and give you money is not reliable and sometimes not understandable. My readership is growing every month, unlike the money I make, October was the month with the least articles published, but it made the most money. You never know when you will get a new spike, or attract a bunch of readers, that’s why I love this.

Money is great, but waiting for it to come is not. Try to focus on what is more important- your content, then money will come because people are ready to pay you relative to the level of value you give them. Everyone is saying that stats shouldn’t define your worth and you can’t give up because of low earnings, but we are all humans so we will inevitably feel stressed when we see that something is lower than our initial expectations. It’s okay to feel anxiety, just take a step back and take a look at the great things that are happening to you:

1. You practice writing, a timeless skill.
2. You gain an audience (even if it’s two people).
3. You learn.
4. And a lot more.

Tips For Other Writers

When I just started writing on Medium, I didn't know much and I could use some help to keep me going. I would like to share my tips on writing after my six months journey:

• Be consistent, but make sure that quality is great. Any of your articles can be the first ones people see from you, try to make a good first impression.
• Look at others, but compare yourself only to your past self. Even if there is a writer who managed to make twice as much as you did in the same period, it isn’t worth your time to complain. You probably don’t know the whole story, so it’s better to compare your current work from your’s from the past.
• Taking breaks is okay. Sometimes I don’t publish for two weeks straight, and my stats don't really drop.
• It’s way easier when you start writing. As a professional procrastinator, I can assure you that sitting and thinking about writing is way different than actually sitting and writing. Sometimes I don’t even have any inspiration, but I manage to write something anyway.
• Every rejection makes you better. Yes, I stress out when I am rejected from publications too, but remember that every closed door means that another one opens. Set a mindset that doors close for you, not against you.
• Revision your stories multiple times, you will find a spelling mistake or a new idea that you want to write down every time.
• It’s often hard to find inspiration, and it will feel hopeless. The key here is the mindset, after several days of thinking I usually find at least one new idea, so don’t freak out if you think that you ran out of them.
• Learn. Writing is a skill that humans explored for thousands of years, it’s foolish to think that you know everything about writing a story, so watch YouTube videos, explore other writers, and analyze your past work.
• Write down any idea you have, even if you are in bed. It can change your life.
• Write a bad draft. Whenever you start writing something try to write a bad, raw version of it, spill every thought out of your head. Next time it will be easier to sit and work on this story because you are just editing.
• If your headline isn’t great, no one will read the article. I can’t say that I mastered headlines, but try to make them better, you will inevitably get more readers. YouTubers spend hours thinking about the right thumbnail, if the thumbnail isn’t right, no one will click.
• Introductions will keep people reading. I suck at writing intros but make them engaging to make readers want to see more.
• Show up. Even if it’s hard, try to continue writing, even if it’s only one paragraph. This will only make your discipline stronger.
• Don’t blame yourself, we all face procrastination, lack of inspiration, or bad results, we naturally feel like a failure, but realizing that every bad thing makes your life better in the long run is essential.
• If you build a routine around your writing, you will be unstoppable.
• Add personal stories into your articles if possible, it will make reading easier and your story is going to be unique.
• Connect with other writers and analyze their work to find something useful for you. Look at their structure, headlines, or other parts of the story.
• Like almost everything in life, your work will be distributed by an 80/20 rule. 7.5% of my work is 76.44% of all of my reads.
• Keep a place for all of your ideas. Journal or an app on your phone should do.
• Enjoy the process, the state of flow that I am in during writing is worth living for.

Final Words

Writing is different for everyone, I wanted to share my experience here. I still have a lot to learn, but I hope I will keep writing. Even though I am growing slowly, it’s enjoyable for me. Publishing good stories takes a lot of practice. I always wanted to become a blogger, and Medium gave me that opportunity. Like any other platform it has its flaws, but it works.

Six months may seem like a long time and I should probably be a full-time writer by now, but I am not. It takes way more time for all of your work to pay off. In a world where everyone is seeking quick success, writing articles online seems like a boring career path. Yes, it is, for those who don’t really love it. Good luck with your writing, I hope this was useful. How long have you been writing here?

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