I’ve Had My Best Month on Medium in Terms of Account & Income Growth. You Can, Too.

+ 9k followers, +34 email subscribers, +$2K.

I [probably] have what you want.

March 2024 has been the best month I’ve ever, ever, ever, experienced on this platform. My account grew on all fronts from followers to subscribers.

The same goes for my organic writing income.

All these great things blew my mind.

I am not endowed with an exceptional grasp of the language. I don’t drop excessive comment bombs, either.

If you are interested to know how I got here — Read on.

I Stayed Away from the Noise

I am a simple person.

I write because I enjoy it. That is it.

I don’t believe in fighting back hostile comments, or feel the need to justify why I write what I wrote. I am not bothered by words of hostility, either.

My work, once published, is a public good. It is your right to express your views. It is my right to read and not respond.

I almost don’t. Here’s why.

I prefer to be a bystander, listening to what others say. I don’t have enough experience in life, or multiple battle scars to prove others wrong.

Plus.

Why diss others? Are we genuinely better than those who read our work? I don’t know.

Really. I don’t.

Wrestling with and responding to hostile comments is time-consuming. That 500-word response you wrote in retaliation could be time invested in the next article.

TL;DR — Don’t fight with haters or hostile commentators. Time is precious. Work on your next article instead.

I Focus on My Life Experiences

Every piece of work I publish is a topic close to my heart.

I write boring stuff. Retirement, intergenerational workplace conflicts, writing, that is it.

I capture my observations from my day and turn them into articles. This strategy turns out to be the best writing approach I’ve stumbled upon.

Every individual has different worries on the same topic. Your worries about retirement may be very different from mine.

I allow my curiosity to run amok while the person in front of me speaks. Then, I extract out what interests me. From this point, I have only 1 job.

Write the story.

After that, I work to project my thinking on top of it.

And then, I share how your line of thinking got me to acknowledge blind spots.

That is what I do.

TL;DR — Leverage your daily life for writing. Write what intrigues you.

I Aim to Write Simply

I encourage you to do the same.

According to Tony Stubblebine, the CEO of Medium, this platform currently has 990k paid subscribers today and will hit 1 million soon.

That is a lot of paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers are like you and me. We come in different shapes and sizes.

Some of us are native English speakers, others speak English as a second language, and maybe a sizeable subscriber population has a basic vocabulary bank.

Hence, I aim to write with simplicity. Whenever possible, I use conversations. They are straightforward. Also, I keep sentences short.

I edit away all complicated words.

It helps your audience slide from the introduction to the conclusion, hence keeping your read ratios high.

I maintained my read ratios between 73% — 87% for March 2024.

TL;DR — Use simple words. You reach more people.

I Write Less

Counterintuitive, I know.

For me, this is simple math. I cannot be writing daily because,

• I need time to curate inspiration from writing,
• I read other people’s articles to grow my brain,
• I invest time analyzing what well-received articles look like.

Research matters. Our findings feed into our writing.

So yes, I kept my weekly publication volume between 4–5 articles. I spread my time across researching, learning to write better, reviewing the headlines for the week ahead, and then, writing.

TL;DR 1 — Seek holistic development.

TL;DR 2 — Avoid transforming yourself into a content pump. ChatGPT will crush you.

I Have a Strong Support Group

I am blessed to meet 4 utterly brilliant fellow writers on this platform.

• Denis Gorbunov — He routinely shares his Boosted stories so I can analyze what great articles look like.
• Matt | Financial Imagineer — He can be a crazy source of inspiration from unexpected angles. He wrote about wild garlic and got Boosted…
• Sarina Chiu — Again, another crazy writer. She writes about making money on Etsy no matter how busy she is.
• Tracy Collins — Her retirement stories and takeaways are brilliant. We share our retirement stories, cross-pollinate, and compare notes.

Collectively, these 4 crazy nutcase(s) push me to get better. They also warned me when bots started targeting my articles.

I urge you to find your support group.

They have your back covered.

TL;DR — Make friends.

And Finally…

I am not writing this article to brag.

I have been writing on this platform for 3 long years. I remember those low double-digit months. I remember what it felt like when my income got sliced by 70% when algorithmic sea change assaults.

Regardless, I say this.

Focus on the craft.

Specifically,

• Headlines — Make sure they are highly clickable. I review and revise my headlines multiple times before sending my work out.
• Introduction — Experiment aggressively. I’ve learned to keep it punchy. Set the stage fast. Slide into the body fast. Then, you’re done.
• Article body — Give more thoughts to non-native English readers and those who read from their phones. Use bullets often. Periods too.
• Conclusion — I tend to end with thinking questions. Think more, think better is my style. Develop yours.
• Article length — 4 to 5 is optimal. I don’t read articles 7-minutes, 11-minutes long. If I have time, maybe. Maybe.
• Stats, Quotes, Research Links — Use as appropriate. How often do you [actually] validate the source of a quotation from who’s who?
• On metrics # 1 — Check views to assess the strength of your headlines. Check reads to gauge the smoothness of your writing. Done.
• On metrics # 2 — Followers and subscribers are not within your control. Let it be. Let it come.
• On Boost-targeted writing — None of my articles are Boosted in March 2024. I don’t overthink it. It will come when I am good enough.

Ultimate TL;DR — Bury your head, be a student of the sport, and commit to the craft daily. Results will come. And when they do — You will be delighted.

Got haters? I got you covered.