My 2020 Plan For More Success On Medium

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

I just published an article on why I won’t make resolutions. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have plans.

What’s the difference? To me, a resolution implies a complete makeover. A belief we can become a new person. Or, as the gurus say, a new version of ourselves. I call BS to that idea. We are who we are.

When it comes to my business, I want to learn from my mistakes and experience. I plan to do more and do it better. I’m not conquering an impossible mountain like telling myself I’ll run a marathon this year. Luckily for me, I’ve done a marathon, so I don’t have to go near that landmine, but you get the idea. A plan is manageable. Call it semantics, but a resolution, at least in my head, can set you up for defeat. I have a plan for success.

So here’s what I’ve accomplished so far. The work I will build on.

I published my first story on Medium during the first half of May of 2019. So I’m at roughly the first half-year point. I want to earn $1k per month by May of 2020, or the ROI will not be worth the time I spend here, as much as I love Medium and people with whom I interact.

My first article was strategically titled to include sex because I’m old but not stupid. It got curated, went viral, and I was off and running. But that didn’t mean I knew what I was doing.

Typical for my entrepreneurial ventures. They either die a young death or flame out after an early success. So after six months, I have a good curation track rate, I get into nice publications on a regular basis, and I’m within a stone’s throw of 2K followers. In November earned my first $500 for the month.

Yet, I don’t know where I stand on the success rate curve. Is my performance good, bad or indifferent. I know I’m happy with it, though it could be a lot better. Some people make big bucks early on by being very open about their lives, specifically their sex lives or their histories with addiction and trauma.

My niche, or lack of one.

I choose not to go there. Writing about those issues don’t interest me anymore, and others on this platform do it so much better. I’d feel I was in competition with them because I’d be trying to out-pain them. There was a time when I needed to detail my grievances with life, but Medium wasn’t around then, when I might have been tempted.

So that is not a lucrative niche for me. Frankly, I’m not sure what is. My question when I decided to write here remains the same. Who wants to hear from an 80-year-old woman?

When I have a successful article, I’ll follow it up with something similar, confident I’ve found my corner of Medium. Then, when it tanks, I scratch my head and start over. Mostly, I write what comes to me and hope for the best. Until I hit upon my area of expertise (suggestions in that department welcome), my plan going forward is to increase my reach to get more views.

Marketing

The new changes to the platform initiated at the end of October 2019 make it clear that views are the thing. Without them, we don’t get reads, which pull in the money.

That means I must do more of what I dislike, which is market my work and my name. So Plan №1: Read every article in every marketing publication. Read every article on marketing that pertains to articles or blogs, especially how to utilize Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Engage more with followers.

I’ve gained followers, at least initially, by engaging with my readers, with members of Medium Facebook groups and by searching out writers of articles that appeal to me. I’ve followed these writers, read and acknowledged their writing, and left comments. This has paid off in return follows and more importantly, new friends.

I’ve also noticed that as my followers grow, so do my earnings.

Increase productivity

It’s no secret that a key to earnings is productivity. I now publish at least one article a day and more and more frequently two articles. I have started my own publication, which I will inaugurate with this article, and use it to attract readers interested in writing, editing, productivity, Medium matters, and general encouragement.

The biggest factor in my plan occurred to me several weeks ago when I realized I had read yet another helpful article on succeeding on Medium, and then promptly forgot who wrote it or where I had read it.

Keep track of my ideas

I now have a folder on my hard drive where I keep notes from these articles. I enter the tips and who left them. I can test them, ignore them, or adapt them to my process as I see fit. But I no longer lose them.

Head health

The final brick in the foundation of my new plan it to work on my psychological fitness, as hard as I work on my physical fitness. I need to keep myself in shape to withstand bouts of discouragement when my stats aren’t where I want them to be, or my imagination fails me, and I can’t think of something new and exciting to write.

I must use creative ways to fight boredom and the drone of repetition that can dull my senses to the fact that I’m living my dream. I’m writing every day, writing my heart out. This work is regenerative, part of the reason I don’t suffer from one of the major ills of aging and living alone, the pain of isolation that leads to depression.

Gratitude

My life is exciting and vigorous in part because I’m in touch online with wonderful, smart, imaginative people every day, some of whom respect my work and ask for more.

And so this is my plan to keep this cart going.

1. Narrow down my niche or niches.
2. Increase my followers by engaging even more with readers and other writers.
3. Market myself by learning about other platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
4. Keep my learning journal for new tips and tricks.
5. Take care of my head to prevent burnout.
6. Be grateful. Always be grateful.

I’ve learned everything I know from the generous writers on this platform. So I’m not keeping any secrets to my limited success. If any of this will help you reach your dreams, please have it. And in the spirit of giving that is upon us, please share your wisdom for the new year with the rest of us.

Happy 2020. May it bring abundance to us all.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. I’ll make sure you don’t miss a word. Thank you for reading.