My 4 Biggest Writing Mistakes of 2019
#1: Working on my personal website
There are a lot of people trying to make it as writers, both on Medium and in the world in general.
Everyone’s path to success is different, but I’ve experienced a modicum of success on this platform, so I thought I’d share what did — rather, what didn’t — work for me in 2019.
1. Working on My Personal Website
Prior to becoming a writer, I freelanced as a web developer, designer, and tech startup consultant. If there was anyone equipped to make a kick-ass author website, it was me. So in 2019, I spent hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours of my personal time working on my personal website, determined to create the greatest writer website there ever was. I created lead magnets, I cross-posted all my Medium articles, I created funnels to send people to my personal website, I did it all.
And it was all pointless. After all that, I decided to delete most of it. My little free lead magnets, my duplicate copies of my Medium articles, and my cross-posted blog categorization structure are all gone. All my personal website has now is a signup form for my newsletter, an about page, a page about my published book, and a way to get in touch with me.
Spending all that time creating and maintaining my website was a waste of time. It was a waste of time because if I had invested that time into writing, I would have grown my audience on Medium and grown my email list. If I had stashed that money away in a savings account, I would have hundreds of dollars that I now don’t have. Instead of having hundreds of dollars and dozens more articles, I have a personal website that’s given me almost no return on my investment.
If you’re trying to make it as a blogger, here’s what I think you should do:
- Get a Squarespace website and make these pages: Home (with a signup form for your newsletter), About, Contact, Blog.
- Host all your articles on Medium, and have your website link to Medium. Don’t maintain a separate blog.
That’s it.
If you’re worried about Medium owning all your articles, don’t be. Medium allows you to download your own copy of all your posts. Do this once a week and you’re golden.
2. Trying to Get People to Notice Me
There are a lot of things people tell you you should be doing to get people to notice you:
- Posting all your articles to social media (several dozen times).
- Participating in writer Facebook groups.
- Cross-posting on your personal blog.
- Constantly pitching editors.
- Participating in online forums.
- Reading and responding to other people’s stories in the hopes that they’ll go look at yours.
You know what has a higher return on investment than all of those things? Writing.
Some of the things on the above list have some value. For instance, participating in writer groups builds a lovely sense of community and helps people get better at their craft. Reading and responding to the stories of others helps us broaden our worldview and make friends. These are great things, and maintaining a writing practice without them would be that much emptier. But the value they add isn’t in growing our readership, and we shouldn’t pretend it is.
What will boost our readership is writing. Every minute I spent doing these things expecting my readership to grow was a minute wasted.
3. Not Posting Frequently
Twice now I’ve said the best thing a new writer could be doing is writing. Well, there were a lot of times in 2019 I didn’t. There were entire weeks where I only posted once or twice, opting to focus on building my website or making a lame attempt at content marketing.
That’s not good. Unless you’re John Gorman or Ryan Holiday, or you’re not particularly concerned with making money, you really can’t afford to be taking publishing breaks. Readers need to see your name several (dozen) times before they begin to recognize you — and the longer they go between the times they see your name, the harder it will be for them to do so.
Of course, it’s not enough that you just post anything. If they see your name frequently and learn to associate it with garbage articles, it won’t help you much. But as long as you’re posting quality work, the more often a reader sees your name, the better.
We don’t know this for sure, but it’s also possible that Medium’s algorithm privileges people who post more frequently over those who post less. Anecdotally, I think this is true because I have a lot more readership than people with five times the followers who post once a week or less.
4. Not Editing My Articles
One of my best-performing articles since Medium’s algorithm change is a piece called Playing Video Games Is Killing You. Most of the time, I do next to no editing for my work, but for this article, I did a lot of work. Not only did I read it out loud to myself, come up with dozens of headlines, and comb it over with Hemingway and Grammarly, but I also redid it almost from scratch several times. It was an experiment to see if editing my work made a difference.
Was it worth five to 10 hours of editing? Upon reflection, I don’t think so. It’s just one Medium article. But every Medium article is worth at least half an hour of editing, which is about half an hour more than I gave most of my articles in 2019.
Before publishing every piece, I should be:
- Reading it out loud to myself.
- Making sure it’s free of major spelling, grammar, and syntactical errors.
- Coming up with several headlines and selecting the best.
Now that Medium doesn’t allow writers to pull articles, fix them up, and republish, this is doubly true. Whatever we publish has to stand for us forever, and so we better get it right the first time.
Starting off on Medium sucks, no matter how skilled a writer you are, because starting from ground zero always sucks. You’re going to have to write hundreds of articles and suffer the indignity of seeing article after article underperform no matter what you do. But if you can avoid making the same mistakes I did, you’ll waste a little less time, and you’ll get there that much faster.