My First Two Months on Medium in Numbers

The honeymoon phase is over, but I still love Medium

My second month on Medium in one sentence: The honeymoon phase is over.

My first month on Medium was my honeymoon phase. I fell in love with this platform and spent far too much time here.

If my first month was my honeymoon, my second month was a reality check. I started to experience some exhaustion. I realized I had to make more time for other activities than writing for Medium.

I also joined other writing platforms to diversify my earning opportunities. Medium is still great. I’m just more realistic now. I don’t give all my time and energy to writing on a single platform anymore.

So, let’s see what numbers say about my first two months on Medium.

512 Followers

I got 309 followers in my first month on Medium. Now I have 512 followers. So, my follower count didn’t grow as fast in my second month. I think that’s because I was very active during my first couple of weeks on Medium. I wanted to get my first 100 followers fast.

I still leave comments on other writers’ stories. But I’m not as active as in the beginning. I’m happy with how many followers I’ve gained in my first two months. Thank you for all my followers!

66 Stories Published

I published my first Medium story on August the 31st. So, I’ve pumped out one post per day on average. I’ve missed some days, but most days I’ve published at least one story.

I still want to work on my writing muscle, so I aim to publish daily until I’ve published 100 stories on Medium. But I don’t necessarily write Medium stories every day. I need more balance in my life. Now I’m experimenting with bulk writing more than one article per day couple of days a week. And on other days I do other things.

Now I try to keep ahead of the game to avoid stress. I aim to have at least a few days' posts written beforehand.

I’m not sure if the Medium algorithm expects us to publish daily. And I don’t know if I can keep publishing daily forever. Probably not. I don’t want to live my life based on what an algorithm wants me to do!

10 Stories Chosen for Further Distribution

I just downloaded the Medium distribution info Chrome add-on. I wanted to see more easily which of my stories got chosen for further distribution. It’s inconvenient to check the information on the stats page. This add-on makes it a lot easier!

It turned out more of my stories got distributed than I thought. I hadn’t noticed some of them had got distributed. Two posts were distributed one to two weeks after the publishing date. Most of my posts get distributed within 24 hours, if at all.

In general, my distributed stories have more views. My most popular Medium post got distributed. But the distribution doesn’t always help. The two stories that got distributed late got hardly any reads after the distribution.

And one of my distributed stories was a total flop. It got only one view!

2 Top Writer Awards

I reached a new milestone in my second month on Medium. I got my first top writer award! Soon after I got the top writer title in ´Satire´, Medium sent me another e-mail. They announced to me I was a top writer in ´Fiction´. Now I have two top writer awards.

$127 Earned

I checked my partner program earnings. I earned $38 in September. That was only for two and a half weeks; I joined the partner program on September the 13th. It was encouraging to earn that much in my first month.

So, I expected to earn a little more than I did in October. My October earnings were $89. I thought I would reach the $100 mark in October. Well, I almost did.

I’m grateful for every dollar I’ve earned on Medium. $127 is more than I’ve made with any other make-money-online method before. I was expecting a little more growth in October, though. Hopefully, I’ll reach 3-figures in November.