My First Week On Medium
Is it worth writing on Medium? Will I keep writing?
I found out about Medium from a YouTube video I saw a couple of weeks ago. I have never expressed an interest in writing but I decided I wanted to give it a try. It was not worth it at all. Writing would bore me to death until I got in a huge argument with someone significant and decided to write about it. This is how I gained interest in writing.
What Has Been My Biggest Challenge?
I have written a few articles in about a month of writing on Medium. 10 articles to be exact. This was the first article. I wasn’t very much interested in writing this but with all that’s happening, I thought I would make a ton of money. Well, I didn’t. I didn’t received not one view, not one clap.. nothing. I was very disappointed in myself and coming up with ideas to write about really puzzled my mind. The stats of this story were unbelievable since my expectations were so, so high.
Big mistake.
I’ve spent hours looking for a publication that my article would be a good fit for. I mean sending emails, and not receiving any back. I would ask myself: Was I saying something wrong? Did I use the wrong picture? Is my article just not good enough? And eventually, I convinced myself maybe it wasn’t.
This was the same exact result. Submitted to a few different publications and nobody ever even bothered to get back to me.
After this article.. I stopped writing for a few days. I ran out of ideas. I would come up with a absurd topic and the lack of interest would drive me to write something that didn’t even make any sense.
I realized I wasn’t trying hard enough and I would trick my brain into thinking that I was.. and that I did a good job.
I Finally Got Some Views
Finally! My time was here. Or so I thought. I received a few views on one of my stories. I was very happy with myself and looked forward to seeing my earnings increase. Guess what. They didn’t. The fact that I was at least getting some views, was still a big accomplishment for me. But I was still extremely disappointed that I have failed.
I still feel embarrassed about the above story because I’m not used to expressing my feelings especially to the public.. to people that I don’t know. But it definitely feels good. I was afraid of being rejected and judge but then I wrote an article and received a very nice response and my whole mindset changed.
I also have a hard time choosing my titles. I switch my titles all the time before publishing. Is it the right title? Does it match my story? These are all questions I ask myself before publishing.
I don’t go back and edit my stories because I don’t want to add nonsense and make no sense out my article. That’s ridiculous.
Is It All About The Money?
No. At first I thought it was. I was just focused on the money. The YouTuber that I find out about Medium from, made a wapping 6 thousand dollars in one month just from one article. Can you believe that? I was shocked! And desperate for the money. I only saw dollar signs all over the place. Until I realized that is not the same for everybody and is not as easy as it seems. I believe that YouTuber had some influence since she already has about a million subscribers on YouTube. Maybe Medium saw her profile and decided to curate her story? Maybe her subscribers hopped on Medium and followed her, helping her gain a bit more popularity on Medium? Could this be possible?
Us, non-influential individuals, have to start from scratch, from zero. Increasing our fan base, our claps, views, read ratio etc.. takes quite a bit of time and dedication. The first story that received some earnings was a story where I talk about my life as a minimum wage worker. With this story I earned.. drum roll…
8 cents.
Next story, a little more. 17 cents. It’s an improvement as I’m seeing some results. I’m starting to notice that If I write about something that I really care and I’m passionate about, gives me better results than writing junk work.
Hard work pays off…
Eventually.
Will I keep writing?
I’m really looking forward to making new connections and friends here on Medium. I hope to be really successful and than more and more successful after.
I have a real good experience here and I’ll definitely keep writing. I see myself in the future maybe having my own clients or maybe even writing a book. Just kidding. Or not.
Who knows? Maybe my book will be a best seller one day.