My Journey on Medium — Month Two Update

Sharing earnings & learnings, time to ramp things up

The second month I believe is about gaining momentum.

You can read, What I Learned In My First Month here.

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My Journey on Medium — Week Five

Whilst my results are still small, I am inwardly pleased with them so far.

Small isn’t always bad like the itsy bitsy spider is kinda cute.

For my first month, I made back my membership fee. I broke even.

The second month was almost set to be the same.

I reveal all at the end. You can scroll but then you will miss all the good stuff about what I did to get there. But that is your choice if you choose to scroll. I would prefer you to read because that will add to my earnings, (I’m not normally self-centred but Medium made me this way), also you may find out something.

Remind Me Again, Why Did I Start on Medium?

I didn’t come here to earn enough just to pay for my membership. Although it is nice not to make a loss.

I came here to write. And maybe earn a bit more than that.

My views had started to grow but have slowly been going down over the course of the month.

You can see the dip in this graph.

I think this is because I haven’t been publishing as much as I ahem should have been doing. I’ll get onto this later.

What Is Working Well

My top-performing story remains the one on followers. It has had 1.5K claps. I never came here to write on followers. But it seems this is a big topic and people are searching and wanting to read about this.

I guess writing about Medium on Medium is what new people to Medium want to know. Reflecting, this is the information I wanted to know too.

I wanted to get the roadmap. I wanted to know how others were doing in those first months, six months, a year later, and beyond.

I wanted to know why they were successful or why they had failed.

Most of all I wanted to learn from those who had already walked the walk.

That is why I decided to document my journey as well.

If it helps someone, that makes me feel good.

I like helping others, it’s hardwired into me. Find out more in the About Me story.

It also helps me to look back and understand what is happening and what I can do better. It helps me to course-correct before I go wrong.

And I am getting off-topic, I will course-correct now.

Back to what happened in my second month.

Do We Have to Talk About Stats?

I’m still trying to figure out the stats.

At one point my views were 834 and my reads 359. What I take from this is that people are looking but not reading or starting and not finishing.

I need to ask myself why.

I think there are two things to consider.

I haven’t started to niche down yet. I have written about anything that happens to come into my brain that day. I know, I’ve been too random.

I think I will start to niche down as I write more. I think this will come naturally the more I write.

The more I write, this will help to discover what I enjoy writing about the most. And more importantly, what readers engage with. I hope it is not just Medium posts, but then again it might be because the two posts I wrote about Medium continue to be my most viewed posts and the ones that have earned me the most so far.

Secondly, I think many of my articles are simply too long. (Sorry about this one too, I will do better next time).

Should You Write Shortform?

My longest story is 7 minutes long. In fact, I have two. They are both getting views but only a fraction of the number of reads.

This tells me that people are either just not that interested in my content or that concentration spans are getting less and less.

I’m going with the latter. (But I will improve on my content as well, I am not so big-headed).

Because I believe we are all becoming more easily distracted.

What with Tik Tok videos to compete with. Who wants to read and spend time reading my random ramblings when they can get a short burst of video entertainment.

This has led me to decide that I need to try to write more shortform. (once I’m accepted as a writer that is, more on this later, so read on).

When I have a minute or two here and there, I’m more likely to consume shorter easier to digest stories.

I’m more likely to read more shortform reads. This might be the same for others too. I don’t know but am willing to find out.

Which has led to this decision to try more short form.

Let’s continue.

Apply Early to Write for Publications

The biggest frustration is waiting on publications to add you as a writer.

But it doesn’t end there. You have to wait for your article to get published.

If you are not sure which publications to write for, then I found this post by Winston which has helped me.

That is one of the drawbacks of writing for publications. You have little control about when your article will get published if it gets published.

But that is for another story, if you want to read how someone is getting round writing for publications, then read this article by Jimmy Misner Jr.

The next thing to do.

Write Your About Me Story

I have done this.

I think the About Me is an important story to have on your profile. It is the story I go to when I want to learn more about other writers. After I’ve looked at their bio.

The “About Me Story” helps readers to make that connection with you.

Do we have some common ground? If you drink coffee, then that’s enough for me. We’re connected. Haha. As you can see, I am easily satisfied. But seriously, I am not so shallow, I like to make meaningful connections — over coffee.

An unrelated tale about my About Me Story.

(You can skip this part if you are so minded, I won’t mind).

I submitted the article to the About Me publication the week before the festive holiday break. After waiting to be added as a writer. I received a response from the publication just before the break that it was going to be published.

It was published on the 24th December 2021. Just in case you are wondering why I was writing about myself on Christmas Eve, I wasn’t. It had been prepared earlier. I just wanted you to know that I am not self-centered.

And this is what I mean about getting the publications to add you as a writer early on. And also, with publications, you will have little control over when an article is published.

My Journey on Medium — Week Six

Week six coincided with the holiday period, whilst that is no excuse, I have decided to use it anyway.

I took a break from everything writing-related. I still took time to read. It was a writing sabbatical. It gave me the chance to read more.

The writers who I have been reading recently:

Jan Sebastian Judy Derby Susie Kearley Ilam Padmanabhan Mike Lewis and Robert Ralph Kristina God among a whole host of other fabulous writers too many to mention here.

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My Journey on Medium — Week Seven

It has been hard trying to keep focused after the holiday break, I always struggle to find my momentum once again.

This article was just the tonic I needed to break my writer’s funk.

I spent the week writing drafts, researching niches, and looking at publications that I want to try to submit to.

So not a lot to report this week.

My Journey on Medium — Week Eight

As I approach the end of the second month.

I’m glad I am still here.

I am glad for the connections that I have started to make with other writers.

I have received some positive feedback; this is always encouraging especially during those early stages. When you could just as easily call it quits. But I haven’t so far.

It was therefore a tingling kind of feeling to receive this email from Medium.

Total Earnings at the end of my first two months on Medium: $9.76.

I know it’s not much and many other new writers have done a whole lot better than that in their first weeks let alone my meager efforts over two months.

Would I like to earn more? Heck — Yes.

Would I like to write more? Yes. Yes.

Goals for the next 6 months:

I could write some boring SMART goals here, but you wouldn’t be interested in reading them, and frankly, I can’t be bothered to write them.

So, I will sum up what I think is the main goal I will set myself for the next 6 months.

Wait for it. If you have read this earlier article then you guessed it.

WRITE MORE. READ MORE. KEEP COMMENTING.

I’m not going to put a number on my writing as I don’t like that pressure. Also, I don’t want to burn out trying to write 500 articles in 30 days. Cos, I know that I can’t do that.

The only goal is to keep going, and not to stop on this journey.

I plan to report back in 6 months, that is the next challenge.

Thank you for reading.

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