Blogging reflections
My Third Month on Medium
And what YOU can learn from it.
I know that some people write a weekly article about their earnings and stats, but once a month is enough for me. Honestly, I don’t really enjoy looking at stats! 😄
Anyway, if you want to look at my previous monthly updates (and see whether I am being honest about my progress), they can be found here and here.
I’ll get on to earnings in a moment. First, a brief reflection on what I have written — and what you can learn from it.
Productivity
I mentioned some time ago that I had around 100 stories, around half of which (at that point) were published stories and the rest drafts. In terms of the published stories, these now number around 90, and I have been making an effort to go back and finish more of the part-written stories.
Soon, I’ll have 100 actually published. Soon!!
I’ve also reflected on how to ensure that you have enough solid, ready-to-go articles in your drafts pile (for me, at least five or ten), while not subjecting yourself to burnout along the way:
Overall, I published 29 new stories in April — slightly fewer than I did in March, but honestly, I am not aiming to write more than one a day. This is a good rate for me.
As the link above says, it’s more important for me to be happy, healthy, and write at a sustainable rate!
New thoughts and approaches
I feel that my niche on Medium (as far as I have one) is creative writing. I am a creative writer myself, a novelist who has also published poetry and non-fiction. From work on my Sparta Online books and other series, I know quite a lot about the processes of writing a book, from planning right through to editing.
All the same, I have found myself very drawn to writing stories about blogging.
I think that in part, this is because the issues around blogging are so similar to fiction writing — craft, idea generation, language, and so on. There’s also the fact that it’s what so many of my new Medium buddies are talking about!
Finally, I have taken the unexpected step of sharing some of my fiction here. The first chapter of one of my web novels can be seen below:
I’ve been writing for pretty much the same publications. Occasionally a new one catches my eye, but the ones that I currently publish with are great to work with, so they are my priority right now:
- Coffee Times
- Illumination
- Reciprocal
- The Orange Journal
- The Shortform
- Writers’ Blokke
- Shorties But Goodies!
- New Writers Welcome
Many thanks indeed to all of the editors of the above.
Best stories
I don’t want to get into lots of detail here, but I think it can be useful to get an idea of another writer’s most successful stories.
Out of those published in either late March or early/mid-April (so I am not including ones that just came out in the last few days), my best-earning three stories are as follows:
- Writing a Badass Beginning for Your Book
- When My Writing Habit Took Off
- 3 Ways To Publish More Articles
I’m super pleased that these are all basically about writing, though as mentioned above, I have been writing about blogging, too, and the third example shows that this has been getting some traction.
Two of the above were in popular publications, but perhaps surprisingly, ‘When my writing habit took off’ was self-published in my own solo publication, Creative Writing 101.
As such, the publication is not absolutely critical, given that this story earned more than almost 80 others from my backlist.
Followers and Earnings
In April, my follower count has risen steadily, increasing by over 200 — much the same as last month. I have eight new email subscribers (thank you!!).
In the previous, my earnings were just under the $15 mark, which isn’t a huge amount, but more than doubled what I had made previously. I was certainly hoping it would keep rising. As I said in my March monthly summary:
I feel cautiously optimistic that I can double that monthly total in April.
So how did I do?
In the whole month of April, my MPP earnings were:
$38.65
Well, I guess I made my goal… even if I didn’t exactly smash the target!
When I started here, all I really wanted was to cover the five bucks membership fee. Now, it’s starting to look more like a side hustle. There is a way to go, but I’m delighted with that…
…and I hope it shows other writers that you can get somewhere through plugging away and writing a new article more or less daily, even without clickbait titles, viral smash hits, or becoming what Medium considers a ‘top writer.
For anyone who has read, clapped, commented and otherwise supported me, thank you! Thank you to the publications, and to my fellow writers who have shared such valuable insights.
Thanks for reading! To get more like this, you can get my posts direct to your inbox. Do that here! And if you’re not yet a Medium member, consider supporting me and thousands of other writers by signing up for a membership with this link, Doing so will support me directly with a portion of your fee, and won’t cost you extra. If you do, thank you so very much!
Also, here is another of my most successful stories from the last month, published in Illumination:
