Summary

René Junge's Medium stats remained stable despite a nine-day absence due to pre-scheduled article publishing and the diminishing impact of daily promotion and interaction as one's readership grows.

Abstract

René Junge, a productive Medium author, shares his experience of taking a nine-day vacation without a negative impact on his Medium stats. He prepared by stockpiling articles to be published daily during his absence. Despite not promoting his work or interacting with other authors on the platform, Junge's views and reads did not decline significantly. He attributes this to having a substantial number of followers and a broad readership, which reduces the relative importance of daily advertising and engagement. However, he emphasizes that these activities are crucial for authors with smaller followings and suggests that established authors can occasionally skip these steps without harming their performance.

Opinions

Regular publication of content is key to maintaining readership on Medium, especially for authors who are not yet widely recognized.
The importance of self-promotion and interaction with other authors diminishes as an author's follower count and readership increase.
New authors should actively engage with the community by reading and commenting on other authors' work to build their network and increase visibility.
Established authors with a large following can afford to take breaks from daily engagement and promotion without significant negative effects on their stats.
The effect of social media advertising and commenting on other articles is more pronounced for authors with lower organic reach.
Consistent writing and publishing are essential for authors who wish to reduce their posting frequency while maintaining their earnings on Medium.
Personal experiences and experiments, such as Junge's three-day publishing hiatus, inform authors about the impact of their engagement strategies on the platform.

Nine Days Of Absence From Medium Did Not Harm My Stats

On the ninth of July, I wrote an article for Medium for the last time before my vacation. Until today I have not written anything since then. In this article, I explain why my reads and views have remained stable anyway.

Every day without a new article on Medium causes views and reads to decrease. I have had this experience many times in the past, and other authors report similar experiences.

I once conducted a three-day experiment to determine how strong the effect is when I stop publishing daily:

I wanted to know how dramatic the losses would be if I didn’t publish a new article for three days.

Every Medium author has heard the advice that you should publish an article every day. I kept to it for three months…

medium.com

Nevertheless, I still have to take a vacation now and then. Without time off, everyone risks burnout at some point.

But this time, I didn’t just want my well-deserved vacation. I didn’t want the holiday to be at the expense of my performance on Medium. It is hugely annoying when, after months of continuous work, you suddenly lose your momentum and everything you have worked for collapses.

That is why I worked in advance for this holiday. Every day of the holiday, I had an article in stock, and every day this article was published automatically.

I described my plan in an article just before my time off:

I Won’t Write For Nine Days Starting Tomorrow

Even as a productive author, you can take a vacation. It all depends on preparation.

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Of course, at that time, I couldn’t know if things would turn out well. After all, I would not be able to promote my articles during the holidays as usual. I usually share the link to my latest article at many different places on the internet every day. But I had promised my wife not to work at all during the holiday. So I wouldn’t even spend ten minutes a day on the internet to promote my articles.

Where I promote my articles, I have summarized for you in this article:

Promotion Guide For Illumination Writers

You can use this checklist to promote your articles for Illumination. If you have additions that I should include in…

medium.com

Fresh content achieves more than interaction and advertising

So I couldn’t advertise my articles while on vacation. There was no Twitter, no Facebook groups, no LinkedIn, and no Manystories. What also did not exist during these nine days was interaction with other authors.

Basically, it is essential to read and comment on many articles by other authors to make contacts and increase your own readership. Beginners are always rightly recommended to do so.

So I was afraid that my numbers would suffer, even though a new article would appear every day. But then it turned out that I always greatly overestimated the effect of advertising and interaction with other authors.

My numbers showed no dips for the entire nine days of my absence from the platform. Nevertheless, I would still recommend every new author to read and comment on the articles of other authors daily.

Why you may ask, should I go to all this trouble when the effect is so small?

I believe that you can get by without advertising and interaction for a few days if you have many followers and a broad readership. In this case, it can be challenging to see the effect of advertising and interaction with other authors. If you have a few hundred views per day, it is hardly noticeable if no clicks come from comments.

But if you have a minimal organic reach and only get thirty to a hundred views a day, the effect of advertising and interaction will be much more significant.

Also, every missed comment is a missed chance to get in touch with someone who could be useful to you in the long run on Medium.

So reasonably established authors get away with not reading and commenting on other articles for a few days and not advertising. The bigger your number of followers is, the longer you can concentrate exclusively on writing and publishing.

This is also why many very well known writers on Medium don’t react to comments on their articles anymore. It’s not only because they can’t handle the sheer volume of comments, but also because they don’t need to generate new readers in this way.

Conclusion

In July 2020, I was able to stay away from Medium for a few days for the first time without being punished immediately.

My readership and the size of my network are now sufficient to keep my numbers constant if I publish an article every day but do not advertise it.

However, presenting new content every day remains essential as long as you are not one of the authors who has a massive readership. With my 3500 followers, I am not yet so far that I could reduce my publishing frequency without enormous losses.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that the effect of advertising on social media and commenting on other articles becomes less valuable, the more readers you already have.

Anyone who wants to have the chance to publish only two or three times a week and still make a lot of money on Medium will have to work twice as hard as everyone else before they can do so.

For me, this is an excellent incentive to keep going. At some point, I will be able to afford a vacation without pre-producing articles and without risking massive slumps in my reads and views.

There is still a long way to go until then. But if I have made it this far, then I can make it much further. And so can you.

René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.

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