One of the Boosts Got Me Over 500 Reads in Only Two Days
And almost 2K Views in Five
When Medium introduced “the Boost”, I read the news but was unfazed. I was a newbie and I didn’t entirely get what the fuss was all about. I had only been added to the Partner Program in January and was yet to figure out how things really worked on the platform.
I’m sure each new member gets through the same stages: the innocence of clapping only once, the hope that people would stumble upon one’s articles without having to do a lot of reading first, the belief that ALL those who left nicely worded comments had actually read the content and so on.
I’ve seen many people who joined Medium at the same time that I did who were very eager to get 100 followers and were “quite noisy” about it. Once they did reach the holy number, they simply vanished. They were not in this game for the writing also, but for the earnings only, obviously, and these were falling really short.
It was their expectations that had played tricks on them, and we all live in the era of instant gratification. Life is short, so why not try another way that held more promise than this one if it was only money they were after?
And then, there were some others who appreciated the platform as it was — a medium where those passionate about the craft of writing could hone their skills. And these others continued their journey despite earning just a few bucks just because they enjoyed writing.
I read a few of them and let me tell you, I appreciate each one of them. It is amazing how their personality and beliefs seep into the writing and how marvelously unique people’s voices are.
While I really enjoyed writing on the platform, I thought “the mighty boost” was for other people. I am not a native speaker, so surely I was at a disadvantage. Whatever I had to say, native speakers could certainly word it better. I was so very sure of that.
Then one evening, when I was already three months in, there came the first email: “Congratulations! Your story has been boosted on Medium.”
I literally could not believe my eyes. More than anything, this email really boosted my confidence. I’ve read a lot of articles on this platform and I stand in awe of how talented some people are. Some really have a way with words, their sentences flow, and their prose is quite insightful.
I honestly thought I didn’t stand a chance. Well, Medium proved me wrong.
Then came the second boost.
Many of the comments that people consequently wrote restored some of my faith in humanity. It seems to me that there are quite a few of us who have become aware of some of the problems that are plaguing the modern world. And more than just a few are not content with being passive anymore.
Awareness is just the first step in making sure that future generations will not live in a nightmare of a world. We might not be on the right path exactly, but many of us have found inner compasses that seem to be guiding us somewhere different, away from capitalist credos and from chasing consumerist dreams.
Who knows, these few might even manage to steer the ship that is humanity toward better horizons.
All this reminded me of George Eliott’s words from “Middlemarch”:
[…] for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
So, the Medium boosts made me hopeful in ways that I didn’t think they would.
They, of course, came with some other lessons. Each boost is unique. What I mean by that is that some can get your articles an impressive number of reads and others a less significant one.
Each boost will however make a difference. The article will get a lot more engagement than you’re probably used to. People will write really interesting comments and very many of them will help you see facets of the problem you’ve written about that you have not thought of before.
Some of the comments I got could be essays in their own right. Getting a boost feels like having a conversation about a topic that you care about with a bunch of people who share the same interests. Quite rewarding I would say. And all this definitely helps to broaden the author’s views.
And then, there is the money aspect. I would be a hypocrite to say that I did not enjoy seeing that what I wrote could earn (some) money. The promotion of these selected pieces did not bring me a fortune (quite far from it), but the articles that were boosted did earn me more than all my other articles together.
So I declare myself content. I learned a lot from this. A boost is a real boost in many unexpected ways. Thank you for this, Medium. And thank you for giving people the opportunity “to voice” what they are passionate about. I might be naive, but this counts more than anything else. For some, myself included, at least.