Content Creation

A Review of a Year as a Content Creator and a Look Forward

“Experience is the most compensation.”

In March 2021, I celebrated my first year of being in the jungle of online writers by sharing seven lessons I’ve learned from that journey. Since then, I witnessed improvement in my skills, approach, and outcome.

But wait. Did I say “improvement”?

Does the jungle not feel like a jungle anymore? Have I doubled my income? Twice? Ten or maybe hundred times? Did I make a 6-figure writing empire?

Well, if you’re interested in the mundane part, I can tell you that in just two years, I have doubled my monthly income by about 55 times, which is a rate I’ve never achieved before by working as a software engineer. I’ve built what looks like an empire for most of the tribe on this platform, especially the newcomers who try to get their wheels turning by getting their first 100 followers.

But don’t get confused. I’m not talking about a 6-figure empire. Sure, earning such an amount as a writer would put a smile on my face, but till that day, I need to rise a few rungs up the ladder.

If you are looking for a story about a legendary creator who made a 6-figure writing business, you’re in the wrong place, my friend. You should look for it somewhere else.

But if you’re still there, here is my story, which is not all doom and gloom.

Facts about my Content

• My first public article dates to 2014 and was published by the German tech newspaper “Java magazin”: AngularJS ganz einfach: JIRA REST Client mit AngularJS.
• My second article was also published by Java magazin in 2016: Token-basierte Authentifizierung mit Spring und AngularJS.
• Two years later, I started a new journey on Medium and published 5 articles between 2018 and 2019.
• In 2020, I have published 24 articles.
• In 2021, I have published 78 articles and 21 videos.

On January 5, 2022, I reached 335.13K views for a total of 107 articles on this platform. This means my stories get on average about 3.13K views.

My most viewed story and also the most profitable one was published in 2020: It got over 59K views and earned $614. I haven’t tracked my effort for it, but I remember it took me about a week (not full-time work) to have it done.

Below is the review of my previous 12 months as a content creator and my vision for 2022.

Things I’ve Done for the First Time in 2021

1. Give a public talk at a conference (enterJs 2021 conference).
2. Starting an email newsletter.
3. Sending a cold email.
4. Recording videos for my YouTube channel.
5. Building my web scraping muscles.
6. Writing articles for some clients who reached out after having seen my online content.
7. Becoming a partner of a few affiliate programs.
8. Buying a sit-stand desk, which was a great relief and has reduced my back pain a lot.
9. Writing stories about entrepreneurship, leadership, and business. That was a great opportunity to practice and improve my storytelling skill.
10. Towards the end of April 2021, I started tracking my working hours and the time I invest per article, which helped me to visualize my system and my effort.

To be honest, I’m using time-tracking in my job as a software engineer since 2007. But I abandoned it when I started my own content creation business. I’m glad I’m following it again now.

Effort vs. Income

The charts below represent my stats on January 2, 2022, for only 61 articles, which are the ones I’ve tracked effort for.

The purple color in both charts represents the income.

The blue line in the first chart represents my effort (number of hours), which includes the time I’ve invested to record and edit videos if the article contains one, the time for searching and learning about the new topics, but it does not include the digital marketing effort.

Let’s break the chart down to understand what’s going on here:

• My most viewed article of 2021 got 20K views, earned $178, and it took me 10 hours.
• My less viewed article in 2021 got 56 views, earned $1.25, and it took me 4 hours.
• My less profitable article in 2021 got 60 views, earned $0.51, and I have invested 24 hours in it.
• The lowest effort I’ve invested per article was 1.5 hours, which has generated $5.47 and got 328 views.
• The highest number of hours I’ve invested per story in 2021 was 78 hours between searching, writing the content, implementing a small app, and performing a web scraping task. The article has generated $318 and I’m glad that it was featured by Jan Ahrend, Senior User Experience Researcher at Google, in his User Weekly newsletter.

Now, be ready to not freak out.

When I calculate my average hourly income based on the 1401 hours I’ve invested in these 61 articles and the $2916.5 ($1823 is paid by external clients) they’ve generated right now plus a $1600 bonus from Medium, the result would be around $3.2.

Yes, this would be a disaster if writing is my single source for living.

But the good news is that the income will continue to increase as long as there are new readers and my content will probably attract more clients and business contacts. More importantly, it represents an asset that I can transform part of it into an eBook, video courses, add as a reference in my CV, or even use it to apply to the Google Developer Expert (GDE) program.

Sounds pretty good, right?

Focusing on quantity over quality would deprive me of such an opportunity.

Views vs. Income

The next chart compares the number of views and income for each story. The blue line represents the number of views and the purple color represents the income (which is the same as the previous chart):

Do you notice any commonalities?

As you can see, the income is not associated with how much effort I’ve invested, nor with the number of views, because it depends on the number of internal views and member reading time. Many of my stories have thousands of views but only less than 10% of them are internal or Medium members.

Achieved Milestones in 2021

• 1K followers in January 2021.
• 2K followers in October 2021.
• Achieving over 100 articles. My article number 100 was published in November 2021.
• Improving my storytelling and writing voice. I have more self-confidence now and feel more grounded in my content creation capabilities.
• I used to spend part of my content production process managing the internal drama and trying to get momentum. Fortunately, I have more clarity and less struggle now. The question for me is no more “if I can write about a specific subject” but it’s rather “if I can write a great piece about that subject.”
• Although my stories still feel like my little children, I’m less emotionally connected to each one of them when I compare it to a year ago. This change helped me to overcome disappointments and focus on what’s next when a piece does not get the expected number of views.

Tiny Habits That Brought Me More Inner Peace

During the last two years, I was unhealthily obsessed with checking my stories’ stats and Partner Program income on a daily basis. That habit turned into a source of distraction and stress weighing me down. It made me feel guilty about not having enough self-control to stop such a waste of energy.

Thankfully, in September or October 2021, I’ve managed to check my Partner Program income only once in 30 days. I liked that experience and started applying for it every month. Now I check my income only at the beginning of the month.

In December 2021, I leveled up the game and stopped checking my stories' stats every day — and even multiple times per day. Looking at the stats dashboard only at the start of the month helped me get over worrying about the number of views I would reach while it’s something outside my control.

​Go, Go, Go

Although my 2021 milestones look like baby steps at first glance, I’m proud that I’ve achieved them and I still like the journey. Content creation is an inherently hazardous line of work, and comparing myself to others or to unrealistic expectations won’t help.

My goals for the current year include:

• Transform part of my articles into videos, which I’ve already started doing.
• Grow my YouTube channel.
• Sell videos courses on platforms like Udemy and Pluralsight.
• Work smarter and improve my system.

And, of course, I’ll continue passionately scribbling more stories down and get them out into the world.

I don’t know what your goals are, but when you pause to assess your endeavors and plan the future, remember the following quote from Jordan Peterson:

“Compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to someone else today.”

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