Seeking Advice from Medium Writers

How Long and How Often?

I have only been publishing on Medium since last month and need some advice. Perhaps a few veterans will provide guidance. If you are pressed for time, you can stop after the bulleted questions and give a quick response. Newish writers might want to stop back and look at the responses in a couple of days.

• Should I limit my offerings to one per day?
• Do longer stories usually get fewer reads?

I had been following the one-per-day rule until Wednesday. My thinking was that, like me, anybody following me would have limited time to read. I wanted to be thoughtful to readers and to avoid a Sophie’s Choice among my literary children.

I had also been keeping my offerings mostly to three minutes or shorter. My reasons were the same as above except that my “children” were also competing with other peoples’ kids for attention. Shorter kids get more attention from me. Why not from others?

Longer pieces require more time. I have a life outside medium. My wife is working from home, earning money forty hours per week while I turtle my way through the old to-do list. If she sees me spending more time again today in front of a screen than cleaning toilets, there will be trouble.

Wednesday I broke the three-minute rule. I published the most important and time-consuming non-fiction I have written this year. It was six minutes long. If taken seriously, the idea could improve the future. It took a lot of research and featured many links to back up the arguments. It had to be long to accomplish its objectives… every objective, that is, aside from reaching an audience.

Later in the day I broke rule number two. I published two more pieces in the same twenty-four hours. The original story, (the long story, the story that mattered most), got fewer fans than anything I have written in two weeks. Back then I had maybe half the followers. The short pieces did well. The dud story got way fewer views and reads.

That poor result is despite my promoting it on Facebook and Quora. I only promote on social media once or twice a week. The sad result happened even despite Dr Mehmet Yildiz trying valiantly to bring it to the attention of the purblind Doomsters whom we thank for curating us. I expect to go to Mars before any of my stories get distributed in topics. Listing my favorite child as “Featured” helped not a whit. Every parent thinks their favorite child is gifted. The less important and less promoted stories did way better.

Am I right? Was this story’s problem the length and self-competition? Or was it just a topic of little interest? Was it the photo? Was it the title? Was it the time of publication at mid-morning in the Eastern United States? Have you had similar experiences?

Behold the dud: