The #1 Priority After Joining Medium
According to some articles, followers don’t matter. Here’s my opinion after getting my first 100 followers.
First, I want to thank all of my followers for helping me achieve my goal. I couldn’t have done it without you!
When I started writing on Medium, the rule that you need 100 followers to enroll in the Partner Program was already in place. Of course, the first item on my agenda was to achieve that number in order to monetize my writing.
I like writing, but I like getting paid for writing even better. I was determined to get my articles behind the paywall.
I will admit, in order to do it, I engaged in the follow-for-follow trend. I knew I could get there eventually by myself, but not as fast as I would’ve wanted to. The main reason I felt the urgency to do it quickly, was because I was afraid I would publish something viral and end up earning nothing for it.
I had all of my stories picked up by publications and some of them were curated, but nothing went viral. But that’s ok. There are still plenty of benefits I discovered from this experience.
If I could do it all over again, I would.
Nothing will make you want to do something more than getting paid for it.
In the beginning, I didn’t care how I got my 100 followers.
But after seeing some of the articles saying that 100 followers don’t matter and that followers are worthless unless they engage with your content, I had doubts.
I thought maybe I should only care about the work I do on the platform… But then I remembered: Money’s great!
So I went back to not caring how I did it.
Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.
— Nelson Mandela
I don’t mean to sound shallow, but money is a great motivator. Would you go to your nine-to-five job if you didn’t get paid for it, even if you did like it?
You won’t make a fortune with your first few articles or your first 100 followers, but the prospect of making money will make you want to do more, try harder, and do better.
Do you want to know how much I made after a week in the Partner Program? Here are my stats:
I made $0.87 in total from the five articles I published in April. Only one of them was posted after I was accepted into the Partner Program.
Now that’s nothing worth bragging about, but it makes me excited to do more, it shows me that making money from writing is possible, and it gives me a good reason to continue.
Freedom to make money equals freedom to create.
As I mentioned before, one of my concerns before becoming eligible to get paid was that I might get lucky and publish something very popular without making a profit.
That’s why in the beginning I was a little cautious about which pieces I was published first.
Actually, my most successful article was the first one I published. Yet, it earned only $0.04 because I published it weeks before I could put it behind the paywall.
I was pretty disappointed.
Now I don’t have to worry about how many stories I post, what I post, and in what order. Any of my articles have the potential to earn money.
It feels freeing. It puts me at ease. I can focus on creating and publishing without reservations.
Strength is in the numbers.
When I first joined Medium, it felt a bit lonely. I had no followers, nobody knew who I was, and I didn’t feel connected to the community.
This changed when I gained more followers. Now that I’ve passed the magic 100 followers, it truly feels like a community.
I appreciate every one of them, even if we followed each other to fulfill a requirement.
I may never meet or talk to these people, but that’s ok. It’s their presence that’s most important to me. They helped me get to my goal and I hope I helped them get closer to theirs.
We don’t need to know each other to support each other.
You can catch up on my first five stories here: