The Most Common Pitfall Medium Writers Fall Into (You Probably Experienced This)

Watch out for this trap.

My progress has slowed significantly here on Medium. Since peaking on February 15th, my views have been on a downward trend along with my earnings.

Part of the reason has been my lower publishing rate. I have not published anything for the last four days.

Why?

At first, I attributed my break to the extra work I had in badminton. The kids had a long weekend, which prompted our club to hold full-day training camps.

From February 15th to 19th, I worked at our badminton center from 10 AM to 7 PM, derailing my regular writing schedule at 10 AM.

This, however, was not the biggest reason for my slowdown on Medium.

A few days ago, I read Theo Rose’s “How to Guarantee Longevity as a Writer on Medium.”

This was when I realized I had unknowingly burnt out as a writer. Theo talked about how writers get sucked into writing too many meta-articles about stats, earnings, and Medium strategies when they see just a little bit of success.

That was my aha moment. I had fallen into the trap of writing for money and needed to get out.

Writing For Views and Earnings Will Burn You Out

If you’ve spent a good amount of time writing as a Medium partner, you probably experienced this feeling at one point in your life.

One day, you write an article, and out of nowhere, it blows up. The article suddenly has 300 views a day after publishing, and you have 50 notifications to respond to.

Then, the next day, success continues to come. Daily views jump from 300 to 600 to 1000 in a few days.

Shocked by this success, you write about your experience. People flock to this article after seeing the title of how you made $100 on Medium in two days.

It feels like you got the snowball rolling. You have momentum, and you want to push it.

Every day, you continue to publish articles in hopes of increasing your daily views and earnings.

It works for some time, but then the progress begins slowing down.

Each new article you publish does not get the same traction as the ones that initially brought you all the views.

And with every disappointment, you think more and more about how to write something that will go viral.

But the more you think, the more difficult it becomes to generate writing ideas. And when you do have a writing idea, you question every word, wondering if readers will enjoy your article.

Eventually, you question yourself so much that you stop.

Nothing comes out of the self-imposed filter — the filter built by what you think readers enjoy.

This is my story in February. I started strong, almost making the same amount I made in January within the first week.

I didn’t want progress to stop, so I kept pushing out content with the goal of making money. The writing that happened to make me the most consistent revenue was articles about making money on Medium.

There’s nothing wrong about writing about Medium. It’s the same as any other niche.

The main problem is when you write with an intent to make money rather than an inherent desire to write, the quality of the article and your production ability drops significantly.

That’s the most common pitfall all too many Medium writers fall into. Their primary focus becomes money, which causes them to lose their ability to consistently write over the long term when the money doesn’t come as expected.

How To Make Money In the First Place

Yes, we all want money. I would bet that more than 90% of writers would stop writing on Medium if the Medium Partner Program stopped existing out of nowhere.

That said, we must consider how we earn money as writers on Medium.

To keep it simple, we get paid for good-quality writing. The more people read and like our stuff, the more we get paid.

Our goal is to write as many high-quality articles as possible.

If thinking about how to write articles that will earn a lot hinders our ability to write with flow, then that’s something we need to cut out.

We need to recognize the conditions that allow us to write well and do everything we can to work in those conditions repeatedly. That’s how we’ll become successful as writers on Medium over the long run.