Medium Statistics
The No-Stat Quest for the $100 Mark
Welcome to No-Stat-Checking May; it’s totally a thing
I am pretty sure that I may hit or pass one of the milestones on Medium in May. I am on pace to have my first $100 showing after 4 ½ months on the platform.
How do I know? Easy, I have been incessantly checking my stats every single day since I started writing. I don’t count, but I am guessing it is around 173 times a day; give or take a peek or two.
Because of this I have been acutely aware of the journey I have taken during that time, and it has allowed me to come to the conclusion that writing on Medium is much like playing a never-ending game of chutes and ladders.
I came out with a bang in the last few days of December 2019. I wrote every day. Then I tapered off just a bit in January, but I still saw my stats increase, bouncing around the 50 views-per-day mark. Until I struck viewer gold on January 31 with my still-highest ever daily view count of 455. I hit one of the big boost “ladders”.
Unfortunately, that happened to be on the eve of two weeks of planned ski vacations. (Remember skiing? And vacations?) I wrote once in that stretch and just that one article bounced me back up to three days in a row of 150+ views; then that was it. I slid down one of the many Medium “chutes” in the game of writing.
From there I struggled for and celebrated 50-view days for about a month. Then I lucked into the ILLUMINATION publication. While there is no doubt that being part of a supportive community boosted my reads a bit, the best part of joining the publication as a writer and then editor has been the influence on my desire to write.
In particular, I embarked on a 30-day writing challenge that has pretty much changed my outlook on writing 180 degrees. I wrote a little about that with a tongue-in-cheek title:
When I started the challenge on March 28, I published an article each day for the first two weeks. As I gained steam, I found that many days I was writing two stories or more. I finished the month of April having published 46 stories.
As I finished out the month, I saw the early days of 50 views turn into 150+ over the last 10 days or so. I also saw my earnings that had been around $17 on day 15 rise dramatically to $60 by month’s end.
So, when I look back and analyze the factors that contributed to the upward spike, I look for changes or things I did differently to make that happen.
Since I was just as frenetically checking my stats in late February and early March as I have been over the last 10 days, I have come to the conclusion that my stat-checking efforts don’t fundamentally contribute to my statistical success. That is looking at the stats doesn’t seem to make them go up. No matter how often I look.
The thing that did change, however, was the frequency of my writing. In fact, there seems to be a strange and coincidental correlation to how often I write and publish and the slope of my stats curve.
More writing equals more views. Less writing equals less views. Looking at my stats impulsively every 7 minutes equals no statistical deflection in either direction. Hmmm.
This wasn’t a revelation really. I just can’t seem to help myself. It is a bit like pushing your baby bird out of the nest each time you publish a story. You want to look and make sure she is flying. The fact is though, regardless of whether the little story is flying or not, watching it from the nest isn’t going to affect the outcome.
Then this morning, after I grabbed my phone and looked at my stats, I noticed an article by Itxy Lopez in my daily feed. It was about article titles and was well-written. So, I went to her home page and noticed that her feature article was how she took a 30-day moratorium on checking her stats in March of this year. Her article is here:
She told a story very similar to mine, and probably yours as well. As I started reading it my thought was, “well, it doesn’t hurt to check a few times a day”, but by the end I was wondering if I could do that; quit cold turkey for 30 days.
As I mulled it over in my head, I made note of the coincidental fact that it was the first of the month. I also considered the mania I might undertake as I potentially chase that $100 mark this month.
So, I made my decision. I am doing it.
After one last loving and wistful stare at my stats page and Medium Partner Program numbers, I am closing the door on that activity for the rest of the month. I am going to allow myself to peruse the Medium weekly email about my stats — probably. Maybe I won’t, we’ll see. I may need me a little taste of those sweet, sweet numbers in a week. But that is it. No clicking on those sections of my Medium profile menu.
Instead I am going to write. I am setting a goal of at least doing what I did in April; 46 published articles. I am off to a good start, putting out two today.
Maybe I will hit the $100 mark this month. Perhaps I won’t. But I know that obsessing over whether I am on pace to do so or not won’t actually help me accomplish it. In fact, it will likely only hinder my efforts.
So here we go. No-Stat-Checking May. I am pretty sure that all the cool kids are doing it.
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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.