LIFE ON MEDIUM

What I’ve Learned from My First 2 Months Writing on Medium

I fell short of my goals, but I’m determined to keep going

So, here I am at the end of the second month of writing on Medium. The results are a mixed bag but I approached this as a 3-month experiment and I intend to keep going with it.

I’ve learned a lot from what other Medium writers have posted about their experience. It has helped me avoid a few mistakes and has revealed some tips that have proved really helpful. With that in mind, here’s my summary of month 2 on Medium.

I documented my first month’s experience here:

At the end of the first month, I had 6 goals:

1. Publish 20 new stories.
2. Get to 250 followers.
3. Start an email list.
4. Earn at least $100 in the next 30 days.
5. Work toward becoming a top writer.
6. Look for more writers to follow.

Here’s how I fared on these goals and more.

Stories published and curated

I only published 9 stories in the past month, far below my goal of 20 stories. Of those 9 stories, 5 were curated in at least one topic. The topics I’ve been curated in are: Outdoors, Food, Makers, Environment, Writing, and Pets. A couple stories still have the “Hang tight!” message so maybe they’ll be curated eventually.

My top story for Views and Reads was this:

My top story for Claps was this:

Publications

Out of the 9 stories I published in the past month, three were included in the publications Tenderly, Age of Awareness, and The Writing Cooperative. I’ve now been accepted as a writer at 8 publications, so I have a few more that I can submit to.

In addition, following the advice of Medium superstars like Shaunta Grimes and Casey Botticello, I decided to start my own publication to keep my gardening articles that aren’t picked up by other publications in circulation. The new publication is called Garden to Table and the tag line is “Victory gardening for the 21st century.” It will focus on edible gardening advice and inspirational articles for the novice or experienced gardener. You can follow it here:

Followers

I’ve gained followers, but not nearly as many as I’d hoped. I’ve gone from 131 to 161 in the past month, far below the 250 I was shooting for.

Earnings

Once again, get ready to be spectacularly unimpressed! My earnings so far for June are $3.44 (with $.26 paid for April and $5.57 for May). That puts me at $5.90 for the second-month period (the first month was $3.37, which means $9.27 total to date), an extremely modest gain. I’m just barely covering the cost of my own Medium membership.

My takeaways

1. Reading and studying posts from other Medium writers continues to be extremely important. I am so grateful when others share their experiences.
2. Curation and publishing in other publications have felt like a more uphill battle than it did at first, but it’s worth the effort.
3. Everything I read tells me that publishing a lot is what really makes the difference in terms of earnings, followers, everything really. If I had met my goal of 20 stories, I’m sure I’d have a lot better numbers to report.

Goals going forward

So what’s next? Here are my Medium goals for the coming month:

1. Publish 25 new stories. I struggled just to get 9 stories published this past month, but I need to push myself harder.
2. Get to 250 followers. This is probably a reach, but I want to try.
3. Start an email list. I got hung up on which platform to go with for an email list and didn’t get anything set up, but I think I’ll be going with Upscribe soon.
4. Earn at least $100 in the next 30 days. I’m still going to aim for this.
5. Work toward becoming a top writer. Outdoors, Food and Writing are probably my best options to aim for.
6. Gain 100 followers for my publication, Garden to Table. Now that I’ve started a publication, I’ve got to promote it. I’ve begun by starting a Twitter account for it, but I need to do more.
7. Use Hootsuite to promote my stories on social media better and easier. I don't really enjoy doing social media promotion so I hope I can automate it somewhat to make it simpler.

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