045 | MEDIUM
When Medium Gave Me a Boost Should I Make Lemonade?
Another unexpected gift from Medium
Read this article for free here.
Long story short, one of my stories was chosen for a Medium boost and I am still in disbelief. So, first of all, I want to express my gratitude to Medium. Thank you very much for this incredible opportunity.
The boost commenced on the 26th of April and it is still generating some views. However, it is likely that its impact has peaked already. If you would like to revisit the story, please feel free to do so.
Typically, I spend a considerable amount of time writing a post. I am often consulting with my family members to confirm certain memories. If it happens to be a folklore or cultural story, I cross-check different versions of the story.
As a result, some of the writing needs time. Surprisingly, on this occasion, I was able to write this post in a single sitting. It was never my intention to target for a boost when I was writing this article.
Later, I checked Medium’s selection criteria for a boost. According to my understanding, it seems like my story met most of them even without targeting them. For your information, those criteria are;
- Story Contents: Is it Constructive? Is it Original?
- Author’s Credentials: Does the author speak from Relevant Experience?
- Craftsmanship: Is the story Well-crafted? Does it feel Memorable?
As someone who is relatively new to this platform, I find this experience to be quite motivating and inspiring. So, my fellow newcomers, We should never give up on our dreams. Who knows, perhaps tomorrow you will be waking up to similar good news.
Stats
Let’s now turn our attention to the statistics. I’ve heard that a boost is typically spread out over a period of six days. At the time when the boost was initiated, my story had only garnered 41 views.
Thanks to the incredible boosting feature, after six days, my story has now reached 1.6k views.
The highest point was observed on the 29th of April, the fourth day of the boost, with 633 views on the story. I’ve heard that, during a boost, one can expect to receive between 0.5k to 2k views. And if you’re really lucky, you may even receive as many as 100k views.
However, for me, this is a fair and reasonable achievement, and I am more than satisfied with the results.
Further, I am pleased to report that the view-to-read ratio for my boosted post stands at 33%. It is higher than my all-time average ratio of 27%. In other words, one-third of every viewer who clicked on my post actually read it, which is not bad at all.
I have earned $10.51 from this post so far, and while it may not be a significant amount, I have no complaints whatsoever.
Moreover, the boosting has helped to increase the view count of my other stories as well. While it is difficult to identify the difference separately from this ‘middle finger of stats’, the impact was significant.
Unexpected Gift
Here’s an additional piece of information that is not directly related. I had this dream, to obtain a Top Writer status in Medium. Typically, I used ‘Storytelling’ and ‘Memories’ tags for my post since they closely align with the type of content I write.
However, I was devastated to learn that both ‘Storytelling’ and ‘Memories’ are not eligible taglines for Top Writer status. Moving forward, my next option was the ‘This Happened To Me’ tagline.
Fortunately, for this particular boosted story, I used the ‘This Happened To Me’ tagline. Something magical has happened, and I received this notification via email earlier today.
It seems that my boosted post has made a significant contribution in this regard. I would like to thank all of you for this achievement.
A special thank goes to ‘my sister from another mother’ Priyanka Priyadarshini. I am grateful for your continuous support and encouragement since day one, and a big chunk of this yellow round thing belongs to you.
Making Lemonade
If you were wondering about the meaning of the title, I am sorry that there isn’t one. It is an arbitrary selection.
Since the beginning of my journey on Medium, I have been engaging with other writers by commenting on their work. As I write this post, my response count stands at 1867.
Sometimes, it took me several days to find like-minded writers and get noticed by them. However, thanks to the boost, I am now presented with a large pool of readers who have engaged with my work at least once.
I am planning to interact with them regularly because I do not want to miss out on this opportunity. We never know when the next opportunity will present itself, so it is essential to make the most out of every chance we get.
Well, This concludes my Boosting story. If you have any questions or require specific statistics, feel free to ask me. I am happy to assist you in any way I can. I hope to hear similar success stories from each one of you soon.