Why Not Stressing Over 100 Followers is Better in the Long-Run

Forget the rush for the Medium Partner Program because these experiences are priceless

There are hordes of articles here talking about getting 100 followers yesterday so you can start earning ASAP.

I have 62 followers as of this writing. I’m thankful beyond belief for every single one of them.

My first article was published 3 weeks ago.

If you are feeling discouraged about your following, don’t. There are tremendous benefits to slow growth.

The 100 followers mean we can apply to the Medium Partner Program and earn.

I get that, but it doesn’t mean our stuff will be read.

Therefore it doesn’t guarantee we’ll get approved today and wake up to hundreds of dollars tomorrow.

Sadly, I see a lot of people treat it like that.

Yes, we all want to be able to make an income doing something we love.

I want to earn it. I want my writing to be of enough quality that when I start earning, it’s because people are looking at my articles and truly feel they will receive something out of them.

Writing for the reader is what I love doing.

If I wrote for my bank account only, then I’m just wasting my time and my reader’s time. I’d only be churning out subpar material for the sake of trying to make a buck.

We have to write stuff people want to read because they feel like they benefit from what we say.

I’m nowhere near that kind of quality.

Having this time to write (what will probably be my poorest quality work), but not having to have the masses see it, is fine and I’m sure will save me a hell of a lot of embarrassment.

My worst will be seen by fewer people.

We can make major mistakes. We can try out all our different voices and interests.

We can put little samplings out there, gather feedback, and continue to improve.

It’s a time of quiet so we can focus on learning, practicing, and steadily improving day by day.

People who choose to follow me are doing it voluntarily. Not because of a follow-for-follow

All 62 of my followers are genuine. Have I mentioned how much I appreciate every single one of them?

They’re not following me because of some “follow-for-follow” garbage.

Yes, I called it garbage.

Too many people get so hung up on that because they’re thinking of the money to be earned.

That right there tells me they’re probably not going to stick around long.

They’re not going to see what they want to see as fast as they want to see it so they’ll move on to the next shiny object.

It does me no good to gain 100 followers in 15 minutes, and have people following who aren’t even going to read what I write.

They don’t care about my writing. They care about my follow back.

If earnings are based on stats such as read time, then how much can we possibly earn if we have the required 100 followers but nobody is reading our work?

The pressure of a niche is less.

We can take this time and try out writing about our different interests.

We don’t have the pressure of being “an expert” in something right now.

We can explore before deciding where to permanently park ourselves and unpack.

Isn’t that wonderful?

One of my earliest articles was about not knowing what to write about.

Since then, and by sticking to a schedule of writing every day, I’ve been able to knock down that list significantly.

The amount of stress relieved by that is worth the slow growth.

I’ve also been able to dig into reading here. I’ve been able to watch the writers I admire, read other articles in the niches I’ve been tossing around, and the amount of clarity and knowledge gained has been beyond description.

I don’t feel so much like I’m stumbling in complete darkness.

I at least have a candle now.

I’m taking a course on writing for Medium and I can watch my growth in correlation with my learning.

I signed up for Ayodeji Awosika’s Medium Writing Superstars course shortly after joining Medium because I was reading his articles and his advice was solid.

Right now, I’m learning. Now just about writing on Medium, but being a writer overall with this course.

Because I choose to obtain followers organically, I get to learn, implement it, and watch everything grow with me.

I might be 20% at best through the course but every day when I sit down to write, I am implementing something new I learned the day before in the course.

There’s satisfaction in that.

These are long-term investments that will pay off in the future.

If it takes 6 months to reach 100 followers, so be it.

Every day I show up, I’m investing in my writing, my career, and the long term.

Final thought — the tortoise and the hare have a message for us.

According to Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, when it comes to Aesop's fable The Tortoise and The Hare:

The tortoise continues to move very slowly but without stopping and finally, it wins the race. The moral lesson of the story is that you can be more successful by doing things slowly and steadily than by acting quickly and carelessly.

Slow and steady wins the race.