Writers Are Seasoned Liars I Wish I Knew Much Earlier — 1.2k Followers And $213.6 Later

My awful take on the lies of all writers and the lessons learned

When I started writing here, I never knew it would be this interesting. I honestly thought it would be a walk in the park because I had developed and gathered all the skills and information necessary. I knew I could do it. I could earn a living by just writing full-time on Medium.

Well, it’s exactly two years of reading and almost a year of writing now, and my only wish was that someone had punched me right in the face. I probably would have had my ego removed, and my hopes reduced.

Medium reading journey

When I joined Medium, I used to love reading anything by any writer. Apparently, I never knew there was a stereotype; a who to read and who not to read culture.

I opened every single article that sounded good to my inner self. Clickbait got the better of me. I opened them instantly and gave them a lot of concentration until I was called off by some honest writers, whose articles are part of my current appreciation today.

I soon started to get pumped up after reading several articles about earnings and the Medium partner program. I thought I was just in a magical world with everything revealing itself to me. All the articles felt like secrets that were told to me in sheer privacy.

Soon, those little articles came together and got me to join the partner program. I then started to write, only this time with all the ideas I had gotten from constantly reading articles and watching YouTube videos of some of the writers.

Writers are liars

I had to take myself down Memory Lane to get this right. This is one piece of information I never saw while I was a constant reader here.

If I was told bluntly that we were all liars. That we were mere storytellers and compellers who got others to see what we wanted like I just made you do now.

Then I would have stayed. Yes, you read right. I would still stay, but I would have fewer hopes than I do now. During my time as a constant reader, here are some of the lies I read from most writers, some of whom are now my friends.

Followers increase your chances of relevance

As of now, I currently have exactly 1240 followers. These followers are what I initially thought would be my medal. While I was a reader, I read articles that bragged about having just seven hundred followers and having a catapulted freelance career on Medium.

I immediately clicked with that idea and followed every single person I saw on Medium. Funny! I didn’t even know there were various users on the website. Some are real-time Medium members in the partners’ program — they have a green circle around their profile image.

Others were ordinary readers who were roamers like me too — they don’t have the green circle around their profile image.

After that, I knew that piece of information was still provided by an honest writer. I instantly knew what society on Medium was to follow. So, I started following every green-circled profile image. On some days I would get 30 follow-backs and on other days I would only get a few above 10.

The most awful lie I read from a writer was for me to follow up to 50 writers a day, and now I regret that badly. Because out of my not-so-unique 1.2K followers, I know that I only have about 400 genuine followers who do read my articles when they see them.

Lesson!

For every new writer out there, I know it’s now tougher than it used to be. You must have a certain number of followers to be eligible for the partner program. But trust me, you don’t want to rush it. Don’t follow profiles blindly. Some of the big writers are more financial-oriented than knowledge-oriented. They mostly want to make money and won’t spend a single second reading your articles once you join the partner program. The best they would do is leave an awful highlight or clap when you call them out.

Instead, get a hold of yourself, keep writing, and once you hit the 100 follower mark, you will be sure to have more than 500 claps and 10 engagements on your stories because they are genuine people who love your work.

One viral story is all you need

This article will make it the 84th story I’ve published on Medium. Although with some older articles that I will tag as being Medium-beginner level articles. So I think it is safe to say I have written about 70 medium-worthy stories.

During my newbie days, I always read articles that are earnings-based, and although they are different in context, they always have one message in common, which is that “Once you have a viral article, then you will ultimately hit the roof afterward.”

I never really believed in that idea, but once it started reoccurring to me in different articles, I decided to take that advice and start writing. Then, I hoped that someday I will get that one viral article.

Well, as you might have guessed, it didn’t come any earlier than it should and you might not believe this, but I had one article I considered viral and another not so viral.

This had 5.6k views and more than a thousand reads, but total lifetime earnings of $7.41.

This received 1.6k views and 960 reads but earned a total lifetime income of $75.25.

If I was asked what the outcome would be at the end, well, by now I thought I would have become a friend of the algorithm and probably have earned more than I thought. But guess what? Those are still my most read articles out of 83 articles. Maybe this one will go viral. I can’t say. But I know now that it’s not until you go viral before you have meaningful success on Medium.

Lesson!

For every Medium newbie out there, don’t believe those tales. They are all lies. Not one viral article can get you the success you want. Hell! Not even two.

My honest advice is to just hope the algorithm recognizes your efforts and blesses you well. You could have a 1000 view article earning up to $200 with proper reading time. That’s what really matters. The member reading time.

That’s the metric to look at, hence it’s better to write more about what members want to read.

100% Grammarly score is all you need.

Just recently, I got tired of the stress. I was burned out. I had written every day for seven days and was planning to start editing and submitting the articles.

But I also got frustrated because the last few articles I wrote were super standard but badly unsuccessful. In fact, I made sure they had at least a 99% score on Grammarly.

I was mislead by the thought of the articles I had read in my newbie period on Medium. Those articles would always exalt curation, claiming that a high Grammarly score would get you curated as soon as possible.

So I had the thought of getting all my articles no less than a 99% score on Grammarly. But guess what? I have only been curated once, by the curators. I don’t blame them or the algorithm. I only blame myself for discovering this terrible truth now.

A few minutes before I started editing the new seven stories, I thought I should do a little research. And I went on to the search bar, I typed in “Curation,” and I opened every story that talks about curation with a sample of their curated article. And you wouldn’t believe what I discovered.

It’s quite creepy. But I copied some articles and checked the grammar-error score on Grammarly. I was utterly shocked because most of those articles only have an 85% Grammarly score or even less.

This is what is most surprising to me. Some of those articles have an 80% Grammarly score and 80k claps. This implies that most of the so-called “medium giants” aren’t solid writers; they are only businessmen and women.

Lesson!

Now I know not to over edit or give my articles full Grammarly screening. Because truly, Grammarly makes some of the articles boring and strict. Words like “really,” and “truly,” are immediately spotted by Grammarly. And these are words that really do the magic. See! “Really?”

As a result, ye newbie or relevant writers, Ignore the so-called Grammarly belief. Simply put, aim for an 80–87% score on your article and concentrate on readability.

If your readability is bad, then don’t expect any success from the article. Here is how to view the readability score of your article in Grammarly. After inputting your story and editing it, click the overall score tag on the right-hand side of the screen. A performance pop-up tab will show on your screen.

Now just scroll down till you see your readability score. If you can get it to a 100% score, please do. Your articles would hold more readers’ attention.

Final Take

We are not really liars. Were are just pushers of vague ideas. I think it is now safe to say that we should try things out before putting articles about them so that we can only give out the truth and nothing but that.

Lastly, My gestures towards you know no bounds. Thank you so much for reading my article today.

Meanwhile, I would be publishing another volume of this particular article.

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