Writing & Content Creation

My Medium Journey Toward Top Writer in Creativity

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable” ~ Christopher Reeve

(Update on June 24th, 2020)

It was Friday morning. Finally, after 3 weeks of work to have it done, I received an email from one of Medium’s largest publications, saying that my article is accepted and published.

Yes, I did it! It was a daunting task and took much more time than what I’ve planned, but It’s worth it. I can’t wait to see the statistics.

• Friday night: Total views 68, Member reading time 13 min, Earnings $0.32

Well, it’s the first day. Maybe it’s too early to expect a considerable outcome.

• Saturday: Total views 316, Member reading time 13 min, Earnings $0.32
• Sunday (day 3): Total views 175, Member reading time 30 min, Earnings $0.69
• Monday (day 4): Total views 215, Member reading time 7 min, Earnings $0.34
• Tuesday (day 5): Total views 79, Member reading time 12 min, Earnings $0.32
• The 21 days after: Total views per day ≤ 24, Member reading time per day ≤ 4 min, Earnings per day ≤ $0.11

Although it seems like a prominent result for many Medium writers, it was not what I was expecting. I thought I can earn the required amount to pay my bills when I dedicate my full time to writing. It looks like it was a nice dream.

Until seeing these statistics, I was convinced that I’ve to rely on good writing and publishing with large publications to reach a big number of readers and earn a considerable amount of money. But I was wrong and so disappointed by this result. It’s time to change my strategy now.

Jill Reid once wrote:

“It’s in the list of top fears for most writers: Being invisible. The possibility our articles won’t be noticed — or read — ranks high on the stress scale.”

For me, the stress was answering the question “Why put so much of my soul into an article, dedicate my full time to it, and not looking for a job when it will not generate the outcome that I need?” The most difficult part that I’ve faced in the first two months after starting writing full time was not writing. It was coping with frustration, coping with my back pain, and find again the writing enjoyment.

In one of his articles that I’ve recently read, Tim Denning said that sitting became uncomfortable for him. For me it was not uncomfortable, it was so painful that I couldn’t sit most of the day and couldn’t be productive as I wanted, which increased my frustration.

With good news about my stories in the last weeks, doing more workouts, and developing a new mindset, I’m much better now. I adjusted my earning expectation, and I’m adjusting my thinking pattern from being goal-oriented to be system-oriented to avoid stress when the goal is not achieved.

My new strategy now is: to earn $1 a day.

Yes, literally one dollar a day, not because I need 1 dollar or I can pay any bill with it, but because if I could learn how to write articles that generate one dollar a day, I could learn how to write better articles that generate more. Anthony Moore, one of the top writers in Medium, once wrote:

“Some people can make $20,000/month here — but most writers won’t. That’s OK; I made $40 total over the first 4.5 years of my writing. If you can make $50/month on Medium for now, that’s great.”

• On day 29 after publishing my famous story, my new strategy started to work. The statistics changed to total views 124, member reading time 1h 31min, earning $2.28.
• On day 36, the story was curated for one topic. Meanwhile, I’ve updated the title and subtitle, optimized SEO, removed the featured image, and replaced it with an animated GIF created by myself.
• 2 weeks later, the article got a new curation for 2 other topics.
• After 2.5 months, the total number of views was 2.8K (25% internal) and the number of fans was 43.

So, this is what I’ve learned.

Improving your writing’s quality

The fact that your story contains grammar or spelling errors is enough as a reason to prevent it from being curated. For my writing, I’m using Grammarly, a tool that helps to detect errors and find better words to express yourself. It’s a digital writing assistant that could be used to compose bold, clear, and mistake-free stories. It checks grammar automatically and gives corrections instantly while you write on Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, and all your other favorite sites.

Grammarly is available as an app, for use with Microsoft Office, as a plugin for Chrome browser, and in other forms. And best of all, it has a free version!

Challenges facing online writers

As an online writer, we need to know which criteria are important for google to good rank your article, how SEO is working, we need to have some digital marketing and social media skills.

As I started writing, I couldn’t devote more than a few hours a week. All that I wanted at that time was to have more time to do it. I got it recently, and I wrote the mentioned story which was thankfully curated, but my goal was much bigger.

I tried to understand the reasons for the gap between my goal and the real outcome. I read a lot of posts from Medium writers sharing their experiences and giving tips. I understood the power of SEO and social media. I was ready to improve my articles for better SEO ranking, but it was not easy for me to consider more effort to share on social media. It was an overwhelming task and consumed a lot of time and concentration.

The power of SEO

In one of his posts, Michael Leonard wrote:

Study SEO like your life depends on it.

SEO and digital marketing are game-changers and could save your story. They have the power to increase traffic dramatically at the moment when you are desperate. Below is an example from my stories, about the increase of numbers of views over time:

In the first months (August, September, October 2019), the story didn’t receive more than just a few views. In April 2020, the story reached 90 views/day. The total number of views on 7th Mai 2020 was 4.4K (97% external) and 3.3K came from google.

To get more traffic, you need to be patient, give yourself more time to hone your writer’s voice, and try not to be very down when things are not going well. You may experience a time when an article looks like not more existing and nobody is coming either to read or to see it after it received just 50 views the first month. The battle with yourself to manage your emotions could be the hardest. Things take time and are hard otherwise, everyone would be doing them.

More views do not mean more earning

Don’t take for granted more views means more earning. The details matter. Earning is related to member reading time due to the current Medium rules. Your story could have a lot of external views with almost no earning or fewer views with more earning. The following screenshot from my statistics illustrates such case:

• 316 views and 13 min Member reading time generated a $0.32 outcome.
• 78 views and 1h 8 min Member reading time generated a $1.70 outcome.

I have another article with 30K views (97% external, 26K came from google). I made it eligible to earn money just in March 2020. For about two months, it generated just $2.80:

You can choose in such case to maintain your story beyond the paywall, or improve its SEO and share it more on social media, or make it accessible for everyone and give non-Medium members the opportunity the read your content and see your good work and maybe they will become followers and want to read more from you. Before becoming a Medium member, I was enjoying reading a limited number of inspiring articles from one of the top writers on the platform. I wanted to read more from him, and here I’m, today I’m a member and I’m still belonging to the list of his readers.

An animated picture could help to captivate your audience

I used my background as a software engineer to create animated GIFs for my articles, especially the technical ones. Animated GIFs catch the eyes of visitors and support a content marketing strategy if used mindfully. Google image search now contains GIF files and animated GIF. This allows your content to be found by users who wouldn’t have otherwise, which means traffic.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, an animated picture is worth 1,000,000 words.

Similar to how a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture exponentially expand on the idea. In the following article, you can find details about how to create an animated GIF:

Transform your struggle to an opportunity

Do you feel an urge to be productive, but also the lack of ideas and good writing skills? You are not alone. It’s important to acknowledge that this challenge we’re in weighs heavy. Here is how I’ve resolved this issue.

1. Translation

My first experience with Medium was just as a reader. I enjoyed reading a lot of articles that I loved. Since I have a passion for sharing knowledge with others, I couldn’t stop translating some inspiring stories I read.

If you’re struggling to produce new material, let’s try translation from your native language to English or from English to another one and make sure to have the permission to do it. Translation helps to understand and learn unconsciously some writing techniques and patterns from good writers.

Your translation might not be good enough at the beginning. Consider it as a snapshot of your continuous commitment to improve. Give yourself time to learn and enjoy the process.

2. Answering other articles

I’ve recently discovered a new way to write my own story. It’s by trying to give responses with value (images, animation, statistics, etc) to different articles after reading them. Some of my responses where long enough that could be transformed into stories.

3. Find your next story title

Are you still facing a lack of ideas or creativity? Let’s move to the next level and set a strategy to learn and share your learning outcome with others. First, you need to write a question to answer. Let’s say it’s: What is the best way to start a story? What are the different writing types or techniques?

Such a question could be the title for your next article. Start by searching, taking notes from inspiring books, or videos you have read or watched. Changing the subject from finding “the characteristics of good writing” to find “5 characteristics of good writing” will make finishing your article easier. Your goal is now much more determinant.

The takeaway

I started my journey on Medium about 2 years ago. Most of this period, I was just a reader. Until a few months ago, I’d less than 10 English articles published. In Mai 2018, I’d just 7 views and 0 fans in 30 days, then the statistics changed to become:

• November 2019: 9365 views, 17 fans (30 days)
• March 2020: I started writing full time and understanding the platform better. It was the beginning of a new chapter in my journey.
• Mai 29, 2020: For the first time, an article of mine “5 Techniques to Become a Descriptive Visual Writer” receives 281 views, 21 fans, and 3 hours ($5.22) Member reading time in less than 24 hours of publishing it.
• June 14, 2020: I have 6 curated articles in total. 10,186 views and 210 fans in 30 days and I’m a top writer in creativity.

• June 26, 2020: My posts got 7,028 views in one day, and my article “What’s new in Angular 10” got alone 6.6K views, and about 50 hours Member reading time ($74.03) in its third day of being published.

That was my 2 years Medium journey!

Don’t hesitate to share yours. And remember if you’ve put in the work and you are good enough to break out and be patient, eventually success will find you. No matter what, keep going, keep learning, and keep improving.

🧠💡 I write about engineering, technology, and leadership for a community of smart, curious people. Join my free email newsletter for exclusive access or sign up for Medium here.