My Medium Journey

Writing During a Pandemic: My First 7 Days on Medium

Wow! It has been an amazing journey. A lot has happened in my first 7 days ever writing for this platform. WOW!

I have gained over 50 followers, one of my pieces has been submitted into a publication and I have even started earning a little cash via the Medium Partner Program.

What has made this journey even more interesting is the fact that I have been writing through the midst of a global pandemic.

This will no doubt have affected my results as more people will be stuck at home due to various restrictions and, as such, there will be more eyeballs on my content.

In this article, I will be breaking down how well I have done, my goals for the next few weeks and months and what I intend to do next to up my writing game.

Just to summarise

Before I fully explain my plans and future intentions, I am going to quickly sum up what I have done in the first week of writing.

I officially joined Medium on the 21st December 2020 and since then, I have done the following:

• Written 5 articles (trying to get this to at least once a day, but took a short break for a few days around Christmas Day and Boxing Day)
• One of my articles has been published in a publication (The Innovation)
• Commented on 4 articles (going to do more of this to grow quicker and help others more)
• Started Pitching to more publications whose main topics are tech, science and photography

But what about the stats, you may ask?

How many views did you get in your first week?

Don’t worry, I have those ready for you just below!

Here are the statistics for the stories I have written

These are the articles I have written in the first week.

4 of these were self-published while the 5th article (the one at the top) was published via a publication called The Innovation.

As you can see, these numbers are extremely low compared to many others on the platform who have been honing their craft for many months or even years.

But it is a good start for my first week and I am very happy with the results I got.

In fact, these results have even generated me a little bit of cash, too.

This is because I signed up to the Medium Partner Program as soon as I started writing on this site.

From these articles, I have earned a grand total of $0.57 so far.

This will no doubt increase over time but it is a good start and I can now say that I have earned money in my first ever week writing for Medium.

As you can see, the article which was published via The Innovation earned a lot more than the other articles, which were just self-published.

I also gained over 50 followers, too

Throughout my first week, I have also gained a reasonable number of followers for my account as well.

Within my first week, I have accumulated a total of 57 followers. I am very happy with this and this is an average of 8 followers a day:

For this, I say thank you to each and every one of my followers for taking the time to read my content and I look forward to writing more articles for you all.

So then, what are my goals for the next week, month, 6 months and year?

After all, I definitely want to stick to writing on this platform and I love the simplicity of the Medium editor, which is a far cry from some of the clunkier and more distracting editors of other blogging platforms.

These are my aims and goals for my first year on Medium

For my first 14 days on Medium:

For the next 7 days on Medium, I wish to focus on getting my work into more publications and then I can become a regular writer for them.

I also want to develop my newsletter and grow my traffic to my new photography website, Photoaspire.

These are the goals I have set myself for the next week to achieve:

• Reach 70 Medium Followers
• Reach a total of 100 story views
• Earn $1 in Medium Partner Program revenue
• Get at least 3 more articles published into publications
• Start promoting my photography newsletter to get more traffic to my website
• Reach a total of 30 fans across all of my articles (only 9 left to go)

For my first month on Medium:

For my first month, I want to get some articles into the publications I wish to write for on a long-term basis so that I can write for them on a consistent basis and develop a regular publishing schedule.

I also want to build up my work and start to gain email subscribers.

Here are my exact goals for the first month on Medium:

• Reach 120 Medium followers
• Reach a total of 200 story views
• Earn $5 in Medium Partner Program revenue
• Get a total of 10 articles published into publications
• Gain 10 email subscribers from Medium
• Reach a total of 50 fans across all of my articles

For my first 6 months on Medium:

This is where I would like to build up a consistent base of followers and start earning a large part-time revenue for my work.

I will also hope to have a decent email subscriber base by then to bring in consistent traffic to this site and my site:

• Reach 1,000 Medium followers
• Reach a total of 3,000 story views
• Earn $300 in total Medium Partner Program revenue
• Get 100 articles published into Medium publications
• Gain 100 email subscribers from Medium
• Reach a total of 1,000 fans across all of my articles

For my first year of Medium:

By this stage, I hope to have a large following and a consistent part-time monthly income from the articles I have written.

I also hope to have a decent amount of email subscribers to drive a consistent stream of traffic to my website with, too.

These are the goals I have set myself to try and achieve at the end of 2021:

• Reach 3,000 Medium followers
• Reach a total of 50,000 story views
• Earn $3,000 in Medium Partner Program revenue
• Get 250 articles published into Medium publications
• Gain 500 email subscribers from Medium
• Reach a total of 15,000 fans across all my articles

What I intend to do to up my writing game

After my first 7 days on Medium, I have noticed that there are some key rules and guidelines you should follow in order to perform better on Medium.

I have used these rules and guidelines and advice from top writers to compile a shortlist of things and habits I will be doing consistently every day to engage with the Medium community and grow my following:

• Comment on 10 posts daily with meaningful comments and ask questions
• Share my articles via a weekly broadcast to my website email subscribers
• Pitch to more publications and communicate with the editors
• Start a publication for photography and link it to my website to enable other photographers and creative writers to start their Medium journey

I will be trying these out and I will let you know if they work or not in the next update. Maybe they will, maybe not!

And finally, thank you

Yes, thank you to each and every single one of you.

I really appreciate you spending the time to read all of this article and I thank all of my followers for taking the time to give me a follow and read my articles on a consistent basis.

I look forward to writing more content for you and helping you out with anything related to tech, science and photography.

If anybody is interested in taking their photography to the next level, I have a newly-released website you should check out.

It is called Photoaspire and I aim to teach you and give you advice on how to improve your photography.

Speaking of the newsletter I mentioned earlier, I have designed an in-depth and detailed FREE 7-Day photography course for you.

It is a must-have if you are a beginner photographer and you are unsure where to start on your photography journey.