This is my Most Productive Month on Medium
The month of February 2023 has been nothing but fantastic for me. Although I was actually quite dreading it first considering it wasn’t really that friendly of a month for single man like me (eyeing at you all lovers out there)
the month of love instead brought a lot of love from you (the readers) in a different way.
Several notable achievements have been crossed; big plan being created; stories being improved — making February is the most productive month of my journey on Medium so far!
- I gained more than 400 followers on February alone (record so far)
- Several of my stories hit 1000k views
- I gained 15 more email subscribers (the most ever)
- I accrued 5000 views on all my stories
- I achieved the “top writer” status in the category of writing!
Beginning the 2023 with only 200 followers, I literally 4X my follower to 800 followers now.
And that happened without me even doing follow for follow approach!
“Medium Power comes with medium responsibility”
I know that writing business is really all about trust building with the readers, therefore, I wanna share few of my reflections having reached this “yet” another milestones.
Maybe by sharing this, I can also aspire other writers or readers out there to start getting closer to their goals, and start tapping into their potential here on Medium.
It Takes Time
First of all, writing takes time.
Take it from me, there were moments that I thought it was pointless doing all of these weird writings on the internet and not getting paid (still not getting paid BTW), and there was a moment where I felt that I was writing to echo chamber.
The truth is: you won’t see result right away!
Learning from experience, I took it as a hobby, sharing story, so it didn’t really put a huge pressure on my shoulder.
Sometimes you give up, on the other times you pick up that keyboard and start jamming all the ideas and nuances in your head. That happened to me a lot.
But trust me, if you do it consistently by providing some sort of value to the society (i.e. helping others to improve their life), you won’t be unnoticed for long.
The market will see your authenticity. People start appreciating. Few months were silence, next thing you know, you slowly gain traction in very short amount of time.
It’s like a snowball effect sometimes.
Just Hang in there my friends. If you ain’t see the numbers yet, keep on pushing. You will have your big break sooner or later. Trust me!
Stats is King
Beginning from this year, I began to take stats more seriously.
No. It’s not something fancy like aggregating certain sofisticated metrics using data processing software V. 2.0 or anything like that.
It’s actually very simple.
Periodically, I would scan my eyes on 3 most fundamental stats on Medium (at least according to my newbie standard of analysis) :
- Views
- Reads
- Read ratio
I know this might sound obvious, but from these metric, I then can decide strategically:
- What headline works the best in terms of getting views
- What structure of writing lead the most in terms of reads, and getting readers to clap on certain story
- How the gap between views and reads differ from every stories, and how it relates to point #1
- How can I take the most advantage of this data by doing a lot of reiterations, trial and error until I catch the wave of the audience.
See? Nothing to complex here.
And it should not be.
At the end of the day, I do believe stats is there to give you bird eye view about what your readers want. What are they most interested in. What don’t they want. And using your judgment, interpret the data to generate ideas and story that are responding toward those notions.
The key is to not go overboard on the data interpretation thing, and keep it as just one of your tools in your writing arsenal.
Find your Voice, not your Niche
Finding your voice in the jungle of writing world on Medium is really about being authentic, genuine, and sharing unique values that resonate toward collective individuals.
I know the term
“niche”
is becoming such a buzz word nowadays.
Even as you start joining Medium for the first time, you already have to find your own little biddy bit of niche in order to separate you from the rest of the writers.
I think many people mistakenly perceive niche as finding something specific that nobody is ever doing anything in that category, like writing about “10 fascinating facts about vacuum cleaners with supermassive amount of suction, which is very niche specific topic in itself (if there was such a thing to begin with).
Not that there is something wrong about writing the most supermassive vacuum on the internet — but are you going to be that guy though?
SO let me give you another example,
many people think that “writing” category is not niche-friendly category since the space is so saturated already with million other writers eating the pie at the same time.
I mean, would anyone even get a leftover from this pie?
It’s not even worth it to pursue this niche category whatsoever (many people would say).
The truth is, all you have to do is not to find a different niche just because one is already packed enough, but rather to define your voice in that category by providing unique value, that is individually you!
- If you are a single mom juggling between raising 2 beautiful daughters and doing writing on the sideline — that could be your unique value
- If you are an aspiring entrepreneur while currently living by only eating Indomie in college and doing writing on the sideline — that could be your value.
- If you are a 9 to 5 warriors living paycheck to paycheck, living in a less developed countries, and also doing writing on the sideline — that could be your value too.
The point is not to find uncharted niche territory where you can say whatever you want, but to actually package yourself so that you can say whatever you want, in whatever space, and people listen.
“niche is easily forgotten
But your voice will always be remembered!”
Key takeaways
- Online writing takes time. Once the flood gate is open, you will start generating snowball views like no others.
- Pay attention to your Medium’s stats. Don’t go crazy on it, just scan it and integrate it in your next writing content.
- Be authentic by finding your voice, not your niche.
