I Wrote Every Week for a year. Here’s What Happened.
This past year I decided to write. For the first time in my life I wrote something besides a school assignment. My goal was simple: publish an article once a week, do it publicly, and earn enough money to pay for all my food costs. Here is a look back on how this experiment went.
The 2017 Stats:
- Articles Published: 44
- Words Written: 52,000
- Total Views: 66,000
- Top Article Views: 11,200
- Top Article Likes/Applause: 1,100
- Average Views per Article: 1,600
- Followers: 1,600
- Earnings: $3,000
I chose this goal, because I honestly wasn’t sure if I could do it. Before this I had only ever written papers for school. And earning money? I had read blogs about monetization, but wasn’t confident I could do it. Despite all this, I was committed to giving writing a shot.
The Outcome
I ultimately met my goal to cover my food cost for the year. Food cost me well under $250 per month ($3,000 / 12 months). However, I did not publish an article once a week. I started about a month late, so that bumps it down to 48 articles, and I missed 4 articles throughout the year. But all things considered, I achieved the majority of my goal. Here’s an in depth look at how it happened and lessons learned.
The Setup
In 2017 I wanted to do something different. Growing up I always made flimsy resolutions at the start of each year. They were vague and not really measurable. I finally got the courage to make a measurable goal, largely because of all the side-hustle content I was consuming. Thank you, Gary Vaynerchuk! I picked writing for two reasons. One, I thought developing this skill would be valuable to my professional career. Two, I wanted to get my thoughts down on paper.
After deciding this, I needed to figure out the best platform for publishing my writing. Should I make my own website and blog? Should I write for someone else? Should I submit articles to publications I follow? Ultimately I chose to publish articles to Medium and LinkedIn. Why? These platforms make it simple. All I had to do was write and make a few styling choices. The hosting, look and feel, and finding an audience is all handled by these platforms. For my purposes, the minimal setup time was the biggest differentiator.
I began by writing down a bunch of topics I had been thinking and reading about over the past few years. The content I follow online is overwhelmingly technology focused, so many of my writing ideas reflected that. This hasn’t stopped me from writing about other topics, but the majority of my views and earnings have come from tech pieces.
The final piece of setup I needed before writing was accountability. Posting publicly forced me to write better content than I would’ve otherwise. But to even publish writing in the first place, I wanted an extra incentive. So, for the first 5–10 articles I was planning to write, I had friends who were interested in the topics read them, offer feedback, and view the final post. Typically I would ask on Sunday if they could review something I was writing. Once they agreed, I told them to expect something by Wednesday. So now I had a deadline to meet. Then they were interested in seeing the final piece, so I had more motivation to publish it by the weekend and send it their way. Besides holding me accountable, this had the benefit of testing my thoughts with someone else. If my ideas were terrible, my friends would tell me.
Now that I had ideas, a platform, and accountability, it was time to write.
My Experience
Take 1
My first article was published on January 28th, 2017. No one read it. No, that’s not hyperbole — literally no one read it.
That one view? That was me.
Not exactly the grand start I had hoped for. But I was okay with that, because getting views wasn’t my goal. Writing every week was. I cared more about the process than the number of views. Frankly, I think that was key to my continued effort week in and week out.
Take 2
My second piece wasn’t better than the first, but two things were different. First it was about AI and driverless cars. In the tech community these were (and are) hot topics, so that attracted more interest. Having a flashy title probably helped too. Second, the editor from the Medium tech publication Hackernoon found it and asked to include it in his publication. This increased viewership, because Hackernoon has thousands of tech readers. I got to leverage that audience. As you can see, that made a difference in views for my second article.
This was cool. I was surprised that people actually were reading my stuff and (seemingly) enjoying it.
Back to the process. Then one article went viral on LinkedIn:
The interesting thing is that this same article only got 300 or so views on Medium. Different platforms, different audiences — makes sense that viewership is different. And I tried to look into it, but I am not really sure why that article went viral when others hadn’t. Engagement is fickle it seems.
Trusting the Process
I began writing about different topics, not just technology. I enjoyed the challenge different topics brought. During this stretch, my view count decreased sharply. If my goal had been to maximize views, then this is when I probably would have quit. But since my goal wasn’t about the number of views, I had the resolve to continue writing. I wasn’t focused on the stats, I was focused on the process of writing every week.
At this point writing was routine. Time to think about money.
I felt confident that I could write something coherent every week. It was time to turn my attention towards the second part of my goal: getting paid.
Between groceries and eating out, food cost me under $200 a month. To be safe I determined I needed to make $200/month or $2,400 on the year. I did research on ways to get paid: affiliate marketing, running a blog with ads, sponsored posts, etc. Around this time Medium was piloting their new Partner Program. This promised payment for Medium-only content. And they were looking for technology writers.
“Hey, I write about technology!” — My first thought seeing the email
This was my opportunity to make money through writing. So I applied. They reviewed some of my past articles and the future topics I hoped to write about. After about a couple weeks of waiting, I was in. I wrote my first series in June. Fast forward to November and I had met and exceeded my financial goal: $3,000 for the year. And I became a Top Writer on Medium for Technology & Artificial Intelligence in the process.
The writing process is not done when you publish an article.
But as good as getting paid and earning Top Writer status feels, it rings a bit hollow if articles don’t fulfill the needs of the readers. An excerpt from one eloquent commenter:
Ouch. That hurt at the time. My pride didn’t want to accept my most viewed and most liked article at the time being called “wishful thinking.” But as time passed, I put my pride aside and reflected on this comment. He clearly engaged deeply with my article enough to write a thoughtful response. As a nascent writer, these are the moments I learned to cherish. A reader wanted to help improve my writing. I vowed to do better research and to engage with my audience going forward.
Writing is a continual conversation between the author and the readers.
Now I routinely respond to comments on my writing. I thank commenters for their time and do my best to offer more value in my replies. This has added a far more personal and rewarding aspect to my writing. If an article gets 3,000 views, I feel indifferent to an extent. But if I get into a multi-response discussion with even one person in the comments, that impacts me greatly. In the end, it’s not the number of views that matters (that was never my goal), but the quality of the impact. Knowing one person found real value in my work, that’s what matters to me.
Final Thoughts
Writing has been one of the best things for me this past year. It’s allowed me to put my thoughts down on paper, share value with others, and earn some extra money. The most unexpected outcome has been how therapeutic writing has become. The process helps me relieve stress and clear my head. It’s odd, because starting out I thought weekly writing would be more of a stress on my life — finding topics to write about, making the time to write. But after a few months, finding things to write about became easy. And making time to write became a given for my routine. As is the power of habit.
Looking to the Future
With the close of 2017, that also ends my weekly writing goal. But I enjoy writing too much now to stop completely. So I will continue to write, just not every week. It feels odd though — how do you stop doing something you have done nearly every week for a year? A piece of my life will be missing. But the only way to grow is to continually embrace change. So that is what I am doing. I look forward to sharing my 2018 goals.
Thank You for the time. I hope my writing experience has brought you value!
