I am celebrating one year on Medium, reading, highlighting/clapping/commenting mostly. I only wrote a handful of stories in the first six months. What gained me followers was my unique comments which showed my slightly skewed, frank, kinda revealing & hostile perspectives on the stories. Around the beginning of the year, I started writing about 1-2 per month stories that were deeply personal to me, revealing family secrets and personal angst and writing in my own, long-winded style (longer than the 5 minutes recommended). It was emotionally cathartic to be well-received by even a handful of other people and earned me about three - twelve bucks per month.

I first got boosted from submitting to a relevant publication (The Fourth Wave) with a story with a provocative title, sexy pic and long-winded, personally revelatory anecdote from my life that related to a current political story. Those pub editors nominated me for a boost and I got the first one in April, with the next in May and one that was just boosted by Medium editors (?) in June. Feminist me didn't really want to include the sexy pics but...I wanted READERS...so I compromised that little bit and got exponentially more reads, 10s of followers more per week and a payment in the low three figures! ;) whoo-hoo! but super-encouraging nonetheless!

Grabby title, sexy pic, personal revelation, submitted to a publication with several thousand readers who are interested in your topic.

I've gotten very few bot-seeming commenters but the most negative side effect of slight success is slowly ignited Follower/Reader Envy of other writers!

Stay encouraged, keep writing and read/clap/highlight/and reveal yourself in comments!