The Power of Boost

Still delivering good earnings

Photo by Bill Jelen on Unsplash

I started publishing regularly on Substack last month and currently have two paid subscribers, which keeps me motivated to cross-post some of my Medium work. It’s a slow-growing account and I struggle to understand how to make the best of Substack.

However, Medium has perked up for me recently. I had a story boosted last month and it’s currently running at £201.86 in earnings, which is a nice little boost compared to my usual 15 cents in earnings. This goes to show that the boost is still delivering. But they’re hard to achieve and there is a huge element of luck.

The disappointing thing is that a follow-up story to the boosted piece, which answers a question posed in the comments, was published yesterday. It has only earned 12 cents for 5 reads. It hasn’t started well and will probably die quickly.

I did hope it might ride on the coat tails of my boosted story and get recommended to readers who enjoyed the first one, but at the moment, it’s lingering in obscurity and is one of my lowest earners of the month.

That’s not just disappointing, but being a piece on the same subject in the same publication, it goes to show the power of boost. The first piece could have gone the same way if it hadn’t been nominated by the editor (I assume that’s what happened, but…