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Before You Hit Follow, Clap
It can tell writers a lot!
I have seen tremendous growth in my Medium account over the last two months. Frankly, I’ve been amazed.
Thank you to all you wonderful souls who’ve let me know you value what I have to say enough to click follow.
I’ve been a full-time freelance writer for seven years, and I’ve seen the biggest growth in my personal writing just in the last three months. June was my highest-paying month ever on Medium. While it still won’t sustain me as a sole source of income, my payouts are finally starting to be big enough to make a difference.
The key to growth as a content writer is adaptability. You have to evaluate the stats and determine what works. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Thanks to the internet, we have all sorts of ways to look at the data. Every single platform gives us some kind of feedback about what our audience enjoys.
Websites have Google Console. On Facebook, we have likes, shares, and engagements. On Medium, we have claps, comments, and follows.
Follows are Great, But…
As an online content creator, growing an audience is the ultimate goal. So every time you click follow on someone’s social media profile, it helps that creator build their CV.
The more authentic followers a creator has, the more money they are bound to make. This is the case in all situations—whether they are getting paid by the platform itself or selling slots on their accounts for sponsorships; more followers equals more money.
But here’s where things went awry. People started buying followers and diluting the validity of an influencer’s audience. So now, you can gain 10,000 followers with a swipe of the old credit card.
Action = Validation
I know a gal on Facebook with 315k followers — yet she’s lucky to get 1,000–4,000 likes on a post. That is somewhere between .3% and 1.6% engagement.
I send a newsletter to 18,000 people, which gets a 21–25% open rate, so I’m reaching…
