My 60-Day Journey on Medium
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
In the blink of an eye, I’ve been on Medium for two months straight now. Honestly, I thought I would quit after a week, and after two months, I’m still here.
As much as I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging by sharing with you my progress on Medium, to some of you, by writing this article might already be a form of showing off.
However, in this 60 days update, I won’t be including any stats or earnings as I don’t want to mislead you and give you a false expectation of how your second month on Medium should be.
I’ve Shifted My Priorities
June has been a struggle for me, but an exciting month for my freelance writing journey. I’m proud to say Medium is no longer my top priority when it comes to writing, for a good reason.
Things at school started getting overwhelming, and I was working on six projects concurrently, all due in June. I didn’t manage to write and publish as frequently as I did in May. Last month I published a total of 21 articles, and now only 6, including this. That’s a drastic difference.
When I started on Medium, I made a promise to myself that I would publish every day, but slowly it became every other day, then every 4 days, and now, I don’t know when I will be publishing my next article.
But surprisingly, less publishing frequency led to more earnings. I still had articles from May earning a few cents.
Although my publishing frequency has significantly decreased, I’ve been writing more than I ever had in my life., believe it or not. But thankfully, I’m nowhere near a burnout yet. Currently, I’m fed with different styles of writing daily; copywriting, blog writing, ghostwriting, so my brain is working just fine for now, maybe in the future, I’ll experience the infamous writing burnout. But I do have writer’s block now, and then, some days, even typing a word hurts my brain cells.
A sneak peek into how my life has been in June: wake up, write, attend online classes, lunch, and writing after dinner, then perhaps do some school work. That’s how much I’ve been writing. When I’m not writing, I’m breathing it and thinking about the next article I have to write. I may or may not be a workaholic.
According to Grammarly, last week alone, I’ve written over 300,000 words up from the 59,000 the previous week.
My estimated writing hours daily is 6 to 8 hours, sometimes more if I’m rushing to submit an article the following day. In fact, I’m on my MacBook so long that I need 3 full charges a day to keep it going. (It might also be because it’s 4-year-old and it’s getting too old)
Currently, I’m trying to juggle school, a remote internship, and working for 7 recurring clients. It’s crazy, I know, but I’m surviving. I’m always under time pressure to produce an article every two days. One thing though, I’ve finally learned proper time management and studying time has never become so precious to me.
I still can’t figure out why clients would want a hire a newbie freelance writer like me, who is still studying, and with only a high school graduation certificate. But somehow they did, and I’m grateful for the opportunities I have, and I will continue grabbing opportunities that come my way. Just saying, my clients are a mix of low-paying and decent-paying. Newbies don’t have to do all low-paying gigs.
I have a confession to make: I’ve kept freelance writing a secret from my parents. They would probably force me to stop and focus on my studies if they ever found out about freelance writing. And I could imagine them checking on me every few hours to make sure I’m doing actual schoolwork, instead of typing out articles.
You might agree with my parents that studying should come first as a student, and earning money can wait. I beg to differ. Writing is not a typical office job because it needs a solid portfolio to impress employers. I would absolutely write for free to build up my portfolio, but the extra money is always good to have.
British vs American English
I’ve brought up this issue in Facebook groups, and one writer mentioned it might affect curation chances.
I write my stories directly in Grammarly Premium, so I’ll always make sure they are free from spelling mistakes, of course, grammar mistakes. I’ve not seen this as a problem until an editor’s feedback on my article, and it was regarded as full spelling errors. I couldn’t understand why he sees British spelling as incorrect and unacceptable, and anyway, he didn’t reply to my private note.
When I switched over to Grammarly American version, the article instantly went from having zero errors to 10 errors, with some are errors I haven’t heard of. My most common mistake would be forgetting to put a comma before and.
Ever since the incident, I’ve never been so concerned about using British or American English. Whenever I take on new writing assignments, I’m sure to ask whether I should write in British or American English.
I’m not well educated on the differences between British and American English, except for the major difference in “z” and “s” and words like Check and Cheque.
Title and Sentence Case
It was when my article got outrightly rejected by curators that I realized the importance of title case. This has been my best performing article so far, and I was hoping it would get curated. It took one entire month for the curators to review my story, which also meant I had one entire month to change the title to title case.
Story Length
I’m most comfortable with writing 800 to 1000 words articles, which translates to 4 to 5 minutes of reading time. However, there are exceptions when I feel strongly about a topic, so I end up writing over 1000 words resulting in 7 minutes of reading time.
I usually don’t go beyond 4 minutes as I value the reader’s time. As a reader myself, I tend to pick stories within 5 minutes of reading time because I can’t seem to stay focus on a 9 minutes article.
White Spaces
As a new writer who has been on Medium for two months, I have no right to talk about other new writers. However, I do get annoyed when I read articles with chunky paragraphs, no breakups in between. It makes it extremely difficult for the reader to read and distracts us from reading and ruin our reading experience. I find 2 to 3 sentences the perfect length for a paragraph, at most 4 sentences.
Attempting to Market My Work
I find joining Facebook groups helpful when it comes to self-marketing. As a new writer, I have to get out there and build an online presence. Besides promoting your work, Facebook Groups are a wonderful platform for you to meet like-minded people.
Although there are exceptions — those writers who heavily self-promote and don’t seem to care about interacting with others. I don’t want to disappoint you, but they are the majority in every Medium Facebook group.
However, the small group of writers who appreciate your sharing in the groups and care to answer your queries is what makes Facebook groups worthy to join.
Clearing My Following
Before this, I did a follow-for-follow in my first month. That was a huge mistake. Those followers I gained through follow-for-follow are not true readers who followed me because they enjoyed my work. They are simply chasing follower numbers on Medium. Stay away from them, they won’t do you any good.
Working on My Publication
Starting a publication of my own was exciting, but it’s hard to publish in it, especially when I wasn’t seeing the growth I was expecting. It’s easy to say “publish in your publication every day, and the publication will multiply in following.” But when you’re actually starting your publication, it’s hard to consider your publication as the first choice with zero followers, and only 12 followers after the first month.
My publication is never my first choice when considering publications to submit my articles to. I often think my article isn’t worth putting in my publication because it would be limited to at most 12 views and would be better off in bigger publications. While that’s true, I forgot that if I don’t have any content in my publication, there won’t be the 12 followers I have now.
It’s demoralizing to see my article garnering only a handful of views in my publication because I think it’s a great article and should deserve more attention. Then again, “great” is subjective. What I think is the best article on earth might not be the case for the readers.
To Sum Up
All of the above sums up my second month on Medium, and I hope my experience would encourage you to stay on Medium and continue writing. I may not be publishing as frequently as I did in May, but I promise I’ll figure it out and get back to maybe publishing every other day on Medium.
