Trend Analysis on my Medium articles
2021 Review as a Medium Writer
Extra statistics and what I learned in the process
I spent the first half of the year writing copy and producing YouTube videos for Panama Vibes (the original, not the copycat!) and Coralys Tech. Additionally, I have been plotting several (future) novels as well as writing a novel.
The second half of the year I decided to work on my personal brand writing articles under my own name. That was one of the reasons why I joined Medium.
In this article I will show you how I developed a spreadsheet to analyze my Medium statistics. You can do the same to know how to better invest your writing time. Additionally, I will tell you a few tips to drive more traffic and increase your readership.
The Problem
Let me ask you a question. Do you write on Medium for the sake of writing something, for making some extra money, or both?
If you are doing it with writing as the only purpose, then I would say you would care little about the statistics Medium offers you. Writing with making money as the sole purpose, may I dare ask if there are no more beautiful things in life than just money?
You should pay close attention to the statistics Medium generates on your publishing activity. That is important to keep your audience engaged, improve your writing skills, and perhaps make some side income.
Since Medium uses a payment platform that doesn’t support payments to my country of residence, I cannot belong to the Medium Partner Program. I love writing because of the joy it gives and how I improve in the process. Therefore, I am not interested in writing here to monetize per se. Nevertheless, I am interested in seeing which articles have the best potential for income generation.
The statistics provided by Medium need to be reshaped in order to generate more meaningful performance data.
For that reason, I look into the general statistics Medium offers all members (free or paid). Based on that, I performed other calculations to give me a better insight. I created a spreadsheet to analyze performance.
I will show you how I used part of the standard statistics to analyze the performance of my articles.
The Spreadsheet
If you look at my Google spreadsheet at the top of this article, you will notice it lists all my writings by name, publication, and publication date. I used the “D” column, marked with a star, to mark which articles — in my opinion — either fared better or were more important.
I filled the “F” and “G” columns with the Total and Internal views respectively. These came directly from the article’s detailed statistics. Notice I disregarded the External views. Why? because external views come from visitors who do not have a Medium account, and as such, would not contribute to your earnings if you were a member of the Partner Program.
In the “H” column, I placed the Read Ratio percentage value. It comes from inside the article’s detailed statistics page. The total amount of “claps” shown in the column “I” is taken from the article listing in your profile, right underneath the article excerpt. I consider these valuable indicators because it shows both engagements. It also contributes to the generated income (Partner Program members only). For that reason, I highlighted them in green.
The role of Estimated, Average and Member Reading Times
There are three columns in which I entered the following time spans: Estimated reading time, Average reading time, and Reading Time by members. Medium shows the Estimated reading time next to your article.
The average reading time is very relevant. It tells you how far into your article your readers read. If your readers are not reading most of your writing, they probably did not find it interesting enough. Assuming you wrote it in clear language, there could be many reasons why that happens. Maybe it is not engaging enough, or the subject is not thought-provoking to the reader. I would say you should strive for average reading times close to the Estimated Reading Time.
The Reading Time by Members is only relevant if you are a Medium’s Partner Program member. Actual paying members (not free members) share part of their subscription fee with other members by reading the articles and clapping for them.
The Results
The last section of my spreadsheet contains calculated values. These are calculated based on statistics entered into the previous columns.
The Read percentage I show on column “M” is the Average Reading Time divided by the Estimated Reading Time. You should strive for values higher than 65%.
I used the Internal Views and Number of Claps in a custom formula to calculate the Empathy. The result of the formula gives me a Star Rating between zero and five stars.
I calculate the Overall Performance result from the previous custom formula and two extra custom parameters: Empathy weigh and Attention weigh. These two add up to 100%, and with them, I specify my priorities between clapping and average reading time. The Overal Performance Index is the result of the Star Rating formula multiplied by the Empathy weigh plus the product of the Attention weigh and the Read percentage.
Conclusion
By taking the statistics provided by the Medium dashboard and analyzing them with extra parameters in a spreadsheet — based on my priorities — I can better identify reader engagement and the potential for income of any given article. Based on this analysis, I can redirect my writing efforts into subjects that would increase my readership and convey my message to a greater audience.
Unfortunately, the Medium API (Application Program Interface) is incomplete and perhaps even deprecated. That means that these values have to be periodically extracted by hand, and that is time-consuming. I hope that in the near future, Medium improves both the statistics and the Medium API by Medium Engineering.
Driving external traffic to your Medium articles
And dear readers, this is how I close my writing year of 2021, of which I spent the last 6 months at Medium.
Actionable Advice
- You can considerably increase your readership by relying on external social media platforms to drive traffic to your newly published articles.
- Do not rely on Medium alone to increase your membership and/or readership. Spread your message outside the bounds of this platform.
- If you are a member of the Medium Partner Program (I am not), you would prefer Medium followers more than external readers.
- Find a good publication that is aligned to what you write about. Articles published through reputable publications yield better results.
