4 Months on Medium
The Great Decline
You know what time it is. My monthly update on the platform. Sharing my stats, what I’ve learned, and my experience so far.
This time it’s going to be a bit different.
Up until now, I have been giving my experience as an average writer, someone who doesn’t write daily or put all their attention on Medium.
I’ve been giving my two cents on what new writers can expect and what advice I’ve learned to help you out. So what’s different this time?
School Has Begun!
Yes! During the summer I was able to give more attention to writing interesting articles. Outputting quality and quantity.
I was consistently pumping out 2–3 articles per week. A great workflow as it was frequent enough to get the attention of the all-powerful algorithm and gain momentum. It was also infrequent to not cause burnout.
Because school started, my focus has been shifted towards academics, and my workflow and consistency that I once had suffered greatly.
To get a better idea of the full picture, check out last month.
The Stats
So, this was last month’s
Now let’s look at this month
Honestly, not as bad as I was expecting. You got to remember that I produced a quarter of the articles compared to last month. So while there is a decline, it’s not drastic at all. You can’t always be growing, there will be a limit.
So does this mean if I give a quarter of the effort I’ll still maintain 80% of my views? That’s not the full story.
While the majority of my views come from new articles I publish, I’ve noticed that because I’m not publishing as frequently the momentum gets almost entirely killed after 3–4 days.
About 70% of the views come from new articles, and 30% come from legacy articles that keep doing well, even after a few months of being published. Compared to the 93–7 ratio normally.
What I’ve Learned
Normally for this section, I go over techniques I’ve learned and how they’ve benefitted me; so if someone is starting, they can decide if it’s a good fit for them.
Today’s going to be a bit different. Even though I learned a lot, I don’t have enough experience implementing them to say concretely that they work.
So, I’m going to shift a little and talk about other aspects, other than writing.
Nothing Can Grow Forever
We all start our writing journey with the idea that we just want to give the world our perspective, we do it for the sake of writing and our love for it.
But when you start to gain some momentum, it’s pretty difficult to still keep that original goal.
You will grow attached to the statistics, especially if there is a financial reason for it. And there is nothing wrong with that.
This truly becomes unhealthy when you start to associate your self-worth with the number of views your articles rake in.
Just because your recent articles are getting fewer views, doesn’t mean they are bad stories.
Of course, my situation is a little bit different, even though I knew something like this would happen this month, I couldn’t have prepared for slowly seeing the views go away.
But, it felt as though I needed this. Something to ground me once again and make the writing process more enjoyable because there isn’t that view count I have to reach to feel like it was worth it.
People have the idea that everything will be growing forever; the exponential rise of technology, the stock market, and their influence. But it will eventually decline or at least plateau, and that’s okay!
I won’t be coming back to Medium with the same focus and attention as last month, probably for a really long time. But when I do come back, I’ll be ready.
Write What You Love, Love What You Write
