How to Deal With Declining Growth
So, You’ve Been A Writer for Some Time
There was that period in time where no matter how much you post you can’t seem to get anyone to read your stories.
Then one magical story or finding the right publication is what it took to get eyeballs on you — gracing you with explosive or steady growth.
Then oh no! Every month you were able to 2x impressions, but this month was only 1.5x, then next month it’s 1.2x, then eventually you stagnate or even see a decline.
Are you not good enough anymore? What happened? I’m here to help.
First, you need to be honest with yourself.
Even though you started your journey to have an outlet to talk about your interests and for the love of writing, that will change after you start seeing success.
You will get invested in your stats and that’s perfectly okay.
Trying to deny it is unhealthy as you’ll hate yourself while hating yourself for hating yourself.
Translation: you hate that you’re not getting the same views and hate yourself that you fixated on views
This is the part where I tell you to remember the real reason you started writing for the art and having your voice heard.
That is truly the ultimate goal to be happy, but what about the awkward phase between it? I mean it doesn’t happen overnight. So I’m here to help make the bumpy road a bit smoother.
I’ll preface that everyone is different in their journey. These steps are what worked for me and give them a try yourself. But if they don’t work move and try out new things, this is to help you.
Write in a new category
Whether that be writing, neuroscience, business, software engineering, or cooking; get out of your comfort zone and write something new!
Trust me, it will give that same sense of curiosity of going into a new community and learning all about it. Eventually becoming good enough to where you can give actual input or advice.
This is just generally good advice for anything in life. Get a new hobby, make new friends, and get involved in a new community.
Even if you don’t want to spend a lot of time researching, you can still write through your unique perspective.
Here are some article ideas:
- Cryptocurrency Explained by a Beginner
- Cooking my First Full-Course Meal, Here’s What Went Wrong and What I Learned
- Learning to Code in One Week
- My First Time Studying Abroad
Find that spark again
You probably have one or two really successful articles. When you noticed the decline you tried to capture that same success by writing about the same topic, maybe even almost the same story.
It might’ve worked or might not have. But one thing is for sure, it’s not sustainable.
You’ll have to find a new unique hit or you’ll be milking a dry cow.
You need to go out and find the topic or story that resonates with your audience. Create a few stories where you put the effort into them and are both unique and of the best quality.
This can mean spending a bit of time every day working on it on top of your current articles, or focusing entirely on it.
Once you gain momentum from it, it can carry you for a new resurgence.
This was similar to the last section but this one is more focused on relieving that anxiety about the stats and setting you up for more success in the future.
Maybe It’s Time to Have a Break
The problem might be just plain and simple you have burnout and the quality of your stories is suffering because of it.
Maybe your schedule is too busy to come up with ideas or write quality articles.
The best thing to do is to either commit to a long break or decrease your frequency. Whatever you do, don’t have an erratic schedule where you publish 5 articles in a week because you had a great week and follow with 2 weeks of silence.
Hopefully, this helped you. Every case is different, my problem for example was due to school and not having enough time for Medium.
But try this out and remember that nothing can keep growing forever.
Write what you love, love what you write
