Medium, a Story That Doesn’t End
From the start to the real beginning of my writing journey
I started my journey on Medium as an author on 15.1.2022 with a terrible article with a few sentences, many grammatical inaccuracies, and a missing title and subtitle.
With a huge picture to show for it. I started not knowing what I was doing. I wanted to write articles about technology, programming, and productivity. I share what I surround myself with every day in my freelance world.
But very quickly, I stumbled. Because it never occurred to me that even an article about how to program something needs some nice storytelling. I didn’t have that at the time. I don’t know why I didn’t put a headline in the article.
Do I know for sure so? In the beginning, I didn’t show much. I wrote more or less from the floor without any preparation, not that it was downright bad articles, to punk as I call it. I write even now.
It’s just that I’ve read a few books about writing and about a dozen ebooks about writing for the medium. However, that’s nothing. As time went on, as my views numbers grew and the associated earnings grew, I lost humility towards the platform.
My readers instead wrote articles that needed to be added to the platform or that my readers were interested in and thus moving forward both in terms of growth in terms of followers and earnings. I stuck to writing articles about things that interest me purely selfishly.
Chapter substack
I figured out a while ago that the moment you write articles outside of your niche, you’re practically shooting yourself in the foot, as people who are used to technical articles mostly focused on Apple, in my case, suddenly get a dose of something about productivity or writing.
Unfortunately, this self-awareness is also the price of experience, so I’ve shifted some of my creative activity towards sub-text. However, it’s not so much that I haven’t grown on this platform.
Over time I’ve gotten to a lovely 40 subscribers to my newsletter. Now I’m seriously considering leaving Substack solely for receiving juicy emails from Mark.
My website jakubjirak.com
I’ve had my website for a couple of years, but it was only after joining Medium Academy that I finally made a blog. I switched from a custom solution towards WordPress to save precious time as I got the Divi template and was greatly amazed.
I expected a ~$250 template to work as it should with little trouble, but writing an article on the site is a challenge. So if you like yourself, don’t spend any penny on this template.
With every article I write there, this torture becomes more bearable now I know how to position the mouse to get the right context menu. I’ve even figured out a way to prepare the article so that it means the least amount of work after importing it to the medium.
But the first few articles were purgatory. To give you an idea, within the first two weeks, I’ve already gotten 21 unique accesses and 65 views. Even my first two weeks on medium didn’t produce results this good.
Building a habit
If you’re serious about anything, even if writing is just a chapter of your life, you’ll forget once you turn the page. Always try to take a lesson from whatever you do, but mainly focus on building transferable skills. Writing is a great creative activity; you can easily see that if you put your mind to it, you can do anything with the right guidance.
Commitment
Commit yourself that you will commit to the activity you want to do, for example, 15 minutes a day or even just 5 minutes. When you commit to this activity repeatedly regularly, you will get used to it, resulting in an adequate flow.
I write practically one hour a day for 400 days in a row. The original plan was to publish articles at the same pace, which has lasted me some 265 days. Realistically, this is more extreme than something you want to do long-term.
It’s quite exhausting, and switching off occasionally helps your articles keep the same drive and drift and not go down in quality even though you’re getting closer to the imaginary 10,000 hours they say will make you a master in every field.
I have currently gone into a mode where I plan to publish five articles a week when things are going better for you, but my plan will only be if some short-lived information is purchased.
Does it pay to prepare articles ahead of time as a buffer?
Yes and no. For example, when I was on vacation for a few days, the planned release made it impossible for the medium to know I wasn’t there. However, at the turn of the year, I had a lot of articles prepared in this way around the current leaks that were on the internet about Apple and their products.
And I got badly burned, and I wasn’t alone. I liked how Mark came out of it with an already prepared video, where he edited how much he was right or wrong with his tips.
At that point, I took some seven articles I had prepared for the planned release and just threw them away, and that was the end of preparing articles around rumours for good. The articles I write in advance are only on topics that are either evergreen or have a shelf life of at least a few months.
Final thoughts
There’s one very positive thing about writing, from my perspective. I don’t know if it’s the fact that it’s gotten under my skin so much or the fact that I see some of those views and, more importantly, reads that confirm to me that someone is interested in what I’m writing after all.
But I never wanted to give up this hobby. Now we’re practically at the end of the second month, where my numbers have dropped outrageously, and it’s all very likely due to the technical drought and my unwillingness to jump on the AI trend and write articles about something you have everywhere.
It’s not that I’m not interested in AI, but I like to be true to my principles, and AI is not something I want to start writing about in a big way, and I can reliably say the same about phones. I like to write about them occasionally, but rather than write purely about them, I’d instead write about drones, cameras and I shouldn’t forget about headsets.
The real conclusion
During my writing ma medium, I have already gained the attention of almost 1100 people who have decided to give me a subscription and either regularly or irregularly read my thoughts, articles or, as Doc likes to say, essays.
Never in my life have I felt so much humility towards any activity or project that I have dedicated my free time, and that’s a good thing because only with humility will this journey always be in the right direction. If it isn’t, I believe that I will be pushed in the right direction because of the great community of people we are building here.
I would like to share one more thing with you,
Yes, I’m going to end this paragraph. I try to put a request for all articles I publish under publications and thank the editors for publishing the article with a private note.
A couple of months ago, I added an offer to help the editors of the Mac O’Clock publication to a note in this way, with Nassos replying to one of these messages that he thanked me for the offer but was not, at the moment, interested, but that he knew/noted me and would get back to me if the situation changed, within the last week it did.
I confirmed my interest, and after discussing the situation in the editorial office, my acceptance was approved. I became an editor at the largest purely Apple-focused publication on Medium. Thank you again for your trust and acceptance, gentlemen.
Why am I sharing this joyful moment with you? It’s simple when you find a passion for writing. Start gradually gaining loyal returning readers, devouring your content as a reward. Then, for your hard work, you also get rewarded by meeting the first milestone of being accepted into the affiliate program and earning your first pennies.
Hence, this journey is ongoing if writing/reading becomes your hobby. Suppose you are persistent enough in your efforts. In that case, you may eventually pass the same milestone as I did of being accepted as an editor for one of the publications on Medium.
The journey of a writer is a truly special one. I look forward to what challenges it will bring me, as this proves that I am still only at the beginning of what the medium and its community can offer.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article! If you enjoyed it, I appreciate your support through likes 👏🏻 and comments 💬. And if you want more content like this, don’t forget to follow me! Cheers 😊👌👋
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