Earnings and Stats From My First 40 Days on Medium (Lessons for New Writers)
Encouragement and lessons for new writers on Medium.
So I am going to be brutally honest… I have earned $0 on Medium in my first 40 days.
But that’s okay. I have earned valuable knowledge and lessons on how to become a more engaging writer on Medium.
So I want to share my stats from the first 40 days as an encouragement for beginning writers. I will also share 3 lessons I have learned from my Medium journey that will be beneficial for any new writers on Medium.
Everyone has to start from somewhere and I started from 0 followers and 0 views. After 40 days I have more followers and views than what I started with. I have seen growth and I know If I continue to learn and push myself it will only be up from here.
So far I have grown as a Medium writer with the help of three incredible resources that have been EXTREMELY useful during my first 40 days on Medium.
I will share the links to those 3 resources at the end of this article.
Stats From My First 40 Days
So here are my total profile views from the past 30 days. You can see I was getting almost no views in the beginning, but as time went on and I started publishing consistently, my views increased and have remained relatively steady for the past week.
This is encouraging to me because it shows progress.
Total articles published
In 40 days I have published 17 articles and that has been a good pace for me. It is about 2 articles a week. Not too much to where I am getting burned out and posting bad quality content, but not too few that I can’t increase my following.
Of those 17 articles 7 were published in publications, and now I will be publishing all my articles in a publication to increase the number of potential viewers.
Diving into my stats at the article level, my most viewed article has 30 views, 12 reads, 14 fans, 5 responders, and led to 4 new followers.
It was about career advice for those starting a new job so that seems like a niche that is resonating with my readers. Fortunately, this is also a topic that I am passionate about so I will be writing more on career advice and tips.
And the stat that everyone really wants to know… my earnings.
As I mentioned, I have made $0
I am okay with that and there are a few reasons why. First of all, I haven’t put anything behind the paywall because at this point I want as broad an audience as possible to be able to read my content.
Also for me, writing is a hobby so it is not all about the money. It is about communicating my ideas in a clear way and putting it out there for people to read.
Right now my goal is not to try and make as much money as possible. My goal is to become a better writer, enjoy the process of expressing my ideas online, and learn how to grow an online presence.
My Next Goals
We all need to have goals if we want to progress in the right direction so I have a big-picture goal related to Medium and two specific Medium goals. The big-picture goal is to become a better writer every day. Even just a little bit better each time I write.
That goal is kind of vague so I also have two specific goals to ensure I am moving in the right direction.
Those goals are to get 50 followers and 1000 profile views. Those are tangible goals, and I have set a deadline for myself so I will be able to concretely measure my progress.
I want to see growth, but I need to remind myself that more followers is not the end goal. The end goal is to become a better writer myself and then the product of that will likely be a growth in my following.
Valuable Lessons For Beginning Medium Writers
Along my journey so far there have been three lessons that have really stuck with me.
The first lesson is to not obsess over my stats. I did that for a few days and it was exhausting. I was constantly checking views and reads by refreshing them over and over. It was a complete waste of my time.
Also, it was not good for my mental health and took a lot of enjoyment out of the writing process.
Now, that doesn’t mean to ignore all your stats completely. Even though I haven’t earned money, I do earn something with every single post I make. I earn data.
It is pivotal that you track your article data and see what is resonating with your audience. If you want your ideas to be heard, you have to write in a way that people can connect with and on topics that people have an interest in.
Over time you will have more data points and be able to gain a better understanding of what people find value in. Track which articles are getting the most engagement in terms of views, new followers, fans, highlights, and responses.
This data will give you valuable information that will inform your writing plan and help you decide what articles you are going to write next.
3 Amazing Resources for Beginning Medium Writers
Speaking of tracking data and planning the articles you are going to publish. Have you been looking for a hassle-free way to do that? I am happy to share the NUMBER ONE tool that has helped me as a beginning medium writer.
It is actually two notion templates that I combined to form the perfect tool.
- The first is a Notion content planner by Ahmed that you can find HERE
- The other is an article metric tracking template by ismailsaleem that you can find HERE (Link to their entire Gumroad store HERE )
I made some modifications and combined them together using my beginner nation skills to create an amazing article metric and publishing schedule template.
This has been paramount in helping me stay focused, organized, and motivated along my journey. It has helped me stay consistent and keep up with my writing routine.
The final resource that has been motivating and helpful for me is content by Eve Arnold and her part-time creator club.
I encourage you to check out her content. She mentioned how she wrote for three years, and it wasn’t until recently that she saw exponential growth in her followers.
So that is encouraging for new writers like me and it helps me to keep the long-term view in mind.
This has been a fun first 40 days on Medium and I will have many more tips to share as I grow so please follow me to keep up with lessons learned and advice about being a new writer on Medium.
If you enjoyed seeing my stats and learning from my experience let me know by giving this article a clap, highlight, and/or comment!
