My First 50 Days and First 100 Stories on Medium — How Did I Do?
Insights, Challenges, and Discoveries from My Medium Experience
I have started on Medium at the end of January 2024 from pure curiosity about how it would be to publish on a platform where the writings are not reviewed, and everyone can publish almost anything they would want.
From the first sight, it looked like Twitter on steroids — people are sharing their thoughts, others are responding to them, and so on.
And there was also a possibility to earn some bucks in reward for all that!
So, yes, I was in pretty quickly, and even though I hopped on the Medium train a bit late, it seems that it unfolded in me a hidden passion for writing.
Now, after over 50 days on the platform, with this being my 100th article published here, I would like to share some of my insights on how everything worked.
Firstly, I must say that I read a lot of stories and articles of yours, and I tried to learn bit here and there.
The advices, however, were often contradictory.
Sometimes I learned that one should write short stories while others told to write longer ones.
Some advised to post two to three stories per day while others recommended the same quantity over a week.
Some authors of these guides are recommending to highlight text here and there, to use different styles, and some recommend plain style without all that fluffy stuff.
But despite all of these, even by reading all these articles and stories, I think I learned a lot, well, at least I hope so.
Now, to the hard data itself.
I publish all articles under a paywall, so all counted reads will probably be by Medium members.
My views and read numbers are nothing extravagant.
I am not sure if this is due to the fact that it is kind of standard or simply my writings are that boring, lacking interest.
Both went up and down over the whole February like on a rollercoaster, and in March, these spikes somehow dissipated, and everything stabilized a bit.
See both months for comparison:
You can clearly see the difference here.
While March isn’t finalized yet, the trend is apparent.
It might be a bit confusing since both graphs are on slightly different scales, but the main message is evident.
To delve deeper into this, don’t we need additional data?
The graphs above are informative, readily available to everyone on the stats page.
However, there’s a catch. These graphs depict data solely for your stories.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but stories aren’t the only content we publish and others see and react to, right?
Indeed, there are also our responses to other stories, and we can’t overlook those.
These data are included in our weekly reports:
That’s a lot of numbers, isn’t it? Let’s tally them together:
- Views: 1695
- Reads: 843
- Fans: 511
- Responses: 146
- SUM: 3195
These numbers are impressive, but what do they mean for me?
Ideally, we should compare them over time to discern any trends.
So, a simple graph can assist us in this regard:
As you can see, the stable growth is apparent here.
Yes, there was a slight decline at the beginning of March, and I attribute that to the fact that I slightly changed my approach to writing at that time.
Until then, I wasn’t adding my stories to publications.
Sure, I had two of my own publications previously, but they were nothing more than a simple list of my stories.
Let’s revisit the previous data once more. Let’s compare the total numbers against each other:
It’s apparent that the majority of the “engagement” with my “content” here on Medium is simple Views.
This means that people notice my work here, at least in some way, but most of them simply walk away.
About half of all views are converted into reads, which, in my opinion, is quite good.
The number of “Fans” is then somehow understandable, but I must admit that I haven’t delved deeper into how it’s counted, so it could be misleading.
Does it mean that 511 people over that time period somehow interacted with my writing here? Probably, and if so, it’s great!
As for the responses — yeah, the number of responses is something I need to work on. It means that only about 17% of readers will leave a response.
This is too low, sadly.
What are my takeaways from all of this?
Well, I know that it’s possible even for a starting writer like me to interest at least someone.
I need to adjust some things. I’m not sure if I should continue the way I did previously and only improve, or try a different approach, but I will definitely need to change something, mainly the quality of my articles.
Finally, it’s apparent that constant work brings some fruits, however, so far these fruits are the low-hanging ones.
The good ones are still growing at the top of the tree, where I need to gradually work to get them.
I will try to do the same check after the next 50 days and compare the results.
Let me know what you think.
Should I keep going?
What should I do better?
Or is my writing so bad that I should call it a day and look for fun somewhere else? (No, I will not, I fully enjoy my writing, bad as it may be! 😄)
Hi there! Could you help me write more stories like this? If you enjoyed this one, sharing it with your friends or posting it on social media would be amazing! ✨
Every comment is welcome, as your feedback helps me improve. And of course, thanks for reading — it truly means a lot!
