Publish Every Day or Write a Nobel Prize Winner?
The Solution of Consistent Writing Without Sacrificing Quality
“Slow and steady wins the race.” — Aesop
How is this possible?
Have you ever read an article written by an author who has 10k or even 100k subscriptions, and only 200 claps per article?
I have encountered this quite often. How is this possible? Why do only 1–2% of your subscribers read your articles?
One of the reasons that comes to mind is if the author published articles every day then Medium algorithm included him in the recommended list. What does this mean?
You will receive many subscriptions, but they may not be your target audience.
Those who run mailing lists know this phenomenon: only a portion of your subscriber base opens your letters.
But we often come across advice urging us to post every day. And this has a certain meaning. There are numerous advantages:
Increased visibility; Momentum and SEO; Generating income; Audience Engagement; Developing a writing habit; Positive feedback loop (“Keeps the chain unbreakable”); Building an audience; Practice and improvement; Establishing authority.
But do you know what? The number of subscribers is probably the most useless indicator on a Medium. Why?
There’s almost no correlation between subscribers and the number of reads, comments, and payments (if you are a Medium partner). 90% of those who subscribed did so simply in anticipation of a return subscription. They will subsequently unfollow you regardless of your actions.
You cannot create your audience by posting daily. Why? When I joined Medium in August 2023, I began publishing articles daily, and sometimes twice a day. However, I did this because I had accumulated a lot of material in advance that just needed to be formatted.
After a month, the number of my subscribers increased, but the AUDIENCE that would read and comment increased just a little. There were only a few people who read almost all my articles and left comments. And I change my strategy.
“Quality is the best business plan.” — Robert Kiyosaki
Why?
Everything has a price. The main disadvantages of publishing articles every day:
Poor quality. Research? Nah, ask AI. Your audience won’t know the difference. Or maybe they will, and unsubscribe, but hey, Algorithm finds few newbies.
Low engagement and feedback. Who cares if no one reads your articles? At least you can bask in the self-satisfaction of hitting that “publish” button every single day. #conistency
Time consuming. Who needs sleep or social life when you can churn out articles faster than a hamster fueled by coffee?
Guess how long Keneman and Tversky took to write the article “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” (1974)? Around one year. Too long? But they received the Nobel Prize for it.
“It is not the quantity of a man’s knowledge, but the caliber of it that matters.” — Epictetus
Of course, only a few of us hope on a journey to Stockholm when writing articles on Medium. However, the quality of the articles is important. Why?
Because on Medium, earnings depend on views, not on subscribers. You get the most views on great ideas that become viral. Finding them and correctly describing them takes time. What is the solution?
If you choose writing as your main occupation, you should write daily. But this does not mean that everything you write needs to be published.
Choose only the most valuable ones. The rest is your “work journal”.
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” — Terry Pratchett
After a while, you may find that it is better to combine a couple of your average drafts into one solid article.
Posting through Publics is useful because while the editor is checking your work, you still have a little time to improve it.
What I’m telling myself constantly? “You are a writer now, and readers are not your boss at a 9–5 job. You can’t afford useless activity and hope for a steady paycheck.”
What I did when have a zero articles solid enough for pulication?
You can find out here:
It’s paradoxical, but sometimes you can be able to publish articles every day if you started working on several drafts in advance and gradually brought them to completion.
For those who write novels, the situation is even more complicated. I think not every story needs to be finished.
Only those for which you can draw a reasonable conclusion, those in which you are emotionally involved, those that make you think about them constantly. You won’t give up stories like this.
“There is nothing to be published unless it is good enough to publish.” — Kurt Vonnegut
