My Sixty Day Sprint to 25,000 Reads and 1,500 Recommends
I’m incredibly curious about other writers’ stats, processes and experiences on Medium. Your numbers and how you got them are vastly more fascinating to me than your politics, your workout routine or bucket list. I’d be interested to read about a random dude (me) who has gone from zero to sixty over eleven posts in sixty days. If you haven’t already left, please pull up a chair.
I’ve always fancied myself a writer but I was usually too lazy or distracted to finish any of my projects. When I did write, I’d mostly scratch out philosophical poetry. I don’t know where it came from. Twenty percent of my brain confirmed I was a genius and ninety percent was concerned:
“Once upon a dream, the floor fell out and my mind’s eye swept the horizon. A potent siphon of waves crashed over the quartet in your heart. The humbling stillness of it all is a shock, an insult, a daring bridge to yesterday’s tomorrow, when the old crumbling bridge will take us into the blacksmith’s shop for a cup of warm heart tea with earthy tones. The moss gives the life and makes it odd.” — Excerpted from “Shazam, Writing Worksheet” Published in Dan Conway Microsoft Word document. Read to wife, eliciting “WTF?”
While writing was hard, Facebook was easy. I crafted a lot of posts people thought were funny. I enjoyed that. A lot.
So when I heard about Medium, I was intrigued.
June 4: My first attempt.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
129 Views, 86 Reads, 67% ratio, 8 Recommends
I was feeling my way with this one. I got some views and reads right off the bat with an assist from friends and family. Then a few strangers recommended the piece, and that was a thrill. I was hooked.
June 5: Dark humor about my father’s death.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
280 Views, 212 Reads, 76% ratio, 16 Recommends
This story is personal and includes a humorous but sensitive depiction of my mother who is still an active force at her retirement community. Should I publish anyway? I did.
I revisited the “too personal?” question with most of my subsequent stories. I want to write about what I know, make observations and poke fun of myself, family, friends and community. But I gotta be prudent.
The story received as many views and recommends as my first one but the read ratio was better.
June 14: Conway family pastime (before Medium).
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
837 Views, 553 Reads, 66% ratio, 37 Recommends
Right away this one did better than the other two. It had a more compelling, fully formed narrative. The famous/infamous Medium Algorithm was doing its job.
I received a note from the amazing Debbie Galant, Editor of Midcentury Modern, a pretty awesome publication that you should check out if you haven’t already.
I said, Yes! Of course! I’m honored! In so many words. I googled Debbie to ensure she wasn’t a mad woman and found out she had been a New York Times columnist for years and had written books.
Hold up.
She reached out to ME? She’s the real deal and she is wooing me because she likes MY WRITING? This was getting interesting.
June 24: Written while on vacation in Ireland.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
309 Views, 217 Reads, 70% ratio, 24 Recommends
The story includes a passage about my Irish cousin-in-law Colman Murphy from Dublin. He fundamentally does not get or enjoy Medium or my writing. He was disappointed that I didn’t ground my story in classical literature references.
An honest man, the best he could do was a half smile and “it’s kind of breezy, Dan.” That was meant to be an easy let down, but I’d rather he’d gone mad, stripped naked and chased me around the flat with a rusty Celtic sword while singing Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
I think he also said it was “sweet” which was his favorite put-down of most things American. Later in the trip he suggested I write about Irish cooking and how it isn’t so bad.
But I got my usual amount of reads, views and recommends, so I was alright. I also noticed that I was enjoying the writing process a lot. Considering my frustrated white-knuckle approach to writing in the past, this was a major earth-shattering, life-changing revelation.
June 27: A little something on my manhood.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
1,300 Views, 1,000 Reads, 75% ratio, 59 Recommends
This is where I started to jump the shark in terms of sharing personal stuff. I remember I was sitting down for tea with my family in Kinsale, Ireland thinking about reads and recommends. I thought, “Fuck it, I’m writing about my testosterone level.”
This created my own Sophie’s Choice. The more I described my T-level as low, the funnier the story. Every added caveat about how I’m really quite normal (really!) muddled the piece. Readers don’t like that.
Very few men recommended this one, but it had a lot of views and a high read ratio.
July 5th: Important generational commentary.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
852 Views, 655 Reads, 77% ratio, 27 Recommends
I had something important to say:
“Millenials struggling to find their way can relate to a loser on a train bound for nowhere.”
But to say this, I had to conjure up a cultural phenomena about Millenials and The Gambler. Ironic, not deceptive. Artistic, not fraudulent. And by the way, if you are a Millenial, good for you! Meet me at the bus stop after school, Gen X would like to kick your ass.
My dream scenario was that this piece would actually create this phenomena. I’d be celebrated as a Mark Twain like figure. Or if things went sour, I’d be excoriated and banished from my community (Medium) like Orson Welles.
The piece was picked up by Cuepoint, Medium’s music publication, yet another amazing milestone in my sixty days of shocking gratitude:
July 1st: Going viral (sort of).
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
32,000 Views, 18,000 Reads, 56% ratio, 1,200 Recommends
I wrote this story in two hours. That wonderful Medium-created anticipation of euphoria washed over me when I hit Publish. I had hooked up with The Coffeelicious, another awesome publication with great editors who helped me get the visuals right.
I had a feeling that I was onto something. From the first read it was tight, fully formed and timely. I’m not shy about self-praise and I knew this was GOOD. Even now, if I’m not careful I can misjudge this story’s importance to Western Civilization. I know its impact has been immense, but I acknowledge there are other pieces of literature that deserve some brief consideration.
It took four days, but then my phone blew up. All sorts of wonderful enlightened souls from throughout this great universe began tweeting out my story. What on earth is going on? And there it was — my Medium Staff Recommend. Tombstone material. I’m done. Doing a George Costanza right now.
Every time I looked at my phone there were 40, 50, 60 more Recommends. More tweets. More followers. Linked in requests. Accolades from people I knew and people I did not know. Old friends getting in touch.
Some of them want to use you. Some of them want to get used by you.
I didn’t feel like a rock star, I WAS A FUCKING ROCK STAR.
It was an embarrassment of riches. I’d scratch and claw for Recommends up to this point, and again in the very near future. But after a few days of the green notification button going off like a slot machine I was as blase as I ever will be. I can’t stress this enough — It Felt VERY GOOD.
Note: I actually wrote this story before The Gambler and Low Testosterone posts, but included it below those two in chronological order because the impact of the story on my writing and my soul occurred once Medium Staff recommended several days later.
July 17th: I can’t deal with fame, man.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
232 Views, 128 Reads, 55% ratio, 21 Recommends
After my big hit the pressure was on. I felt thousands of imaginary eyeballs patrolling their Medium feeds preparing to torpedo my next effort. I responded by writing a story about my body functions. Several times I changed the actual message/thesis of the piece halfway through a draft. Ultimately I wrote about how a booger on my cheek prevented me from pursuing a life of public service. I have to live with that.
July 23: Mining for Forrest Gump moments.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
1,000 Views, 666 Reads, 65% ratio, 47 Recommends
I was determined to write something not entirely about myself, and this was the best I could do. At least it was mainly about a place and a time, the pre-crash San Francisco tech scene, circa 2000.
I got this text early the next morning after I published:
Business Insider did indeed pick it up. They ran it on their UK site and claim it may run on their US site.
I was a two-bit player at Macromedia. Worked there for barely a year. My wife, on the other hand, was a big shot and worked there for five years. She thought it was very funny that I ended up with this posterity piece. Very funny.
July 25th: More about Dan Conway.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
494 Views, 337 Reads, 68% ratio, 27 Recommends
This one cracks me up. I had a lot of fun writing it. That scares me. I mention my own name a dozen times or more (I don’t feel like counting).
Maybe this gets me closer to my ultimate goal. My version of “All Work and No Play” is just one page after another of glorious DanConwayDanConwayDanConway falling off the typewriter.
It didn’t do as well as I thought it would.
August 1st: Sharing my financial data on the Internet.
Stats as of August 3, 2015:
4,200 Views, 2,800 Reads, 66% ratio, 68 Recommends
I like this piece but it hurts a little because I realize I’m somewhat judgmental and jealous of those who have more. Intended point of story: It is patronizing to feel guilty about living a nice life.
I’ve always had a little bit of a class-warrior inside, and it’s not my good side. Nothing like a public blog with thousands watching to ferret out your true feelings on a sensitive topic, warts and all. But I’m happy that it started a bit of a dialogue. Those are huge numbers for me, and I don’t take them for granted.
And this was another big deal — almost too weird and awesome to be true:
That’s Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist randomly tweeting out the link to my story.
My class-awareness means I’m also totally starstruck. This tweet is the latest in a totally unexpected and unbelievably cool parade of blessings that have come my way over the past sixty days on Medium. If you have read my stuff, Thank You.
I have more to say about posting, promoting, publications and a variety of other topics related to getting noticed. If there is interest in this story, I will cover those things in a future story. I’m no expert, just a guy who is totally into it and has had a little success.
If you liked this, please hit Recommend and follow me on Medium. Thanks very much.
