My First Month on Medium: Stats, Stories, Followers
I joined Medium in 2017, published 3 articles, then didn’t write anything for… about a month ago.
On April 11, amidst a midlife creator crisis, I had this brilliant idea that I had to get back on Medium.
I didn’t start with 0 followers — I had 35 followers on this account, sharing this for transparency, but more on this later.
So, here’s how I did in the first month:
Stats
I started getting consistently higher views, not because I’ve been publishing more but because I’m more active on the platform.
I learned this on Twitter: If you engage, your name simply pops up more, giving people more chances to click on it.
Simple as that.
Stories
I published 9 stories. The last About Me — Akos story was also published in eh About Me publication.
Mistake
I didn’t actively promote any of these stories on social media — I included some of them in my newsletter, but I lacked overall promotion outside the platform.
It’s hard to make sense of these stats, but the longer titles didn’t get as much love.
Here are all the stories in chronological order:
Why You Shouldn’t Try So Hard To Niche Down
8 things writing has taught me since I wrote my first blog post in 2008
Stop Saying I Don’t Have the Time To Write
Why some of your best ideas didn’t get any traction?
How to Find the Perfect Niche to Write About
Here’s why commoditizing your services is bad for you
How to Survive Idea Dips as a Writer
This is why I’m restarting my Medium.com blog
Followers
I’m happy with how this turned out. I’m not doing follow-for-follow. I didn’t post How to Get 100 Followers in 10 Minutes or anything I wouldn’t be proud of. I played this game on Twitter, and I won’t make the same mistake here.
What’s next
Steady, focused growth by submitting two articles a week. Because my Twitter challenge 35at35 (35 threads in 35 weekdays, I know it was a stupid idea) is still ongoing, I can’t write more. I wish I could, but I physically can’t.
If you’re interested in that challenge, I’m giving updates every weekend about the current week on writersfastlane.com.
Thanks for sticking with my blog!
Cheers,
Akos
