2 Hard Truths from Being on Medium for 2 Months.
My favorite social platform.
I’ve had 1k views on 9 articles.
Hundreds of comments. My snarky and vulnerable comments score more likes than my articles! (I should write an article about driving traffic to your articles via comments. And other methods I tried.)
I made 0 dollars. And gained 200+ followers. I promised if I got 100 followers I’d share a free gift. You can grab it from the link at the bottom of this article.
I ❤ Medium
That is not one of the two hard truths. I read a lot of Ra-Ra Go Get Em Medium writers. People who write almost exclusively about how to make money writing on Medium.
I also read a lot of Boo-hooo Medium writers. Those who write about how they will never write on Medium again. How much it sucks, or how little they make relative to the work they put into it.
The truth, for me, seems somewhere in between. The platform shares my work a fair amount for being a new writer who posted 9 articles.
I didn’t go viral or feel like I got undue lift. But I definitely meet people worth talking to everyday I publish.
It feels like a fair grind. So, I will be publishing consistently, next year. Despite…
I Don’t Produce the Quality I Want at the Pace I Want.
Cory Doctorow is a beast who posts every day, at a quality I don’t imagine attaining. He focuses on Journalistic Nonfiction. Doesn’t get too creative with his words. So that’s part of it. But even if I were to attempt a more journalistic style, I’d not be able to produce the daily word count he does.
While I do believe the algo rewards better stories. They’ve pushed some clunkers on me.
On Facebook and Twitter I post daily.
Rough drafts that I refine over weeks (often months) before I publish them here.
I have a dozen stories that are sooo close to being ready, it hurts. Long to have this be a place for my polished writing. That said…
What if I went for volume over quality the same way I do with Facebook and Twitter?
I will be testing that out eventually. What I’d like to do, is give myself a 30 day challenge where I write for 1hr and then do 30 minutes editing, adding Medium’s minimal SEO, and a photo or two. Then do a once a week post the next month and write up a comparison companion piece.
This is Where all My Eggs Should Be.
Given what I’ve read from others and my personal growth trajectory this first 2 months, if I flipped the switch to paid and focused solely on writing here, this would be my main social media platform within 6–12 months.
That’s a bitter pill for me to swallow.
I’ve spent a lot of time grinding and building relationships via Twitter, podcasts, and Facebook. I am not ready to jump ship off those platforms. Nor give them the back seat necessary to really see where this goes.
For those of you who read my work here regularly, thank you. I want you to know, you can always give me advice, constructive criticism, and start up real conversations. I give a lot of critical feedback and suggestions in my comments. I’m not a hypocrite. Whatever I dish out, I can take.
Click here to get that free guide to oral storytelling I mentioned.
I’m lucky to have you in my life.
