30 Days of Consistent Publishing and Engagement on Medium — Here’s How it Impacted my Stats and Earnings
Consistency truly is the key.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love experimenting with my content creation strategy.
It’s the only way to keep the process of online writing fun sometimes, especially on the sluggish, low-inspiration days.
And of course, the more you experiment (or iterate), the more you improve.
You only have to get 1% better each time you post in order to achieve real, effective growth as a personal brand or business.
After a slow start to February on Medium, I gave myself a firm kick up the ass and started engaging far more than I ever had before. As a result, my metrics all ticked upwards. This post even went viral for a brief time.
I wanted to maintain that momentum, so I set a simple target for March:
Write at least 1 article every day
Engage with at least 20 other articles every day
It wasn’t a huge ask, really. It just required a little bit of dedication and focus.
How’d I do?
Well, I’m pleased to say I did it!
In March, I wrote 33 articles, exceeding my target. I missed a day here and there, but overall, my 30-article goal was met.
I also managed to read and engage with at least 20 articles from other writers every day, on average. Sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less. But either way, it meant I engaged with around 600 articles throughout March.
And when I say “engaged”, I mean read all the way through, left a valuable comment (not just “Great job!” or a paraphrased summary of the article itself), and gave it a few claps.
Some articles were short so I was able to read them fairly quickly, while others took more time. But, lots of engagement with the work of other writers.
It’s easy when the content’s so good.
What happened?
Interestingly, my efforts to create and engage consistently resulted in March becoming my most stable and lucrative month on Medium to date.
While my stat graphs for all previous months on the platform looked like an erratic series of jagged peaks and valleys, my green and blue lines for March (before they were replaced with dots) were mostly smooth all the way through, apart from a couple of spikes on the days certain articles performed especially well.
And my earnings ended up exceeding $300 for the first time, which I know isn’t massive, but it’s a nice growth indicator:
I’ve been in the $100 club (ie. the top 6–8% of Medium writers) since November, but I’d never gone beyond $250 in my 10 months on the platform, until now.
The takeaway (and next steps)
The simplest lesson I learned about Medium this month was this: consistency pays off, with time.
You don’t have to write every single day or engage rigidly with 20 articles on a daily basis like I did. But the algorithm seems to like seeing you returning regularly to the platform and spending time on your fellow writers’ work, so it’s helpful to get yourself into a rhythm.
Plus, if you only read what you actually want to read, like I did (rather than feel like you have to reciprocate someone else’s engagement), you’ll enjoy the experience so much more. I learn something new on Medium every day.
So, if you want to see some stability on your stats dashboard:
Establish a sustainable writing rhythm, and
Set aside some time for engagement as regularly as possible
I plan to continue writing and engaging as often as I can, primarily to see if I achieve the same kind of results.
I’m guessing my metrics will gradually climb steadily upwards over time, as long as I keep showing up in a valuable way.
And as always, I’ll keep you posted!
The consistency thing is huge. And like you did, I think looking at your average is much more useful as an overall strategy than being robotic everyday. I find it helps with compliance.
Damn that’s a hell of a lot of time reading. I’m sure it pays dividends with your writing too.
It actually takes quite a while to select articles you are truly interested in, to read properly and write thoughtful comments. Let alone the writing! I am quite slow, but I try to stay consistent and focus on quality.