What writing on Medium for 1 month has taught me
Medium is not a simple platform
As most of us did, I started writing because I had too much to say and too few places to say it.
Personally, I started mid quarantine. You know what I’m talking about. Those 2 hours I had to fill between online classes and lunch. What else would I do? Everyone else is asleep and I can’t go back to sleep now.
I’ve always been a deep thinker. I might not say everything and maybe not even agree with everything I’ve thought, but I do think a lot. Sometimes, I think about stuff that changed my life or might change or something like that as if I were tripping on acid or something so I need to share those thoughts with the world.
I started posting a few small 1–2 min. reads on a small Portuguese website but there wasn’t any traction so I was basically writing for myself and posting it on a website only I could find.
Finally, I decided to look for a website where there was actual people, a website where I would have people reading my thoughts and my fears while being semi-anonymous. Yes, I use my real name and that’s me on my profile photo but no one really knows who I am so I don’t care.
My first 5 days
I have to tell you this if you have literally just started.
You will not get views like you think you will. Trust me on that.
I started my medium career enthusiastic and thinking I was a great writer. I translated some of my articles to English and posted it. Some of them haven’t even gotten 10 views, let alone reads.
I probably posted around 6/7 articles on the last 5 days of May.
I earned 51 cents.
Yes, I did spend hours writing and spell-proofing and doing everything big writer would tell me to do but it still got me nowhere.
Still, 51 cents is quite a lot of money for my first few articles given the fact I had no background in writing except for being a Law student.
I was still pretty disappointed. Mostly in myself too which is an awful feeling.
Still, I persevered and wrote 9 more articles in June.
My first month
As you may be thinking, I didn’t only write 9 articles in 30 days. Obviously not… I stopped writing around mid-June for some reason.
I think I stopped because I had to study a lot, I took a Harvard course on Contract Law and because I am stupid. Those are the reasons.
Even so, I did make a lot of money for 9 articles.
I made 43 dollars. Crazy right? for half a buck to nearly half a hundred bucks.
Let me tell you something even crazier. Even though I made 43 dollars with, supposedly, 9 articles, there was an article that stood out.
I wrote an article about how investing in the stock market won’t make you rich. I used math, excel spreadsheets, the whole shebang and boy did it pay off…
With only that article, I made over 33 dollars. Think about it. From 43 dollars, more than 66% was from 11% of the articles.
That made me realise something very important.
Why bother, you know?
Why should I even care about what I write if the only thing I need is for one article to take off and go to the moon?
I am grateful for having found Medium, but Medium thought me that in order to be successful you need to stay true to yourself.
I tried writing about an author whose books I never even heard of. I tried sharing a story I heard. I tried being all motivational and stuff. Nothing worked.
When I finally wrote about something I am truly passionate about, the articles started taking off. I went from being happy with 20 views and 5 reads to having an article passing the 400 reads in under 1 week.
I wrote several articles about personal finances. In fact, I believe all my articles in June are about personal finances.
I was getting hundreds of reads and I loved interacting with my readers by discussing our opinions in the comment area.
Everything was just as if should be. I was doing something I loved about something I was passionate about while getting paid.
I was on top of the world and I thought there was nothing that could bring me down from that peak.
Then life happened…
Life will slap you when you least expect it
I had been writing all those successful articles in the biggest finance-related publication here on Medium.
Out of the blue, they kick me out. I was no longer a writer.
I tried reapplying but something strange was happening…
I couldn’t read anything published by the owner of the publication.
I went to his profile (which I really liked btw) and trust me when I tell you I can’t make this up.
This grown man blocked me for no apparent reason.
So there I was. A writer that was just gaining some traction left with nowhere to write.
I tried a lot of places but there was never as much traction as before.
That’s why I stopped writing. I was so upset that I completely let go of something that had kept my mind sane and occupied for almost a month now.
What happened when I stopped writing?
You can probably imagine that I stopped coming to Medium as a whole.
I stopped writing because I had no motivation to write and because I had no motivation to write, I stopped coming to the website and stopped reading as well.
Rookie mistake.
I had never been much of a reader.
Even when I had any kind of interest in a book, I would just listen to it as an audiobook instead of reading it.
That changed when I found Medium. I started reading because I wanted to better myself. I wanted to better my writing and I wanted to better my speech.
What better way to enrichen our vocabulary than to read something written by someone with a better vocabulary than ours?
I was shocked when my mother started telling me that my conversations made more sense and were quite flavourful since I started writing. I mean, I felt something was different but I had no idea other people were feeling it too.
I feel like I should leave you with a piece of advice.
Read as much as you can.
Even if you don’t really feel like what you are reading is all that interesting, keeping reading it. You will thank yourself later.
