1
2 Comments

Got 1K Views on Medium - What I Learned

Why I started writing on Medium:

I'm building a journaling app, and I figured that a lot of the people that keep personal journals are writers. So, I thought Medium would be a great way to get some backlinks and promote Introspekt (the app I'm building).

I also wanted to become a better writer and I figured the best way to do that was to start writing.

The Articles I Wrote:

I wrote four articles to test the waters:

  1. Why Everyone Should Journal
  2. 3 Mac Apps to Boost Your Productivity
  3. The Google Product You've Probably Never Heard Of
  4. How To Learn iOS Development For Free in 2022

Most of the articles flopped badly with < 100 views and < 30 reads.

The article that took off and is responsible for the 1k views is article #2. It has about a 60% read rate and has 626 reads.

I think this success can be attributed to several factors:

  1. Listicles do very very well on Medium.
  2. Article's main image was very good (a Macbook half open in the dark with screen on)
  3. Everyone wants to get the best utility out of their devices. So, if they have a Mac they are eager to know what apps would help them.

How much do you earn $$$ ?

You don't earn much.

Medium also recently put in place a new rule that to start earning money you need to have 100 followers. So, unless you already have a platform where you have a following, it's going to be hard to start earning.

on February 9, 2022
  1. 2

    Always great to see real stats on something. Thanks for sharing.

    I loved Medium back in ~2015, but haven’t paid it much attention since then. Ironically, I stopped reading if every day because I was overwhelmed by the amount of listicles and “What doing $MUNDANE_THING taught me about running a business”-style posts. Based on the success of your second article, I guess not much has changed 🤷‍♂️.

    Very interesting to a peak at the monetisation side, too. This post has got me wanting to check out Medium again, if only to see how it.l compares.

    1. 2

      Hi Tom,

      I think Medium has a lot to offer but like every other content/creator driven platform, some form of clickbait reigns.

      Just like YouTube has clickbait thumbnails and give away videos, Medium has those types of articles. But, I think all of these kinds of platforms also have some underrated creators who may not get mainstream attention but create great content. I guess it just takes more time to find them.

      On the monetization side, I don't think you can earn much money unless:
      a) You write every day and treat it as a job
      b) Or you regularly produce listicles and those kinds of articles

      But, I definitely think it's worth cross-posting to Medium if you do write content elsewhere on the worldwide web.

      Ashish.