I started my Medium journey on August 23rd, 2022. In the first 120 days, I acquired approximately 7,500 reads and 62 followers with 38 stories. I still have yet to release “content that may change everything” as I await an important decision from one more entity.

So what happened in this 30-day period?

The War Goes On

My apartment committed — in a lawyer’s words — check fraud. To be continued…

A New Year

In other news, it’s no longer 2022. This event has led to many publications publishing “year-in-review” stories which showcase their top-performing stories within the year. Most important is Level Up Coding’s Top Articles of 2022, which has opened my eyes. Just look at those headlines: Google, Google, Amazon, and more Google. There are some stories about ChatGPT, which is a recent trend among those in technology. There are also a few listicles and job-oriented articles.

I researched various authors for a better understanding of this data. One of the best examples I found was by the author Alexander Nguyen. Now, please don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way: This person is a hard worker. However, his Medium page is composed of 3–6 minute stories about his enter or exit experience at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Then, people lap it up like the second cumming of Jesus… I mean SHIT, 6.5K followers? J man only had 12.

I looked into this “trend” some more. At this story’s release, two stories in the Trending Section of the Medium Homepage are about Google (Layoffs). Not to mention a pattern I recognized in the Writing section of Medium: Someone who gained 100 followers in 10 days made stories composed of listicles and clickbait-ish titles that have been written thousands of times on this platform.

The significance is that — for the first case — humans value status much more than I anticipated: It’s no wonder that including Google on your resume makes you “successful”. For the second case, people on this platform read stories to validate themselves (more than any other purpose). This claim could explain why stories focused on earning income are always trending.

There is one more observation that has changed my perspective on how to create stories for this platform. I released 7 stories from December 26th to January 24th, yet only 2 gained traction: You Got Microservices Wrong and How to Set Up Baserow (with SSL). One of these stories is dramatic yet informational, and the other is a story that I went through extra effort to promote to a specific target audience. 

Of course, I’ve gained more fans from the dramatic story.

The idea that drama or negativity is good for growth is not a new observation. Consider the Theory of Relatability from the previous story in this series. However, I didn’t expect this type of content to be “supported” as much as it is. The following stats show how more fans are gained organically with dramatic stories.

I never promoted the GPL License or Rapper Destroys Google Engineer stories on my own accord.

This doesn’t mean other content on Medium won’t succeed. More so that my effort is better spent on dramatic content (clickbait, status oriented, opinionated, negative). In addition, there are technical optimizations I can make concerning SEO, Canonical URLs, Tag (Topic) Usage, and promotion. I could Call to Action for people to follow me and optimize my profile page. All of these things affect my growth on Medium.

The people have spoken: I could be more shameless.

Loot From 150 days on Medium

Let’s analyze the results from this period and compare them to the aggregate.

The Last 30 Days

What did I gain from posting 8 stories and 3 responses on Medium in the last 30 days ?

• 5,827 views (1,853 reads).
• 11 followers.
• $0 earned (from the Medium Partnership Program).

The Aggregate

What did I gain from posting 46 stories and 15 responses on Medium in 150 days?

• 23,516 views (9,324 reads)
• 73 out of 100 followers (required for a Medium Partnership).
• $0 earned (from the Medium Partnership Program)

At the current rate, it will take me 55 more days to become eligible for a Medium Partnership. I can promote more content to achieve this goal faster. So after 150 days on Medium, I am reminded (for the fifth time) that I have the potential to make money on Medium.

Going Forward, I must take time to optimize certain aspects of my workflow and publishing strategy. In addition, I must perform an overhaul of certain SwitchUpCB features. That said, I don’t plan to slow down when it comes to posting quality stories: This upcoming month will be a testament to my productivity.