I started my Medium journey on August 23rd, 2022. In the first 30 days, I acquired approximately 2,000 reads and 13 followers with 11 stories. Most of these results were thanks to a timely story about Uber’s Hack. Following this period, I took a break to optimize my workflow and organization.

Creating Series

As a reminder, I maintain a blog at SwitchUpCB, which contains various content. However, some of this (personal) content is only accessible via SwitchUpCB membership. When I qualify for the Medium Partnership Program, it would be problematic for readers interested in my stories on Medium to be unable to access them despite having a SwitchUpCB membership. So I must crosspost every Medium story to SwitchUpCB.

In addition to the above, certain posts I create — such as this one — are meant to be read in a series or with context. The lack of this functionality increases complexity on my end and contributes to unnecessary overhead for my readers. As a result, the SwitchUpCB Series feature — equivalent to Medium Lists — has been born. From October 3rd to October 13th, I worked on a blog overhaul — among other website features — to manage the content I create in an easier manner.

The Incident

In “Loot From 30 Days On Medium”, I mentioned that I recently moved to an apartment with roaches that kept me up at night. As a side effect, I found out — before anyone else did — that Uber had been hacked and ended up creating a popular news story on Medium. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be my last incident with the apartment.

When I moved into the apartment, it was undergoing a property management change. As a result, my payment and work order accounts weren’t set up. So I visited the new property managers at least six times over an entire month to remind them to set up my account, so I could pay rent. But nothing worked…

My rent is due on the 4th of each month. I tried to pay on September 30th, but the account still wasn’t set up: An employee told me I should wait for the system to be set up to pay the rent. So I waited for a few days, then reminded them once more on October 3rd to set up the account, to no avail.

On October 10th, I received a call from the same employee who told me to wait for my account to be set up: She told me the vendor would set it up in 5 days. Then, on that same call, told me I had 3 days to pay the property management company in person (when I was 100 miles away from that location). Doing this over the phone isn’t legal, though.

On October 13th, I received a knock on the door of my unit. That same employee was accompanied by two maintenance men to serve me a pre-eviction notice and stated that I had 3 days to pay them in person (since no account was set up). At that time, there were over ten issues with the apartment (including the roaches), so I asked the accompanying maintenance members to fix the issues I notified them of during move-in.

The maintenance men told me they couldn’t fix any issues since there were no work orders. Well, how do you set up a work order? You need an account to submit work orders. Not to mention that the managers wouldn't use their accounts. So who can fix my problems? No one, according to them.

This entire exchange meant the maintenance men weren’t at my door to help me but to threaten me.

After multiple attempts to pay the rent from the apartment office were refused, I was denied service by that same employee. The vendor fixed the account that same day, but it contained a late fee, which the apartment isn’t revoking. I encountered other issues that add to this story, but most importantly, I’ve had to spend extra time preparing for further action throughout this ordeal.

Yet another person who wants ME to pay for THEIR mistakes…

While the above events occurred, I was also engaged in my usual workload. As a result, every website feature took much longer to implement than I anticipated. This work halted my Medium progress since I didn’t post any stories after “Loot From 30 Days on Medium” and “What is an Algorithm”.

The SwitchUpCB Guide

On October 13th, I announced the new features in Announcing The SwitchUpCB Guide. This announcement included the release of the SwitchUpCB Guide, Services, Blog Series, Public Feedback, Roadmap, and a membership overhaul.

The Shetpost

I resumed posting stories on October 17th (54 days after starting Medium). This included a few shetposts, but also a detailed guide to setting up a database as a spreadsheet. Several publications accepted these stories, which await publishing.

Loot From 60 Days on Medium

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

The Last 30 Days

What did I gain from posting 6 stories and 2 responses on Medium in the last 30 days?

• 1,027 views (402 reads).
• 15 followers.
• $0 earned.

The Aggregate

What did I gain from posting 17 stories and 12 responses on Medium in 60 days?

• 4,481 views (2,317 reads).
• 28 out of 100 followers (required for a Medium Partnership).
• $0 earned.

Going forward, I will be releasing more content: More stories. More music. More software. More services. While new developments are coming for the SwitchUpCB website, the workload is manageable. So after 60 days on Medium, I am reminded that I have the potential to make money on Medium.