My Results After Publishing On Medium For 30 Days In a Row

Today marks 30 days of consecutive writing and publishing here. This is the longest streak of daily writing I’ve ever completed and the first time I wrote and published every day.

Writing every day is a great habit, but challenging yourself to also publish adds an additional layer to it.

I now have 30 pieces of finished content that I can use to showcase my writing. Not to mention the satisfaction of completing a challenging goal and building a new habit.

When I started 30 days ago, I didn’t have a set goal in mind. I figured I’d just focus on staying consistent and then assess how I felt after a few days.

I realized quickly that producing high-quality work each day is time-consuming and not as easy as I thought it’d be. So I decided to commit to at least 30 days.

My Results

There are a lot of posts here with writers sharing success stories about how they gained a few hundred followers in two weeks or made money with a post that went viral.

Well, yeah, I experienced non of that.

In fact, I think I got one follower total and a few reads.

And I think I know why my results were so lackluster. There is a difference between writing to grow an audience on Medium and just writing daily on Medium.

Writing daily won’t guarantee growth, but I’ll save my analysis after I look at my stats and get a better idea. Plus, it doesn’t matter, I still completed 30 days in a row of writing, and I’m happy with that achievement alone.

So, my results depend on the criteria I want to focus on. If we’re talking readership growth, then they weren’t so great. But again, on a personal level, I’m happy to have been able to reach my goal.

So, what did I actually learn? I’d say my biggest takeaways are:

1. Writing daily is really hard
Making time to sit and write daily is grueling and tedious. Don’t get me wrong, it feels amazing when you actually do it, but the process is so hard. Even on the days, you have a topic you’re excited to write about, it can still be a challenge.

I think the lesson itself is that it’s so difficult, which is why it’s so worthwhile to do and why it’s such a powerful habit to build.

2. Focusing on the habit is much more effective than looking for motivation. My motivation to write daily was gone after like day 3, which made the next few days really frustrating.

But it was useful in a strange way because I realized that relying on motivation is not helpful.

Writers procrastinate because they don’t feel inspired or motivated, and they wait for it to arrive. I realized that those moods are very inconsistent. Sure, the spark of inspiration feels great, but it’s not reliable.

Inspiration is like that really cool friend who you always have fun with, but they’re super flakey, so you hardly see them.

Instead of waiting on inspiration, I focused on habit and consistency. I didn’t care how I felt that day or whether I was inspired or not, I focused completely on the objective of finishing my daily writing and hitting publish.

Doing so not only gives you the satisfaction of discipline, but you also start to take your writing more seriously.

Moving forward

My plan now is to continue writing daily, but I’m not going to publish each day on Medium.

Here’s why

Writing and publishing content that Medium’s algorithm actually wants and will promote takes time. I was writing high-quality articles with a lot of value, but many of them lacked the topic and scope that Medium likes to push.

The platform prefers more engaging pieces that invoke emotion like what Tim Denning does, not high-brow conceptual content strategy like I was doing.

I’m not mad about it, I kind of knew from the start that I wasn’t writing in the specific style needed to get reach. I knew it required a lot of effort and time, which I didn’t have. I work a full-time job as a content strategist and do freelance writing on the side.

So rather than half-ass it, I just wrote about what I already know, which is marketing, specifically content strategy. I figured it was better to put my energy into something I knew I could deliver quality on.

Also, showcasing my expertise in content strategy was a good way to at least build authority. I may not have gotten a lot of readers, but now I have a number of solid articles that showcase my knowledge.

I still plan to write daily and to start putting more effort into building readership for my work. Also, I have a cool idea on how to implement my academic background in History as well.

It’s been an awesome challenge, I feel a great sense of completion. I 100% suggest anyone who wants to get serious about their writing to try it.