Hi, I will describe my journey to reaching 100 followers and applying for the affiliate program on Medium. As it so happens, I was an avid reader before writing. I was attracted to the medium platform as its posts were better written than most available sites. Initially, I enjoyed two posts a day, and with some luck, the posts were not classified as members only.
After a while, however, I felt the need to read more, so I decided to support my favourite author Mark Ellis, who you may know from Mark Ellis Reviews, and I acquired a subscription through his link in September 2021. It took a few more months, but the thought began to gnaw at my mind that, after all, I deal with exciting stuff too, and I like hardware, so I’d like to share these thoughts with others.
So from January 15, 2022, I started to write my posts. At first, it was mainly to improve my English as I didn’t use it daily, and eventually, it became a passion. The affiliate program and the possibility of earning money were far from my goal. It is an excellent benefit that I can be rewarded for writing articles. So I started to think of the potential income from media as a lucrative side hustle since I’ll be doing something I enjoy, and it might still earn me something, so win-win situation.
Let’s look at what it looked like with views and audience building over time.
Q1 2022
Within the first month, I got a lovely 34 views. I didn’t write many articles at first. It came out to 1 per week in the first two months. However, I had a significant advantage, as my friend was probably bored, so he offered to proofread my articles. It was fine as long as there were few, but you started writing more articles now. You have other activities to do. There is not so much time for proper proofreading.
So I got the paid version of Grammarly, and realistically, I can recommend this app. The regularity in my writing led to the fact that while I doubled the number of views in February, there wasn’t that much of an increase in terms of reads. Well, so let’s face it, in the beginning, I wasn’t even that active, considering I was publishing articles in 1–2 week intervals, so I’m ashamed of it now.
The fact that I didn’t see the results right away made the beginning difficult for me, so I only came back to writing in my spare moments, which weren’t many, which is why March didn’t look very good either. Since I enjoyed writing more, I decided to do something about it.
Q2 2022
I planned to switch to a regular writing mode instead of writing on punk in April. At first, I thought I would publish one article a week, but in the end, I got a bit more in April. In total, seven came out, so what the hell? I wrote just a little bit more…
But the unexpected happened, and one of the articles I wrote was a big success for me and got a lovely 2700 views, which was surprising for someone who is starting and hasn’t seen more than 120 views for his article so far. This made me a bit more awake in my situation, and since May, I have started to take pieces seriously.
My success was due to the distribution of the article, and I then focused on how to distribute my articles. In May, I started publishing an average of 3 articles a week. I didn’t get nearly as stunning results as in April, but the viewership graph showed me that publishing regularly leads to better readership distribution.
And it was necessary to experiment as well because once you get some views and reads to that, you grow your fan base. Hence, you start to wonder what you can do to get more people interested in your content, and that’s when Mark Ellis came up with his ebook.
I have read this ebook three times, written some notes, and started applying Mark's advice to contribute to publications. I figured that if I reach 100+ followers without publications with a narrowly focused audience and there is a better chance that my content will interest someone, it makes sense to continue writing.
June was a breakthrough month for me. I started publishing articles daily, some days even more than one article. Why did I do that? I began to enjoy writing articles I found a passion for it. It was also part of my experimentation to discover the best time to post.
In conclusion, the ideal post time varies depending on what you want. Posts published on weekends wake people up more to comment. They seem to have more time to do so. Conversely, posts you publish weekly get the most response around 9 am regarding views.
Q3 2022 — July
Then suddenly, my writing on the medium was approaching six months. On the 8th of July, the first milestone of getting 100 followers was broken when I found out I had organized and joined the affiliate program. My application was approved, and since then, I am continuing my efforts, and I am looking forward to the first reward that should come in the next month for my writing.
Final thoughts
Finally, I would like to thank all those who have accompanied me on this journey and those who are yet to join me. I would also like to thank you for accepting me into this publication, which I appreciate. I have made writing an excellent habit where. I devote an hour to an hour and a half a day.
And it is persistence that leads to success. The fact that my numbers are a bit worse than in previous months doesn’t mean anything. It is summer, so people enjoy the outdoors and do not sit in front of screens. If you are also in a situation where you are starting to write, and you are thinking about it as a passive income opportunity, believe that it makes sense. You have to hang on until the first successes come.