This Is What Life With 4K Medium Followers Looks Like
The good, the bad, and everything I never really talked about before…
Marking milestones by talking about my journey on Medium has now become a tradition. One, I intend to stick to for as long as I am at least moderately active on this platform. Whether that’s going to end sooner or later, remains to be seen, but as far the Medium Partner Program goes, the plan is still to test it for a total of three years. I am now very close to the second half of that period during which, among other things, I seem to have also gained over 2000 new followers.
On the 5th of January 2022, I reached my first 2000 followers and I wrote an insightful article about my multi-year adventure on this platform, a story that reminded many folks about the importance of slow and steady. Another 2000 followers later, albeit garnered in exponentially less time, I think I can share some wisdom and insight that not just new writers but also established ones might learn a thing or two from, or at the very least get inspired not to give up writing.
What type of writing strategy works?
Everyone has a different writing strategy, and it doesn’t all come down to one’s personality and style. In my case, the niches I write in, vary in different ways. My main niches are technology, LEGO, software development and accessibility. Occasionally, I write about random stuff and writing, such as this article. 🙂
- When it comes to technology, it tends to be seasonal. As I usually write about Apple products, it means that every time there are new announcements and releases made, I will find myself having to focus on that and churn out at least a few articles. This can last anywhere between 2–8 weeks. The devices I review, I also buy, which means that I may not always get my hands on them on day one, and also need time to actually use them to provide valuable information to my readers. There are, of course, columns that I tend to write around tech outside of these seasonal windows, and it’s typically influenced by what the tech scene looks like, or whether I get inspired by something random.
- When it comes to LEGO, it’s a very similar story as it is with Apple stuff. LEGO releases new sets every month, but there are also bigger releases, which could mean I get unusually busy with LEGO articles in a given month. For instance, February 2023 was pretty busy. Many of the sets I write about, I also buy and build, so naturally that also takes time.
- Software development and accessibility is where I mostly have full control over what and when I write, because it’s largely not connected to anything else but my own ability to find interesting, impactful topics to express my views on.
- The random stuff and writing is mostly exactly that, quite random, apart from the anniversary and milestone articles like the one you’re reading right now. 😉
Truth be told, I have no grand strategy here. Never did, nor am I planning to have one. I keep an eye on tech and LEGO, and everything else fills the gaps, so that I can release 3–6 articles a week, though more commonly around 4–5. This is probably the only aspect I am strategising with — frequency. Medium is a side-gig for me, a little passion-project and I don’t want it to take up too much of my time, so I don’t spend more than 16 hours a week writing and publishing articles.
The one final aspect worth mentioning is that I often don’t just sit down and write an entire article. I tend to have many — usually around 60–80 drafts — ready to be worked on or in a nearly publishable state. I also don’t take the time to make them perfect. For me, good enough is good enough.
I let Medium’s robot Harry read the draft out for me, and if nothing scratches my eardrums, it’s ready to go.
What gets the best readership?
Undoubtedly, tech. Then software development, and finally LEGO. Accessibility, the random stuff and meta articles have the lowest readership. In technology and accessibility, I managed to keep my top writer badge of honour for over a year now. LEGO is a niche I single-handedly brought back to life on Medium, and it’s nice to see that some new writers are now following in my footsteps. I am THE top writer there, but there’s also reduced competition so far, so it’s an easy crown to hold on to.
LEGO is an interesting niche however and a great example of one that with perseverance and decent writing can have potential. I have seen the numbers steadily grow over the last 9 months, and I am hopeful that over the next 18 months, I can turn it into a more established niche, one that even Medium takes seriously.
The reasons why tech and software development seem to be the most lucrative niches, has a complicated answer, but there are a few factors that I think contribute to their success:
- Readers are generally curious about tech, and want more than one opinion or view-point.
- Medium was made popular by tech-savvy folks and software developers. That is still quite true I think, as most people I talk to in tech know about Medium, everyone else, not so much, or at least it doesn’t instantly register.
- Tech is a very controversial niche and its fans are very opinionated. This results in fairly high engagement and fairly solid readership.
Is having 4000 followers better than 2000?
Surprisingly, not really. If your expectation is that you’ll make double the income with double the followers, then you need to take a cold shower and scale back your expectations. Scale them waaay back. In fact, you’re better off expecting nothing will change. Zilch. Nada.
No offence to any follower, but the large majority of them seem to suffer from amnesia, in the sense that the large majority of them follow you and then promptly forget they ever did that.
Believe it or not, follower-count is not a reliable unit of measurement on Medium. Helps morale though. 🙂
So, if today you have 2000 followers and 20 of them actually read your articles, you can expect that by the time you hit 4000 followers, 15 of those initial 20 will have forgotten about you and probably even Medium, you’ve gained another 20 loyal readers, but a few of them will start ignoring you after the first article they liked, because that’s how people and the internet work, and you probably have now just 23 loyal readers. Three more than before. You might think I’m bullshitting, but I am not, as I have the luxury to compare January 2022 and January 2023 in terms of income, which brings me to my next point.
What does income look like?
While I won’t give you detailed earnings reports as many like to do here on Medium, I will give you enough to either inspire you to keep writing or give up — entirely dependent on your interpretation. 🤷♂️
Let’s go back to my previous point about 2000 vs 4000 followers, and let’s compare January 2022 to January 2023.
- January’s income for 2022 with a little over 2000 followers: $696.
- January’s income for 2023 with nearly 4000 followers: $894.
That’s a roughly 23% increase in income for a nearly 100% increase in followers. If you expected January 2023 income to be $1400, well, I’m sure you’re very disappointed now. Let’s also not forget the additional 200+ articles released in that year that contributed to those earnings on top of all the previous ones.
That being said, I still think these numbers are decent. During this journey from 2000 to 4000 followers, my best month — September — resulted in a $1251 payout, while the worst month — predictably February — just $471. Averaging out over a year however, I did manage to comfortably land myself into the 5-figure club of yearly total Medium earnings. Of course, much of it got reinvested, as how else do you think I can review Apple and LEGO products?
Referrals vs subscribers vs followers
I actually wrote a dedicated article about this, but it’s worth summarising here as well. These are the numbers I find to be the toughest to increase. While it’s a steady growth, it’s a very slow one, with a total of 102 subscribers and 21 referred members. According to some, these are actually not bad numbers, and I can’t say I’m complaining either, but compared to follower count which tends to average at 160/month, subscribers and referrals seem to be a very different ballgame.
As last time I shared a followers growth chart, I feel it’s worth providing another update to that, but this time you’ll see both the total growth over 8 years, and last year’s growth on its own as well. In one word — steady.
A few other noteworthy points…
Nothing earth-shattering, but while I keep an eye on other writers’ findings and experience, I think there are still a few I can share from my perspective that can be inspiring to many.
- Zero writer’s block. After 395 stories, I still don’t feel like I struggle in any way to find a topic to write about. If anything, I am more inspired than ever, and could easily write 2–3 articles a day, every day, if I didn’t have a life and a full-time job.
- I’ve developed more writer-to-writer relationships.
- I seek out more proactively certain writers’ articles or topics that I care about.
- Just as excited when a new follower comments, as I was 7–8 years ago.
- I have opened myself up to more public critique. This is tough, but I also learned to know when it’s worth fighting back. I definitely lost a few readers along the way, some initially quite loyal, but hey, I’m not in the business of making everyone happy. My entire brand is not to!
- I still don’t find any reason to write articles to cater to SEO or the algorithm, so waiting with childish curiosity to see how well my honest, and original thoughts do every time I release an article is still very much the case.
- I have stopped following people back. In fact, authors that don’t write, I unfollowed. I also mute a lot and even block certain authors to keep myself sane. I went from following 600+ users to following just 94. Unless my interest in their thoughts is truly genuine, I see no point in following users back.
- I always write a little bit. I use Ulysses, and it’s installed on all my devices, and it syncs to iCloud. I do, however, do most of my writing between 9PM and 2AM.🦉
- Saturdays are weird, so I often don’t publish on Saturdays, but apart from that, any day is fine.
- About 15% of my articles are scheduled, so they go live days after I’ve written them.
- I don’t use Grammarly, I rely solely on my own English skills and help from Ulysses’ revision tool, which 25% of the time I disregard.
A great ride so far…
I can’t say I have any reasons to complain. The numbers are going in the right direction, I still enjoy writing and people still seem to enjoy reading what I’m writing. As far as Medium goes, that’s all one can really ask for. Be that 2000 or 4000 followers, I still care just as much about staying genuine, offering valuable content to my readers and putting as much of my personality into my writing as I humanly can. The rest is up to my readers, subscribers, and followers.
Here’s to the next 2000! 🍻
Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe and/or become a member for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility! For my less regular readers, I also write about random bits and writing.
