Skip to main content

The Busy Medium Bee


Buzzing around and making honey. 

I love honey. My teeth can’t handle sugar anymore, so honey is my sweet treat, mostly with a peanut butter sandwich. 

The analogy of the bee buzzing around, working hard to make honey and the Medium writer staying active on the site to produce views and money is appropriate I think. Bees take time off in the winter in cold locations though. 

Unless a person has a massive audience somewhere else they can successfully transfer over to Medium, building a regular audience on the site takes time and a consistent effort. 

What I’ve noticed since writing on Medium regularly for the last three months is the time spent reading and interacting with other writers’ work directly correlates with how many views and money you make. 

In the last few weeks, I’ve been posting as much as ever, yet have decreased my interaction by about 70%. I’ve noticed my views and interactions have decreased by about the same. 

On the one hand, this can be discouraging because we may feel under the whip of having to interact to gain any traction; on the other hand, it gives us something we can do to help our chances of gaining traction. 

The good part is reading and interacting on the site helps us learn, gain insights, and feel more connected with other fellow writers. This is good considering how lonely writers can get when focusing on their craft and building their online presence. 

There really is no substitute for purposeful interaction to help build a sincere audience of readers. This is true at WordPress, Medium, and other similar sites. 

All of the shortcuts we see people do at Medium aren’t going to really help speed up the process. 

The only way to stay consistent at Medium and WordPress is to genuinely like the communities and want to interact with them. 

I imagine someone who can read and clap on 50 articles a day, leave 25 comments, and follow dozens of people they like would find they are stirring up a buzz around the place. If they could sustain this for a year they would likely have great success here along with posting quality articles. 

Most of us can’t sustain this type of interaction, yet it is interesting to consider. 

At NewsBreak I make much more now than I do at Medium and I don’t have to interact at all. I already have over 500 followers even though only have half as many articles and hardly any interaction. 

I think most writers find Medium requires too much energy for what they are getting in return. That’s why we see so many ghosted profiles. 

Maybe the best strategy is to schedule a certain amount of time you can spare for reading and interacting. Maybe a certain amount of articles you will read on Medium and WordPress. Staying consistent with the effort would bring the best results. 

Watching the views go down and the followers diminish is discouraging, so instead of letting the downward trend gain steam, get busy and make some honey. That’s my advice. 

Happy writing. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is Writing on Medium and Vocal Worth It?

Honestly, the writing site, Medium, is my favorite from the user friendly and quality aspects with reading and writing. I like the concept, the pay structure, how it works in theory. Why then, am I not writing there anymore? Deleting my Medium writing account wasn’t an easy decision, and I’ve had some times of regret in losing what I considered the best compilation of my articles online, yet, overall, it was a good move for me. When it comes down to what matters, where we write makes a difference in our identity as a writer and person. Medium continued to show me that it had much different values than I did as a conservative Protestant Christian. That is the main reason I’m glad I’m not there anymore. Yes, it is a shame that I had to delete hundreds of articles, all chronologically published, representing my work in a professional and quality way on their excellent writing and publishing site. And, the yearly membership fee really wasn’t very much, around $60, and I probably made aroun...

A Guide to Winter Fishing on the Oregon Coast

When it comes to finding the perfect winter fishing destination, the Oregon Coast won't leave anglers disappointed. The mild weather coupled with an abundance of fishing locations and fish make Oregon's coastline a perfect place for winter fishing adventures. What's the Weather like on the Oregon Coast in Winter? The average temperatures in the winter on the Oregon Coast are around: high 51° F and low 42° F . Other weather factors include high wind gusts up to 80 mph and the bulk of the annual rainfall of 75" coming down from October to May. Basically, the wintertime weather on the Oregon Coast is rugged enough to filter out the fair weather visitors, yet mild enough to welcome anglers looking for some of the best fishing in the world without the crowds. Types of Fish to Catch and Where Weather is mostly a secondary consideration for anglers visiting the Oregon Coast; their first consideration focuses on the types of fish there are to catch. I...

5 Topics Hotels Can Consistently Blog About

Starting a blog to complement a website and other digital marketing efforts is a great idea for hotels, yet what should their blogs be about? Consistently posting blogs about interesting topics sometimes isn't that easy. In an effort to help, let's discuss 5 topics hotels can consistently blog about to gain traction online. 1. Local Attractions and Destinations: cc from pxhere.com Local SEO is vitally important to gain attention from search engines, in order to stand out to prospective guests interested in staying in the hotel's local area. Blogging about local attractions gives hotels a large topic to draw upon when brainstorming blog ideas. Even if the hotel is in a relatively isolated location or smaller town, there's always something to write about when it comes to local attractions or destinations. Restaurants, bars, nightclubs, concert halls, sports stadiums, race tracks, wilderness attractions, parks, historical sites, and more can be highlighted in a ho...

Opinion: Most communities in Oregon and the US are Republican, yet Democrats are in charge

2022 Oregon Governor Election Photo  Assuming election results are valid in Oregon, which does take a lot of faith these days after the questions about the 2020 US Presidential election arose, Democrat Tina Kotek won the Governor’s race in 2022 by a slim margin over Republican Christine Drazan. The interesting aspect of this win is how many of Oregon’s 36 counties voted Republican vs. Democrat. Looking at the political map, almost the entire state is red with only a few small counties in the northwest having the blue color. Specifically, there were 7 counties that voted Democrat and 29 that voted Republican. The difference is the 7 counties voting blue are the most populous counties, also the counties with the most residents coming from other states – much like Tina Kotek herself, a transplant from Pennsylvania . Tina only won the campaign to be Oregon’s 39th Governor by 66,727 votes over Christine Drazan. Said in another way, the Democrats pulled off another close election with m...