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Writing Success Comes from Volume and Quality in Balance

Our success is up to us.



Success, as a general term to describe the results that constitute a success in a writer’s mind, as it meets or exceeded our expectations. And volume is how many articles/content pieces it takes for each writer to succeed with various levels of quality involved.

Each writer will have their personal goals and ways to measure the results achieved through writing an article. Each writer has differing perspectives on what constitutes quality with a finished product. With these important variables in mind, let’s explore how many articles it might take with a theoretical estimation based upon experience and what I’ve seen in my decades-long online writing journey.

Most writers can’t expect to attract a lot of views when writing only one article a month, or 12 a year. They may be able to stay in the game at the base line level and maintain some trickle of income, yet it isn’t the volume needed to reach that level of success to maintain. Still, we must first appreciate the levels of maintenance we’ve achieved so far.

My Writing/Creating Online Experience


For instance, I am in this mode, writing an article around once a month as I focus on work, family, and homestead; this without having a large following, with a journeyman build up, slowly and steadily, around 11 years later a small built-up presence writing online, making videos, etc.

Some bad results I can blame on the content I express getting shadowbanned, yet mostly I haven’t had a large build-up because I’ve never had the volume needed to establish a profitable presence online to maintain. Medium is known for how sharply income will drop when not participating heavily in writing and reading articles on Medium.

There have been seasons where I spent writing 10 or more articles each month, but mostly I’m in maintenance mode, writing or creating content about 12–15 times a year.

Still, at Medium with this strategy in play for around a year, 111 monthly views and 36 reads for 21 days of November. This amounts to .30 cents.

Now, what if I wrote an article a day and share it on all my platforms, what type of results would come?

I realize many have done this on Medium, as this is a writer’s platform where writers tend to share strategies they’ve used to get better results, and I appreciate the tips and stories of experience shared.

Writing Everyday for a Year Goal


Writing everyday or much more for long periods of time, is an interesting experiment that can help us stay motivated in life, showing ourselves capable of having discipline if we make it a matter of honor and integrity.

I’ve seen mostly a month of writing every day, but I’ve heard of people doing it for a few years. With some decent marketing, this volume of articles would result in drastically different results than 12–15 per year!

365 articles vs 15

Writing 24 times more articles in a year would get what results? Would I have 2664 views for 21 days instead of 111? Does sound about right.

What I’m trying to express is the possibility of getting to that next level depends on our willingness to create volume with a certain level of quality (length, research time, diction, syntax, content, formatting, etc.).

I would estimate this type of effort would see significant monetary results; this would vary according to the type of views on Medium, if I could get any paid subs on Substack/Patreon, affiliates on blogs, donations, and shared revenue from platforms.

I probably make about $7/month with my low-maintenance production, so times this by 24, it would be $168/month, which is in the ball park. This could then be built upon to reach higher levels, etc.

To build up an online presence and following, writing, publishing, and marketing an article each day for a year would get a writer on their way to making a living or a substantial side income within 10 years. It would take this type of volume plus quality to do it.

What is Holding Us Back and Quality’s Involvement?


It just seems that writers, including myself, think making money with their writing, music, videos, and podcasts, isn’t going to happen in significant ways; thinking…there is some secret passage way to these results, when it may be more so the volume they are putting out.

Quality is subjective, but there are some universal objective characteristics that define quality as well.

Essentially, if a writer is producing something a certain amount of people consider to be quality, this is the measure needed for the creator to maintain and improve upon these results.

Some people call it a niche. It is the final draft of your content that naturally finds a niche within a larger system that knows almost everything through AI and the sum of human knowledge online.

Technology is where the written form is found, yet it can and should be printed.

If it takes two days for each article, then do one article every other day, this would probably net similar results, especially if the quality is improved by the longer creation time.

I think this effort comes with a willingness to publish more thoughts and views to a larger audience, or what could be said, to get past the natural intrinsic guard to reaching the level of success needed to make a living…

The writing adventure continues.

Conclusions


Plugging along and maintaining is better than dormancy and deadness, but it doesn’t allow for enough growth to build an online presence with writing. Writing one article a day for a year will theoretically improve results 24 times the results of a 15 article/yr production.

I’m grateful for the presence I’ve been able to build and don’t take it for granted the support I’ve received through the years. Thank you and God for the good results.

Notwithstanding that all things are made possible by God and His will be done. Overall, it is up to us to write and publish, our success is up to us.

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