5 Hardcore Lessons I Learned From Building 6000+ Followers On Medium
I wish I knew them sooner!
As I’m growing and consistently learning as an online writer (or at least as a Medium writer) new things keep coming up my way. So today, in this story, I want to share some of the hard-earned lessons I recently learned. I hope these lessons will help you in some way along the way in your writing trip.
1. Never Trick Your Audience
Using templates to hack/trick your audience is the worst thing you can do.
I used to be that guy. Not too long ago, I was obsessed over templates and “Doing the thing unethical way” So that I could trick my audience. For example, starting my stories in a certain way, writing my headlines a certain way, or ending my stories in a certain way — all to trick the audience.
Don’t get me wrong though. There is a huge difference between tricking your audience and hooking your audience. If you do the former one, you lose your authentic self and of course, your audience can smell it. If you do the latter one, there is nothing wrong with it as long as you are authentic to yourself.
I would use the hooking approach but almost always I would fall for the “Trick” trap. And that’s the biggest mistake I realized a lot lately.
To hook your audience, you don’t need to trick them.
The second thing I’d like to mention here, which of course, I failed at doing is, trying to share or teach the stuff I didn’t do or was not doing personally.
For instance, teaching people why they should publish on a daily basis. But if you’re not doing it in your account, or you never published daily, ever, there is no point making a statement about it or sharing the thing. Why? Because you’re no more than a toddler about the topic you’re talking about.
You have no experience.
That’s just one example. The point I’m trying to make is: Teach the stuff you have done or doing, and your audience will love it.
But there are times when you really want to share something but you have no experience with that subject, in that case, respectfully mention your experience and be authentic to yourself.
That’s the name of the game, my friend!
2. Do What Works Best For You
There is no particular path to success on Medium.
There are many ways and methods you can apply to succeed on Medium. If someone says “If you don’t do this, you can’t succeed on Medium,” Run!!
Let me elaborate more on this to clear up your confusion. For instance, there are two or three ways to get your first 1,000 followers on Medium.
First, create stories that the Medium algorithm pushes, this means the quality bar of your stories should be high. And hopefully, if you continue to create quality stories you’ll get your first 1,000 followers.
The second way is to connect and network. You just create “Okayish” content but you spend most time networking and connecting with other people on Medium. Assuming that it takes you to get 300 followers in one month, you’d be at 1,000 followers by the end of the three months.
The third way is to suppose you have existing followers or audience on other social media platforms, YouTube, or whatever. For instance, you have 20,000 followers on LinkedIn. You can pretty much get to 1,000 followers by promoting your Medium profile to your LinkedIn audience.
You see, there is no exact path, and it does not just apply to Medium, but also to most of the things in life and business.
For example, publications. Most people like to publish their stories in publication on Medium, but I don’t. And I didn’t. So what do I do? I started self-publishing my stories, and still to date, I self-publish my stories
And to my surprise, I got better results than people who publish their stories in Medium publications. You get the point.
3. Optimize For Lifestyle, Not Money
A few days ago, James Clear tweeted something that hit home for me:
You shouldn’t be surprised when I say “Most people optimize their lives for money” If you ask people whether they want a comfortable life or want to make more money, most will choose the latter option, because they think more money means, more comfortable life, which is completely wrong, by the way.
You can’t have $10B and expect to live a stress-free, comfortable, and peaceful life. No, it’s not gonna happen. Money comes with responsibility. So the more the responsibilities, the more chaotic your life gets.
That’s the trade you have to make.
To clear this up, I have no interest in building the next billion-dollar startup, no interest in making millions of dollars per month. This is the reason I stopped my service business. This is the reason I stopped my consulting business. And this is the reason I stopped creating content on Twitter and LinkedIn.
I no longer optimize for money over my lifestyle.
Can confidently say, I’m optimizing my life for lifestyle, and I’m loving it so far. I want to control as many things as possible in my life: The time I want to wake up, the things I like to do, the work I’m passionate about.
And let’s be clear here, you don’t need $1 or $10M per month to live a comfortable and peaceful life, but just enough so that you can focus on the things that truly matter.
So I think, chasing money mindlessly but ruining your lifestyle and making it miserable is a bad trade. So it’s better to avoid this trade then, isn’t it?
4. The Person Who Thinks Long Term, Never Fails
You don’t fail, you learn. Sounds cliche but couldn’t be more true.
- Thomas Edison failed 1000 times before he invented the light bulb.
- JK Rowling failed 12 times before she wrote the Harry Potter.
- Walt Disney failed at multiple businesses before he found success with Disneyland.
You see, and I think the most important factor why they all got success at the end of the day was because they all were long-term thinkers. They didn’t fail, they learned and improved themselves little by little each day.
Said differently, they never stopped playing the game.
How you can apply this lesson to your life? Maybe this is your first attempt trying to build an audience on Medium and sadly, you may not be finding success here.
But the game is not over yet, Maybe Medium isn’t for you, or might be some other reason. But remember, Medium is the start not the end, you can try Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and maybe you still won’t find success in any of them.
But then? You may try Twitch streaming and all of sudden you build tens of thousands of followers there, and you become one the most paid streamers on the platform. That’s what success looks like.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards — Steve Jobs
To win and get success in any game, you have to keep playing it. That’s what success asks you for. So the moment you stop playing your game, you lose.
So think long-term and keep playing.
5. If Confused, Slowing Down Is The Best Answer
Whenever you get confused about something, slow down.
There are only a few cases where this statement might put you in danger. for example, there is a bomb you have to refuse by cutting a red or yellow wire (Like in a movie?), You are confused but you also only have 2 minutes to refuse it.
It’s not the best answer to tell yourself in that situation “Slow down boy, nothing bad is going to happen.” No, this would be the wrong approach. Instead, you have to act fast, as fast as you can.
But that’s an exception.
In creative works like writing, designing, coding; or choosing a career path; or thinking about whether you should take the business risk or not, in cases like these, slowing down can be the answer.
- Don’t know what would be the next paragraph of your writing? Stop and go for a walk.
- Don’t know what would be the homepage design of your website? Stop and do something creative in the real world.
- Consistent hitting the wrong code and feeling stuck? Leave it for 2 days.
- Don’t know whether you should take the business risk or not? Take some time, and in the meantime, journal, ideate, ask people, & relax.
I did this exact thing when I stopped my service business as a ghostwriter, I took a couple of weeks of break, wrote down all the advantages and disadvantages of ghostwriting, and figured out what I’d do if I stopped doing it to make money.
And guess what? Shutting ghostwriting down was one of the best decisions of my life.
But I wouldn’t be able to make this decision if I hadn’t slowed down as it was my primary source of income at that time and I didn’t want to lose it.
But slowing down gave me clarity on what I should do and what shouldn’t.
So yeah, these were the five hard-earned lessons I learned, and I hope you find them helpful and valuable, and hopefully, you’ll apply the lessons you learned here.
By accident, if you’re interested in growing and making money on Medium in 2024, I’d encourage you to read the below story to learn more about it:
