The dark side of publishing daily on Medium
Publishing too frequently may make you invisible in plain sight.
Almost all ‘meta’ writers writing about this → Publish consistently / frequently.
Meta-writers are those who write about writing. (like me)
Their stories look cool when you join Medium. Eventually, you’ll have a love+hate feeling with them.
Coming to the point.
In the name of consistency, people are posting stories every day.
Good or Bad?
It's good if the story is good.
Bad, if the title is so good and nothing inside the story.
Urge to read.
Often I feel the urge to open the story despite part of me saying don’t do that.
Most of the time I regret opening stories.
They look so promising with the title.
But almost 90% were grinding the same concept/ideas.
When a reader falls into this pattern of associating the disappointing stories with your name, he’ll eventually start to skip your articles (when they see your name near the story title) — no matter how catchy your title is.
My fingers are itching. I couldn’t sleep without typing something every day.
I can’t sleep if I can’t post what I typed.
I know this is not a good thing. So I have a simple rule. If this is not (really) going to help anyone, then don’t post it.
trust me, frequency is not the only factor for success in Medium
Write consistently. But post when it becomes a minimum viable story.
Trust me. The follower count is not the symbol of success.
You won’t earn proportional to the follower count. This was the hard lesson I learned this month (after a month of joining the Medium Partner Program).
I wrote this because no one is talking about this.
I hate good writers publishing sh*tty stories for the sake of publishing.
It is equally irritating as a clickbaity article that doesn’t even have an iota of useful info inside.
dormant followers
When you post too frequently, you’ll become invisible in plain sight.
Don’t earn those dormant followers who are too lazy to unfollow you & at the same time don’t bother about your stories.
These are the people who are responsible for the decision of the Medium distribution algorithm not to push your articles further to other new readers.
earning potential
You’ll not be paid for my frequency. You’ll be paid for the quality.
Then why they are posting frequently? Because it will gain you followers.
If you write A, people who like A will start following you. If you write B, people who like B will start to follow you. Likewise, C, D, E, F, Goes on.
But when you write C again, only C wants to open it. Not all the A, B, D, E, F.
Frequently publishing will let you touch too many topics and broaden your niche. So you’ll get a quick increase in the number of followers.
But they are not potential contributors to your earnings.
quality first
Remember, you need a person to read your story for at least 30 seconds.
I am not talking about your writing quality. I am talking about content quality. Information quality.
Focus on the value you provide.
This will beat the formula of “showing up every day” through a new story on Medium.
I am not against consistency. I am against it when the frequency overtakes the quality.
That is not good for you in the long run.
the myth of “quality increases when the quantity increases”
When you write more shitty stories, you’ll get conditioned to make more shitty stories.
Practice better.
Let's have a good proportion between time and quantity. Without that, the quality is never going to increase.
What else did I miss here? I know most readers are better than me. So share your points without hesitation.
