Member-only story
Here’s What Happened When I Took A Month Off Writing On Medium
Hint: All of my stats dropped dramatically
I basically took a break from everything social media—including writing on Medium.
It all started when I got locked out of my Facebook page.
As I’ve been traveling to multiple countries this year, finally landing semi-permanently in the Philippines, Facebook decided they needed to verify page ownership.
I guess they didn’t like that I was in the USA from January to March, then Costa Rica from March to June, and a couple of weeks in Mexico before returning to Costa Rica. On top of that, I’ve been living in the Philippines since September.
Facebook wanted their mobile app to track my whereabouts, through GPS, to determine my “home” country. Which I reluctantly gave them permission to do—since I normally have GPS tracking turned off by default for all my apps.
I thought the process would go relatively fast, but I was mistaken.
It took Facebook nearly a month to verify my page ownership through GPS tracking.
During that time, I decided to focus on my offline writing, like working on my first full-length novel.
Trust me, I enjoyed the break from posting to social media every day.
But, I also missed it.
With the hiatus, I stopped writing on Medium too.
Then a few days ago, I checked my Medium statistics. Since I have less than 300 followers on the platform, my stats dropped significantly.
I barely had any reads on my older stories. And since I wasn’t writing any new content, there was nothing new to fuel readership or views.
Honestly, the results from the month-long hiatus didn’t surprise me.
And so far, in November 2021, I’ve made a dismal $0.05 in earnings with the Medium Partner Program.
So, what did I learn from this impromptu experiment?
- Medium’s algorithm awards fresh content over old
- Consistency is the key to being a successful writer on Medium
- Posting frequently (i.e. daily or weekly) on Medium gets you more reads, more followers and more money
