The first things I’ve learned about writing after 17$ Medium Dollars

My stats after ten days of writing

December, 2019. I spotted a website called Medium which claims to be a platform where you can earn writing something. In that period of my life, I was still a student and I was looking for a side hustle in order to have enough money to buy videogames or pc components.

So, I wrote my first Medium article. It wasn’t a big success…not at all. I feel that my writing was a little superficial, but since someone liked that post and some other one find it useful, I’ve decided to leave it there.

After two years, as an Italian in the very core of the first pandemic wave, I’ve decided to write another post about our daily routine in lockdown condition. I needed to express my emotions, since they were hard times (but it seems the worst is gone!).

Again, it wasn’t a viral post, and no one read it. Then, in the end of 2021, I’ve deleted it, together with another post about Google Stadia. I’ve felt it was a start of a new writing cycle and I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned.

What did I learn?

I’ve learned several big lesson:

• Writing is a flow, it is not the period at the end of a sentence. You will change in your life, your mood will change, and something you wrote with bells on, will not excite you in another moment of your lifetime.
• Quality pays more than quantity. You can write thousands posts whose length is one sentence each. Nobody will find them useful, so wait a moment before posting: sometimes, if you focus on the contents you’ve written, you will notice that they don’t seem useful to you either. Focus on quality, help someone, care about being accurated. You will be proud of you when people say: “Oh, thank you!”
• Writer’s Block. Sometimes you simply don’t know what to say, but you feel the need to express yourself and you’re hating that white sheet you cannot fill with words. In other moments, you know what you desire to write about, but looking here and there you see that the web is full of articles about the same topic. Don’t care. You can ever do it better. I used to trash my ideas because something did already exist. I will no more.
  Wake up,
  fluffyc3rb3rus
  , you’re in year 2022. Every macroscopic thing is already invented, but you must not stop your growth!
• Do not followback. In 2015, I’ve reached 10K followers on Twitter by following back people. A popular publisher contacted me in order to publish my tweets on their school diaries. Yes, having 10K followers I had much more interactions and retweets, but they weren’t really interested in what I was writing. It was a silent trade: I retweet your tweet if you retweet mine to your 10K followers. I never felt really appreciated. Clap only if you want to clap, follow only if you’re really interested in reading somebody’s article. Otherwise, it looks a little hypocritical. Do not try to look nice to attract people, just be yourself, write what you like and the rest will folloy.

The Outcome

After a week I’ve started putting all my efforts on writing, these are the results:

• 4500 Views
• 1081 Reads
• 23 Followers (3 with referral)
• 17$

I know it’s only the start.

That’s the most important thing: to be proud of yourself, to be happy of what you’re doing.