What I Learned From 30 Days of Blogging on Medium

A photo of me walking away from these last 30 days, looking over my shoulder at the trail of blog-shed I’ve left in my wake.

Some of you reading this have been thinking I am crazy for a couple weeks now. Some of you have no idea that I’ve been blogging for 30 days in a row. Some of you are thinking, “FINALLY! MAYBE HE’LL STOP!”

So the question is, “Why?” Why would I do this? I’m not sure I even knew when I started. I kind of just wanted to see if I could. I also wanted to see what it would do for me/to me.

I was trying to figure out how to stay on top of my social media game, and then I realized that I’m not really a “take pictures every waking moment” kind of guy. I’m also not a “tweet every thought that passes through your head” kind of guy. I guess I stew on things a little more. So naturally a blog seemed like a great fit.

Overall the last 30 days have been pretty crazy. 30 blog posts in 30 days was not easy. I gotta admit, there were definitely a couple slumps in there. Maybe you could tell, maybe you couldn’t.

The biggest challenge was staying motivated. It sucks coming home at the end of a long day, looking at the clock at 11:30pm, and realizing that you haven’t gotten a post together for the next morning. But hey, that was part of what I committed to.

It was also a time killer. I spent a lot of the time I normally spend answering emails plugging through edits or revisions of a post that was almost together. Even now, I am writing most of this post five days before I release it in an effort to stay ahead of the game. Sorry everyone I still owe emails to!

I know you want to talk about stats so let’s talk about stats. Here’s how it went…

• Of all of my posts in the last 30 days, this one about millennials got the most views and reads (237 views, 174 reads)

Those Damn Millennials!

• Of all my posts to date, this one about my black female cofounder (Alex Liggins) got the most views and reads (357 views, 279 reads).

My Black Female Cofounder

• The post with the highest ratio of views to readers was this one about context switching (80% read ratio, but only 30 views). Keep in mind that views do not equate to reads.

Context Switching: 10 ft, 10 miles, No In Between

• The most popular day for my blog over the last 30 days was on Friday, March 6th with 204 views.
• Overall, here is how my stats page looked for the month:

Fairly dense even though there were significant down days.

• The previous 30 days I set myself up by doing a few sporadic posts. If you’d like to compare that with the previous 30 days here you go:

The big spike is from the day I posted “My Black Female Cofounder”. Notice that even though I had a couple large spikes the total number of views doubled by posting every day. You can discern more from the other stats if you wish as well, but that depends on how much value one places on views, reads, or fans.

Maybe you’re more into milestones. Here you go…

7 Days In: I was listed as a top writer in “Economics” on Medium. Alright, alright, stop your applause. All I got was this lousy fine print at the bottom of my profile card.

All these posts and all I got was this stupid label.

I think I may have also showed up higher in searches for people who were specifically looking for “Economics”, but I am not seeing that show any benefits in the referrers lists on my posts.

12 Days In: I was asked to contribute to the publication Age of Awareness. I also don’t know how much this actually helped because I don’t see it that often in my referrers lists. However, it was cool that I showed up in someone’s search and was asked to contribute to their tribe.

30 Days In: I am still waiting for Oprah Winfrey or David Letterman to call me for an interview.

Here is what I learned…Because that is what it’s all about, right?

• I write better in the morning than at night. It just seems like my head is clearer. Thought I would point this out because it required some scheduling on my part.
• Coming up with ideas is ROUGH. The real key is stacking a bunch of ideas in notes somewhere and then building upon them when you have to post. I just used Medium as my notebook in this case. If I had an idea I’d put it in a Medium draft instead of sock it away in the notepad app on my phone. That way, when I sat down to write I would have topics to riff on or choose from.
• It’s hard to get over the hurdle of feeling narcissistic. I’ve heard tell that others get chastised for being self centered when they attempt something like this. I talked with my friend JACOB TITUS about this. He has come up against a lot of this in his year long run to Rust Belt photo blog fame and glory. I guess you shouldn’t worry about what others think, but it can be a little difficult to think that way when you are in fact posting for others to see. I think that there is still an element of “do it for you” that you have to implement.
• Numbered lists are good, but titles that evoke feeling are better. A lot of people fall victim to click bait-y titles that say “3 simple steps to living the life of your dreams”, myself included. I figured I would check out how those types of titles compared against some of the other ones I was writing. It turns out, the best results I got were from getting people concerned, frustrated, excited, or hopeful.
• The most inspiration I got was having meaningful conversations with friends. It’s easy to try to take what you know (or what you think you know) and compress it into blog-gold, but the best results came after taking a walk with a buddy or having a conversation with my fiancée. Those people I could really share myself with.

Now that this experiment is over, I want to hear from you.

You read that right. I want to know what you thought, what you liked, what you didn’t, what you wanted to hear about that I didn’t say, and whatever else you can think of in terms of feedback.

Drop it in the comments, comment on the LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram post this was linked in, tweet me, DM me, whatever. Just let me know.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got about 10,000 emails to get to.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story pl…oh you know what, screw it. We’ve all been doing this for 30 days in a row. I’m sure you know the drill by now. Take your mouse or your finger and slam that applause button. Did you know you could hold it down and applaud up to 50 times? I bet you didn’t. In fact, I know you didn’t. I also know that some of you did, and you just go in there and press it, like, 3 times. Except for you Dustin Mix. I know you’ll just be in here with those 49 claps. I’ll tell you what you can do with the 50th!