Here we go again — Mid-June I pledged to participate in the 30-Day Writing Challenge. So I spent June and July focusing fully on producing stories for my favorite content hamster wheel (this platform).

A subtle reminder to myself and an anonymous declaration of admiration to the writer who I used to envy — Amid the pandemic, desperation brought me back to Medium. I had written the sporadic post, only to disappear for months on end. Now I was back, and I was on a mission. The intention was not to steal your followers (it still isn’t) or make bank (would be nice, but…

Think about this: If you sit behind the steering wheel of a car for the first time, will you know how to drive? — When you start playing a brand new game, I understand you feel somewhat overwhelmed. That’s completely normal. You’re trying to move forward, but you’re not sure what you’re doing is what you should be doing. You’re a beginner, how can you know what’s right? You want to get results from…

How I got to 1000 people who clicked or tapped that follow button. — Don’t be fooled by the image. The 1K refers to followers and not to dollars. How did we get here? Last week, I reached another Medium milestone: 1000 followers. That’s a humbling number. Think 33 full classrooms. I started to write and publish consistently. In the beginning, I published only on occasion, whenever “I felt…

A deep dive into my Medium stats and earnings. — 2017 I opened a Medium account in December 2017 with the sole purpose of writing and sharing one article. I didn’t think much else of it. 2018 The year thereafter I published an impressive total of five pieces. Yes, you heard it correctly! One in January, February and April. In October that…

And wrote for 14 weeks straight like I meant it (so far). — So you want to be a Medium writer? This summer I decided to give writing a chance. A real one. A few random posts I published ages ago live on my Medium profile, but I hadn’t made the decision to put a serious effort into it yet. To get good or better at anything, you need to practice. …

A breakdown of my humble November earnings and stats. — Some writers advise ignoring the stats completely for the first year. I’m curious to learn how my articles are performing. By writing this income report I also force myself to have a closer look at the stats and reflect on how it went. In November I went through a serious…

I was looking for a mental escape. — Two years into freelancing, and it’s starting to go somewhere. The funny thing is, I had no idea I’d end up writing once again. As a matter of fact, I was trying to get away from writing. Not too long ago I held a fulltime job as a translator and…

It prevents me from censoring myself. — When I started writing on Medium, I wasn’t concerned about growth. I decided it would be fun to publish a post. My main goal was to avoid the hassle of setting up a blog. My name was put there because I couldn’t be bothered to come up with something catchier. …

Not as much as you’d think. Let’s take a closer look to see why. — The very first piece I published to Medium was in 2017. It’s a 10-minute read introducing an expense tracking template that worked well for me. Of course free links to the template are included, right at the top of the article. At the time of publishing, I didn’t have a…