Five of My Biggest Surprises from Writing on this Platform

Sometimes amazing things happen here

Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

I rarely read anything about Medium. I am of the mind that most people who write about Medium can’t think of anything else to write about. Some write about tricks they learned on how to game the algorithm. Others write complaints about something that irritates them about Medium’s policies. Others write to brag about how one article they wrote went viral and they can show you how to do it too.

Yawn.

Don’t worry. This isn’t about any of that. I’ve been writing on Medium for almost three years, but only about two years seriously. That first year? Phhhhhht. I think I made about $20 for the entire year. My lowest monthly payout was 60 cents. 60 effin cents. During this time I seriously considered just pulling the plug and moving along. I only wrote occasionally, though I did read every day.

And then it happened. My first surprise. I was checking my stats and I noticed the stats for one of my stories were going higher than normal. It kept climbing and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Already the views and reads were more than any other article I had written.

The next morning I saw that this article had made more money than all my other articles combined. Admittedly, the bar was low…