How I Posted 100 Blogs In My First 6 Months, and How I’ll Do Even More

I reached a pretty cool milestone today on Medium. I posted my 100th blog since I signed up about six months ago. And I plan to do even better than that in the next six months.

When I first started blogging on Medium, my initial goal was to build a small portfolio of blogs so that I could get hired for content writing. That was easily accomplished in two weeks.

I also gained the 100 followers needed to monetize my blog. That wasn’t part of my game plan for earning money as a writer. Content writing was my primary focus. But things changed.

I quickly realized how much I loved blogging. It was far more creative and involved more freedom than content writing. I enjoyed writing about what I wanted to, when I wanted to, with no deadlines or revision requests. I decided that I’d make my blog the priority, and content writing, secondary.

I had a couple of my blogs go pretty big and made $420 in earnings for April. May brought in another $300. I feel like I should be proud of those numbers. Yet I know I want to accomplish far more than that for monthly income.

I’ve gone from starting with zero followers to having almost 1400 on Medium. I’ve increased my Twitter following from 275 to over 2400 in about six weeks. Again, these are things to be proud of. But I’m not satisfied at this point.

The reason for this is twofold.

First, I tend to not be the most patient person in the world. I work hard toward my goals and am persistent. This often leads to me feeling bad about myself. Especially if I feel I am not progressing as quickly as I should be.

Secondly, I know I can be doing better. Being a writer entails so much freedom. Freedom to write whatever you want to write, using whichever method you choose. I am also free to write as much or as little as I want, based on how many hours a day I choose to put into it.

As I reflect on writing and posting 100 pretty awesome blogs in just six months of writing, I’ve thought of five ways that I’m going to improve my results on Medium. I hope you find these useful and decide to use any or all of them yourself.

1. I Know I Can Reduce My Hours Spent On A Number of Unproductive Things

I thought about how many total hours a week I’m actually writing, and I instantly felt a little bad about it. I realize how many additional hours I could realistically put into creating more blogs and other writing. Especially if I wasn’t wasting time on a number of things that really aren’t that important to me.

I pinpointed two things, in particular, that are completely unnecessary to put as many hours a week into as I do. I also thought about being able to get up an hour or two earlier each day of the week and limiting the amount of time I spend watching streamed TV. All of these things are doable.

I feel that I could almost double the amount of time I spend a week writing. I felt that I did pretty well by producing 100 blogs in six month period of time.

However, I think that investing almost double the amount of time I’ve been putting into my writing could easily have me posting between 150 to 175 blogs in the next six months.

This is not some difficult task or chore. I LOVE writing. I’ve cranked out a 4000-word contest entry in literally 4 hours, give or take. I am a quick typist and the ideas often just come to mind very easily for me.

Spending more time writing and less time on things that don’t make me as happy as writing will really help push my writing goals forward. I am willing to take time from a number of less-important things and invest them into something far more fulfilling.

2. I’m Building Other Income Streams To Afford Myself More Writing Time

One thing I am very blessed with is having much more time to write than the average person trying to survive in this economically tough world. I have multiple income streams personally, and my Bride owns her own counseling practice.

I decided I didn’t want to do carpet cleaning anymore as my main career and I didn’t care to pursue real estate as fanatically as I had in the past. I was able to make the switch to writing as my primary focus. Doing what I am passionate about for a living is the most fulfilling feeling in the world.

Even after becoming a paid, professional writer, I was still able to tweak my goals a bit to make my ultimate dreams come true. I started out focused on content writing for other companies and changed my mind about that within a month. I wasn’t having nearly as much fun doing content writing as I was writing my own blogs, articles, and poetry.

I was making more income doing content writing, so I felt torn. I wanted to contribute more to our household income but felt it wasn’t nearly as interesting and fun as blogging. I decided to see if I could replace my content writing income with another source.

I have owned a real estate listings group for 8 years on Facebook. I always offered it as a free group for 1500 to 2000 local agents who were members of it to post their new listings, free of charge. We have about 8000 other members who like to see what the newest listings are priced at.

I decided to make a tough decision and monetize the group. I posted a few different posts about there now being a fee to post listings, open houses, and real estate-related businesses in the group. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

There was pushback. Quite a few agents didn’t like being suddenly charged for posting their listings. Most have decided not to pay to post their listings. More of them were decent than not. A few were downright rude about it.

However, I’d say about 20–25% of agents are paying to post in the group. It is a well-run group and the largest real estate listings group on Facebook in Idaho. Why shouldn’t I earn a little money for all the work I do, keeping it free of non-related posts and spammers?

The income I’m making from the group after a month and a half is affording me more hours to spend on my blogging and reducing how many hours I have to spend on content writing. Adding that revenue to my carpet cleaning jobs I still do occasionally for mostly past clients, I now have enough income to free up more of my workday for blog writing.

3. I’m Reposting My Older Blogs Most Evenings

One great aspect of reaching 100 blog posts in my first six months of writing is that I’m building quite a library of work in a relatively short amount of time. I’ve started to repost some of my earlier work once in a while.

It’s been awesome doing this. I didn’t have monetization of my blog on Medium initially before I had 100 followers. Those are the blogs I’ve reposted first. A number of them are doing well and adding income to my monthly totals.

I feel that often a blog just doesn’t hit as big as I’d like it to. With a second chance, I have a feeling a number of my blogs are going to go over bigger the second time around than when they were originally posted. Plus I can edit them and make them even better than the first time they were posted.

I have far more followers now than I did when I posted quite a few of my earlier blogs. By taking a little bit of time each evening to repost a second blog each day, I will double the number of blogs I’m putting out there to read, and in theory, should be earning even more income than I currently am now.

4. Not Wasting Time Posting My Work On Ineffective Sites

Something I’ve changed in the past month or so is not wasting my time posting every blog I write on every site available to me. Not all websites are created equally. More exposure in numerous ineffective places can take away time you should be spending writing new content.

When I first started blogging, I was only posting on Medium. I added a friend’s website to my to-do list, to help him add content to his site, and to have a secondary avenue for my work to be seen. Yet his new site had very few users. This was not conducive to my goals of building a larger following.

I read up about other sites you could post blogs to. I researched the ins and outs of certain websites and figured I’d give a number of them a try. It was exciting at first to see the differences in their layouts and I hoped that all of them would pay off in a noticeable way.

They didn’t. Right away, it became apparent that Medium was one of the best sites for income potential. Both right away and long term. I’ve earned $720 over the past two full months on Medium. From what I’ve read, that’s considerably higher than many people are earning there.

I see the potential, long term. I’ve noticed how easy it is to jump from 100 to 500 followers. From 500 to 1000. And from a thousand to fifteen hundred, which I should reach in a week or so. If you do the work, it’s easy to build a following and gain more readers. The more readers you have, the more income you earn.

Other platforms were disappointing. I joined Hub Pages, Substack, Vocal, Ko-Fi, and Tealfeed, most recently. I’ve decided that taking the time to post my work on a number of them isn’t worth the minimal income earned.

Vocal is one of the best. As many of you are aware, you pay $49.99 for the first year and $99.99 for your second year. Vocal offers decent bonuses as you post certain milestone numbers of blogs and articles. They also pay you $5 each time you write an article they feature. This has happened to me a number of times. I earned my $49.99 back within the first month or 45 days.

They also offer at least two or three monthly contests most months. These can range from $2500 to $10,000 for each winner, $1000-$2000 for 2nd place, and $25 for 15 to 25 runner-up winners. I have yet to win anything so far, but it’s sure fun and exciting to try.

Substack is a zero out of ten website for me. I haven’t earned a penny on it and quit posting on it. Hub Pages was flattering at first, as they have other publications and my writing was featured on them at least 15 to 20 times. But I’ve literally earned just a few dollars total in three months. I quit posting on theirs as well.

Ko-Fi is a tip-based site. Your tippers can also agree to tip you in a reoccurring way, monthly. I’ve earned about $55 on there in two months from tips, so for me, it’s worth keeping around. Tealfeed is a new site and promised to monetize sooner than later. We’ll see about that, I suppose.

By limiting myself to only posting on three websites consistently, I save numerous hours a week by not posting on sites that pay either nothing or close to it. This affords me more time to write new material or repost existing blogs on Medium and here on Vocal. Time is limited, it’s best to spend it wisely on things that produce results.

5. I’m Building My Following On Medium and Twitter Daily

I’ve invested a fair amount of time over the past six months trying to follow as many writers as possible, on both Medium and Twitter. I’ve done it even more so these past few months. I know that I can improve upon that as I’m getting better at seeing which strategies work more effectively.

I’m starting to follow only Medium users who have a profile picture and a bio posted. I used to just follow every profile I found that I didn’t already follow, but realized that it’s better to have followers who engage on the site. With more engagement comes more potential readers of my blogs.

Medium only allows you to follow so many people per day before they stop you from following any others. This resets every 24 hours. I have read that you are allowed to follow 125 people in a 24-hour period.

It might be more sensible to count the first 100 you request and stop there. Then, you’re still able to accept actual new followers that come to you organically, by stopping short of the limit by 25 per day.

I also just discovered something new, as of this morning. There is a way to tell if the Medium users you are requesting are paid members. These are the people you want reading your blogs and articles because you’ll earn income from those readers. I am mainly going to follow those people from here on.

How can you tell which ones they are? Check out this picture below. I go to a popular user’s profile, someone who has thousands of followers, and click one of their popular articles. Then I click the hand clap icon to see all the people who clapped for it. This brings up a list of people you can scroll through, and I only request the paid members, who have a green line around the top and bottom of the profile pic.

Here’s an example:

The ones marked with yellow dots are the paid members, in this example. They are the followers that will earn you income every time they read one or more of your blogs or articles.

This is not to say you should never follow anyone who isn’t a paid member. They could decide to pay at a later time, or perhaps you just find their work interesting and useful. You should certainly follow anyone you choose to, for your own reasons.

As far as building a Twitter following goes, please check out these two blogs I’ve recently posted. Instead of going into full detail here, these two links will take you right to the in-depth articles for both. They’re worth reading.

How I Gained 1300 Writer Followers In 2 Weeks On Twitter

3 Weeks After Adding 1300 Followers on Twitter, I’ve Added Over 700 More

Both of these articles are quite helpful. I’ve found that Twitter is so far the best social media platform to feature your writing on. There are tips for adding followers, what kind of content to post, and some mistakes I made initially when using the site. You can learn from my experiences over the past few months and help expose your writing to even more people in an effective way.

Last Thoughts About My Next Six Months of Writing:

I’m excited for what the rest of my first full year of writing will bring. The learning curve for this new carer as a writer has been pretty intense, but fun. There has been much learning, a lot of trial-and-error, and definitely some early success to go along with it.

I am proud of my progress. I take joy in all the little small wins that seem to pop up daily. Yet I know that I can fine-tune my approach and continue to research better, more effective ways to expand my audience.

I’m convinced that I can do better and reach my goals. I’ll progress to the levels I wish to reach as a professional writer in the next six months. I’m excited to see the results on my one-year anniversary of becoming a writer. I wish you the best in your journey, as well!