Five Lessons From One Year On Medium (Along With Stats)

If I can do this, anyone can

Photo by Eyestetix Studio on Unsplash

Today marks the end of my first full year on Medium. And if you’re reading this, I hope we have a fantastic 2025 together.

I did a few things right in 2024 and screwed up a ton. Read this so you can skip out on the screwing-up part. I'll give you my five lessons, which will save you countless hours and headaches. There will be a second part to this newsletter, but it'll be on the paid side.

Why on the paid side?

It'll have all of my stats and income for 2024. It'll also give a clear idea of what can be done in 365 days on Medium. Okay, let's dive into the lessons.

1. Save every draft

With almost every article I've written, I've felt the urge to delete it at some point in the process. The tone is wrong. Nobody is interested in hearing this. My brain comes up with a laundry list of reasons why my work sucks.

Ignore those urges.

One article sat in my drafts box for two weeks. I nearly deleted it several times and changed it half a dozen times. I published it and ignored it because I knew it would bomb. It turns out that the article is one of my highest earners and most viewed.

2. Know the numbers

Medium is a numbers game in every sense. You can be a good writer, but most of your articles go nowhere. On average, if I publish ten articles, one or two will be successful.

Even the best writers "fail" often.

3. Limit you links

I see articles all the time that are covered in links. I'm not clicking the 37 links that have been stuffed into an article. When you add a link early in the article and someone clicks it, they don't stay on your article for 30 seconds, and you're likely not getting paid.

You did the hard work capturing a reader's attention; now keep it on the article.

Nothing wrong with a few links. Just use them sparingly and keep them toward the end of your article. Don't spam them with

4. One ask

Just like limiting your links, limit what you want the reader to do. They're busy, so they don't want to link to every article you've written. Just use one short call to action. Direct them to an article you're proud of or to join a newsletter.

Don't overwhelm the reader.

5. The money is in the tagging

I've written at length about the importance of tagging in prior newsletters. Here's the quick down and dirty - use all five tags and ensure they are high-value. What is high value? Use tags with 500k followers or more and less than 100k stories under that tag.

Okay, now, onto the juicy stuff.