My Medium Journey: Episode 5
Reality check
This is a monthly feature in which I document my solopreneur journey from start to … uh … whatever comes after the start. Fail or flop, I hope we can all learn something from my experience.
After a great month in September, things fell back to earth in October. I came out of the gates with a story that I thought would do well. It did poorly. Like really poorly. I don’t know why, but I can speculate about a couple of factors.
First, the article was published just as Kevin McCarthy got the boot as speaker of the House of Representatives and horrifying events in the Middle East began to unfold. Clearly there were more pressing things demanding people’s attention than my article. (Although, for the record, the article was about mindfulness and compassion, which the world seems to need now more than ever.)
Second, in late September Medium.com became aware of some sort of fraudulent “manufactured engagement” going on that they have (at least in theory) rectified. I wonder to what extent this sucked attention from the rest of us — both in terms of readers and also in terms of the ability of Medium staff to promote our work.
Finally, I suspect the most important factor is…the fact that sometimes stories just fail to take off for reasons that are inscrutable. As my editor says…
