I Published 31 Articles in 31 Days - Was It Worth It?

I did it. I finally did. But at what cost?

The 30-day challenges on Medium are very popular, I personally recommend participating. Although, this is not a post about how it went for me.

For me, August was not a 30-day challenge. It was actually May, and I already wrote about the results. I made a commitment to write 30 stories (minimum) each month, not as a fee, but as a habit.

The story you are reading right now is my 31st this month. You may think I'm exhausted, but while challenging, it was a very fluid month.

Let me tell you how this month was for me.

I'm going to focus on 3 things throughout this post:

1. Publications
2. Niches
3. Results

These may be the questions you may have about writing daily, I will do my best to clear them all up.

Here we go!

Published articles vs written articles

I feel lucky to say that, as of writing this, there are no unpublished drafts for me. Each and every one of the pieces was written as of August 1. Today, August 31, they were published.

All of them were accepted by Publications?

Unfortunately not, but that's inevitable. If you've done a 30-day challenge you know that rejection will happen and you shouldn't feel bad.

Of the 30 pieces written before this article, 6 were posted on my own profile and Pub (cross.roads). That means 24 of them were accepted.

Did I write daily?

No, some days I wrote 2 and even 3 pieces. I didn't force myself to write every single day, but I did try to write 8-10 articles a week.

In total, I was accepted in 12 Publications (which you will see below). Some are big and popular, others are a bit smaller.

My recommendation: don't just stick with big Publications. Little ones can surprise you in terms of real interactions.

The Publications that accepted my stories in August are:

ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR

ILLUMINATION

The Side Hustle Club

An Idea (by Ingenious Piece)

Feedium

Thoughts And Ideas

The Venting Machine

Writers’ Blokke

Mystic Minds

Unwritten Journal

Freelancer’s Hub

Making of a Millionaire

Niches are great, why settle for just one?

I've talked about this several times here, but I'll say it one more time.

I know several niche writers who are doing very well. However, Medium is a massive place filled with millions of communities, writers, and topics. So I always recommend writing about what you like, even if you like a lot of different things.

You can be a science-fiction novelist by day and a DIY carpenter explaining how to make a birdhouse by night. Have fun.

I wrote for Publications with very different topics, which makes everything more interesting. This month I wrote about:

• Meta Medium articles
• Psychology and mental health
• Writing tips
• Business, side hustles, and entrepreneurship
• Personal stories

The Tags I used the most were: Writing Tips, Advice, Mental Health, Life, Business, Side Hustle, and Entrepreneurship.

Each Publication has its own guidelines, styles, and essences. Make sure you read them well to know what they are looking for.

All Pubs responded to my submissions?

Sadly no, some never gave me feedback. Some only contacted me to say that I was not accepted and other editors took the time to make corrections.

If a story went 48 hours without being reviewed, it was sent to a new Publication, if it fit. If not, I posted it myself on my profile.

It was worth it?

As I mentioned at the beginning, I plan for this way of writing on Medium to become a habit. So I wasn't expecting big changes in terms of revenue or views.

However, oh boy there were results.

The most significant achievement was my story with the most claps so far. Which was posted on August 19 in Feedium and today has 1.6k claps. I had never hit 1k claps before. Yay me!

On the other hand, the number of new followers was surprising. I DIDN'T see it coming.

I started this month with a little over 1,000 followers and, 4 days ago, I reached 2,000. Every day, when I woke up, I came across dozens of notifications from new followers.

In terms of views and revenue, it wasn't my best month, but it wasn't far off. August didn't beat May as my highest earning month, but it gave me something better.

Conclusions

This has easily been my favorite month since I started writing on Medium. I took the liberty of writing about different topics, I received hundreds of positive and comforting comments and, at the same time, I had fun as hell.

Clearly, not every month will be the same. I doubt that I can always maintain this rhythm, but without a doubt, it will be my north.

In general, it's a great exercise as a writer. Daring to swim in new and different waters each day really keeps the juices of creativity flowing.

Have you tried something similar? How did it go? Let me read it in the comments!

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