February in Review, 10 Boosted Articles, and Kristina God’s Writing School

I feel I’m learning to embrace the power of Substack

Hello Everyone!

I’m writing this on leap day. I’ve always thought that leap day should be celebrated with a day off. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Thursday, it only happens once every 4 years. Why not make it a rolling party?

Sigh... nobody ever implements my great ideas.

Anyway, this is the end of the month and it’s always fun to look back on what you’ve achieved. I set personal bests in both Medium and Substack which I’ll get into in a minute.

In this article I plan to give you some examples of Boosted articles, provide a sneak peak at my future plans for Substack, and endorse

Kristina God

’s newsletter. Let’s get going!

I’ve been looking at some drafts

Quite a few of you have taken me up on my offer to review your drafts to provide feedback on changes that might get you Boosted. I think at least one of you has gotten a Boost on something I’ve edited.

As Medium continues to evolve, I think you’re only going to see a greater emphasis on editing. Most of you have sent me draft links, which is good, but I’d prefer to get a google drive document so I can track the changes. I’ll end up doing this:

That’s a screen shot from an article I did in February that didn’t get Boosted… but it should have. If you didn’t read it, please do, it explains my editing philosophy:

How a ‘Track Changes’ Feature Helps to Clarify the Etiquette of Editing

I’ll also use comments like this:

It works so much better than the private note feature on Medium. Google Drive doesn’t limit my character count so I can suggest changes in a way that sounds a lot nicer (and that’s important to me).

Substack isn’t Medium and vice versa

One of the things I wanted to emphasize is that although I mostly write about Medium, I would like my readers to be aware that the format I use on Substack isn’t the format you should use for Medium. Medium and Substack are two different animals. I don’t feel you can transpose an article from Substack to Medium and expect to get the same results (other people probably can, but not me).

I generally spend more time crafting my Medium articles because that platform places a greater emphasis on a creative/personal element. On the other hand, I seem to have better success on Substack when I provide information without hanging it on a complex narrative. Experimenting with this is part of the reason I’ve been releasing old articles like this one:

One result of the differences between the two platforms is that it takes me less energy to write Substack posts. Medium’s Robin Wilding even told me she enjoyed the “behind the scenes” vibe of my Substack newsletter.

Because the energy commitment is less, I might be able to start doing an afternoon Substack. As always, it will depend on how things unfold in the coming months.

The three articles I’ve imported from Medium are the one linked above, A Cornucopia of Coolant, and That Valentine’s Day Bouquet.

Here’s how they’ve performed:

As you can see, they’re lagging behind my regular Substack style entries which is actually encouraging because the old Medium posts are harder to write.

I’m also doing those to practice my voiceover. That’s still not where I want it, and I lack the software to fix the irritating errors and coughs. I’ve decided for the sake of efficiency I just have to live with the minor mistakes. I know how my brain works, and if I start demanding perfection of myself, I’ll end up spending 80 hours a week on those things. That’s why I’m content to live with the occasional stutter (hopefully I’ll get better as I go).

Boosts from February

I nominated 22 stories that received a Boost in February and I received Boosts on 10 of the stories I wrote. Nominators are allowed to nominate 2 of their own stories, but Medium hasn’t approved a self-nomination from me in a long time.

10 Boosts in a month is a personal record (Yay me!). My previous best was 9. I think there’s value in providing examples of Boosted stories so that you get a better idea of what your writing should look like, so, here they are:

1. Why We Must Recognize the Humanity of People in the Adult Film Industry

2. How Connecting with Your Authentic Self Is a Long and Confusing Journey

3. Why Escaping Toxic People is a Gift to Give Yourself

4. Why All Writers Must Develop the Fundamental Skill of Performative Reading

5. How an Old Photo Can Provide Some Clarity on the Nature of Eternity

6. Why Emotionally Lazy People Aren’t Entitled to Unconditional Love

7. How Learning to Embrace Diversity Can Change the Trajectory of Your Life

8. How to Not Become Overwhelmed by all the Platforms and Publishing Opportunities

9. How I Used to Provoke People to Prove They Were False

10. Why Toxic, Patriarchal Men Become Enraged When They’re Ghosted

My favorite of these is probably “How Learning to Embrace Diversity Can Change the Trajectory of Your Life.” My favorite story that wasn’t Boosted is probably this one: How Ignoring Unspoken Truth Will Conspire to Sabotage Your Life. You can read it for yourself to judge if it’s lacking.

My big earner this month was here:

That might change as some of the stories Boosted late in the month get a chance to catch up.

In case you’re curious, I think this is my all time top earner:

The only concerning thing about February is that overall my views were down, but that’s been a trend for the last few months:

Compare that to August of 2023:

Something created a spike that hovered around 15k views for a couple days. That’s why you have to take the view counts with a grain of salt.

My conclusion on this is that Medium users shouldn’t panic too much about stats. I think it fluctuates month to month and that might be, in part, due to changes in how the data is collected. The only stat that matters is your earnings.

Kristina God’s newsletter

In February, I signed up for Kristina God’s newsletter. I started seeing new subscribers almost immediately:

Over the last year, I’ve been very busy with Medium. I’ve viewed Substack as more of a playground, but now that I’m over 100 subscribers I’m beginning to see the potential. I’m also getting a better idea as to what readers want and how to use the platform.

I feel the best case scenario is to continue to grow my Substack and cultivate quality writers who I can Boost on Medium. I do enjoy editing and helping other writers succeed, but if there’s too much of a demand I might have to streamline the process.

We’ll see how it goes.

For now, I’m busy and I’m seeing growth so what else can you ask for (Well… a seven figure, multi-book deal I guess. I have the manuscripts all ready to go, hint, hint).

Thanks for reading, as always, leave your questions below.