SUCCESS ON MEDIUM

I Upgraded Every Underperforming Headline And This is What Happened

Hint: not much

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

I’m a pointy-headed nerd who likes to play with numbers. I love making spreadsheets, charts, and graphs. One of the first things I do every morning when I log into my Medium account is check my stats. So, a little over a week ago, I decided to see if my success here was being suppressed by underperforming headlines. I’d test the hypothesis that if my articles’ headlines were more click-baity, more people might read my stories.

When I first decided to do this, I thought I might end up with a brainy piece replete with numbers, charts, and graphs. Then reality bit, and the actual numbers are too lame to make charts and graphs out of, so I’m just going to use my words.

For this review, I looked at everything I published on Medium between August 2021 and February 25, 2022. Though I’ve been a Medium member since late 2017, I narrowed in on the past seven months and didn’t analyze my whole body of work here. Two reasons: (1) I don’t like most of what I published before last August, so I’m reluctant to revisit it. (2) I published very few articles before last August.

Last summer, I submitted entries to two MWC prompts— the first installments of what would become a six-part series —…