July Report Card: YouTube Shorts Analytics, Another Medium Fail, & the Instagram Shock!

First, the bad:

I made a whopping $0.39 on Medium. Wamp. Wamp. Wamp. My Medium earnings have fallen for two months in a row. Not that they were stellar. I earned, at most, $3.29 in January.

When I shared my low earnings on Twitter, people told me I should be happy to earn what I did because they hadn't made a single dollar.

Ouch.

There are many who will teach you success secrets to Medium. I'm not that committed, though I did complete a Udemy course about it last year to see what I could learn.

My goal isn't to become the "person who hacked Medium success" because it's not a platform I own or have any control over. Not my algorithm, not my monkeys 🙉

(Besides, I'm from Kansas. My monkeys fly).

I treat Medium as I do Twitter, TikTok, or YouTube; I use it to share my ideas, meet others, and network. I own the site you're reading now, which is built on open-source Ghost. I prefer to put more creativity into it and my other sites.

What Works For Earning Money on Medium?

Hey, if you want to earn $2-3 on Medium each month, you have to write there daily. After hardly using my Typeshare account this summer to give myself a writing break, I know that stopping that flywheel killed my Medium funds.

In my best month, January, I was doing Ship30 and had worked really hard on Medium since December 1 by writing long pieces.

When I abandoned daily writing on Typeshare—which I have set to post automatically to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium—my earnings fell.

I'll still use Typeshare to post to Medium, but I think the thrill is gone for the moment. I'd rather have my best, long-form pieces on my own sites.

Btw, you can get my Typeshare discount here.

Now For the Good Stuff: YouTube Shorts Have Helped Me Grow My Audience!

I am so glad I found YouTube #shorts!

Sure, my top short is a video of my cat. But I'm having fun. I'm not seeing the initial response I had in June when I started doing shorts. This makes me think that the organic reach we had 2 months ago has declined.

But this is still a great place to be, maybe even better for this creator than Instagram Reels and TikTok.

Let's zoom out.

For perspective, I only began teaching myself to edit video in Adobe Premiere back in January. I started creating not only audio versions of my podcast, but video versions. Then I got into making thumbnails... It's a process.

I had a handful of views by June with ~100 videos and only 20 subscribers.

You can see above I've seriously improved views, watch time, and subscribers. I also haven't posted a long-form video since June 11. It's my top long-form video now, but it's buried beneath the dozens of shorts I've made.

I know the content is great and the audio version of the podcast has gotten more plays than many previous episodes have! Watch the video 👇

Let's Look at TikTok: What's the Reach There?

First of all, TikTok won't let me go back 90 days, so we'll look at 60:

Let's Dig Into Instagram Analytics Now

Hold. The. Phone. I didn't expect numbers like this.

I post a mix of Reels, photos, and stories. (As you can see, one graphic I made auto-posted twice).

I wouldn't have guessed it had given me the most reach over the past 90 days! I hate Instagram and have for the past three years since they mistakenly memorialized my profile!

But what about video views?

Instagram is making me work for this in the app on my phone since I don't have this hooked up to an analytics tool. I added up the top 4 videos of the past 90 days and that totaled up to 27,937 views.

Y'all, the cats beat me again!

The moral of the story here is to get over yourself and post on the app you hate.

Kidding, or not kidding. But how will you know which works for you unless you try them all:

• Instagram Reels

• YouTube Shorts

• TikTok

I still think these are the three best places to be.

Make the video. Do what I do and just show up. Look however, wear no makeup, do your thing. Be yourself. The one thing I am hearing lately? Be authentic.

It's not so much about doing the top trend or playing today's top song on TikTok. Audiences are wanting people who show up as their authentic selves. I decided early on I'd be the "Talk to the camera" chick even if it wasn't "the cool thing" to do.

Keep doing you.