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Learning First-Hand Why a Top Writer Would Quit
Why writers with tens of thousands of followers walk away
In 2020 when I began publishing on Medium I found a list of the 50 top writers from 2017. Besides the celebrities I only knew 3 of the names.
Who were these people with hundreds of thousands of followers I’ve never heard of? I found their profiles, but they hadn’t published regularly in years.
Why did they stop? They made it to the top. They had to be making good money. Why would someone with that many followers give up? It’s a question I wondered for years.
My name is never going to be on a list of the top 50 anything for Medium, but I know what happened to them.
It’s the same thing that’s happening to me right now. Things changed and they chose to leave.
The good ol’ days
My peak was the end of 2022 and start of 2023. After 2 years of struggling I’d finally figured it out. My writing schedule looked like this:
- Personal essay/memoir
- Movie list
- Medium meta/self fellating writer bullshit
- Pure humor
If I went through a rotation once a week, it was an easy thousand a month. When…
