Your Writing Career Will Be Hell if You Focus on Metrics

It was for me.

“I want to reach 10,000 followers.”

That was always a personal goal of mine.

No matter which platform I was on—Medium, X, Instagram, LinkedIn—I wanted to reach that metric at all costs.

I would daydream in my college classes of one day reaching that goal. Back then, 10k followers meant you were the sh*t. It meant that people actually cared about what you had to say. It meant that a whole arena of people would hang on to your every word.

I craved that feeling.

So much so that I quit my writing career 3x and failed at other business ventures I had.

Let me explain.

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Numbers DO Matter

I don’t want this post to come off as if I’m someone holier than thou.

Numbers do matter in some way. Heck, how else can you track any progress without them?

I still look at my numbers from time to time. Plus, most writers I come across have 2 classic goals in common:

1. Get more engagement

2. Make more money

There’s nothing wrong with those goals at all. No one wants to be poor or feel as though their words don’t matter to the masses. Content creation is all the rage now—and it should be.

It’s hard as hell to find a job out there.

But there’s a balance that comes with everything.

Now, back to my story.

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Metrics Put Me Inside a Mental Prison

As I stated earlier, numbers made me quit my writing career 3x and other business ventures I started.

Why?

I started as a writer when I created my first WordPress blog in 2017. I saw no views, so I quit.

I created another WordPress blog in 2018. I saw no views, so I quit.

I started on Medium in 2019. I saw no views, so I quit.

I started a freelance writing business in 2019. I made no money, so I quit.

I started a digital marketing company in 2019. I made no money, so I quit.

I started an eBay reselling business in 2019. I made no money, so I quit.

Notice a pattern here?

I came back to Medium in 2020…

Something clicked.

The one time I decided to put my head down, focus on writing, not view my stats, and publish an article every single day for a year, I saw results.

https://medium.com/technical-excellence/i-wrote-on-medium-every-single-day-for-a-year-and-heres-everything-i-ve-learned-368edf009a62

I don’t know how else to explain it.

I focused so much on metrics my first couple of years as a writer that it put me in a mental hell. It made me crave validation to the point where even one person who viewed my work after it got published wasn’t enough.

I automatically quit as soon as my ego wasn’t stroked.

The lack of validation made me feel as if I did everything wrong.

I would get into a state of comparison syndrome where I’d see a few writers did well on Medium and get down on myself all of the time. I got depressed. I would always ask myself, “Why can’t I have that?”

It even got to the point where I felt like nothing would work for me.

I was a lost cause and no matter how hard I tried, I’d never get those 10k followers no matter how consistent I was.

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Metrics Made My Writing Worse

I would check my stats on Medium daily when I first started writing.

Heck, I tried growth hacking on X for a year.

I would spend hours studying viral posts, hoping to duplicate their success in a day.

Sometimes it worked. I reached a crazy hot streak on X for a couple of months.

Guess what those 1 million impressions amounted to?

1,000 email subscribers (on an old list I had) who didn’t care about me and $80.

That’s it.

“Congratulations! You asked for this”, is what I said once everything came to fruition.

I couldn’t believe I fought, clawed, and almost sold my soul for 1k unengaged email subscribers and $80. It didn’t feel real at the time. At that moment, I realized why everyone’s favorite TikTok influencer or YouTube creator is broke (unless you’re one of the Paul brothers or Mr. Beast).

We’re programmed to live in an attentive society, but attention doesn’t work anymore.

The internet has dispersed everyone into tiny communities that support each other no matter what. We’re no longer in the days of “controlled media” where everyone sees and buys the same thing that’s marketed to them on TV.

We all have different tastes and opinions we want to share.

I didn’t realize that then, so I copied, and copied, and copied other writers until my writing suffered. It lacked creativity and emotion. I lost my motivation to write.

I felt like I was on a never-ending hamster wheel of content creation.

It felt like a job—and that’s the worst thing.

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The Big Lesson in All of This: Focus on Quality & Consistency

Numbers are cool.

Take it from me, as someone who failed calculus.

But they aren’t the end-all-be-all of your writing career. I see sooo many writers have it twisted online and assume lucrative numbers will cement them as superstar writers.

That could happen to you.

And when it does, I’ll be the first one to congratulate you and say I was wrong.

But at the end of the day, I’m fine with my little community over here on Substack. I’ve tried the numbers thing so many times it made me puke. I’m done with that. It never worked for me.

I’m content with that.

You may think I’m settling, but I’m not.

I’m allowing the chips to fall where they may. All I can do is remain consistent and publish quality work. If I lose sight of the moment, I’ll never be proud of the journey I took on the way to my destination.

I want to look back on my writing career and see that I made a positive impact on someone’s life—not that I had 10k followers.

What’s there to follow if all that person cares about is numbers, anyway?

Seems like a hollow way to live.

I choose an engaged community of 10 people any day. Those are 10 people I can have a conversation with at a bar—not talk at in a big arena like I’m the president.

Anyway, I’ve rambled for too long, so let me leave this here.

Speaking of quality and consistency…

That’s exactly why I created the Consistent Writing Blueprint Program.

I wanted to create something that focused on quality and consistency—something that’s been missing since the inception of influencer culture.

Here’s more info. on it below: