Your Views Are About to Drop
By: Fatim Hemraj
Tags: Ｍedium, Writers On Medium, Holidays, Christmas, Writing

If you’re at all like me, you constantly obsess over your stats. It’s the last thing you do before bed and the first thing you do in the morning. My partner is constantly in my ear, “Seriously? You’re looking at your stats again?”

“Yeah, that’s right buddy. Ain’t no shame in my game.” I said as I shooed him away.

I’m not anti-stats so I’m not going to sit here and tell you to stop checking your stats, because A) I’m no hypocrite and B) stats can teach you a lot when used correctly.

During my time on Medium, I’ve made it a priority to pay attention to patterns and I’ve been enjoying sharing them with other writers.

For example, in this piece, I write about how I noticed my views are higher on days where I don’t post and that in general, my posts do better when I give them time to breathe. I don’t agree with the writers who say you need to publish every day to be successful.

Not only is it not realistic for many of us but in my experience, it’s also just not true.

In this piece, I talked about how you don’t need to adhere to the unspoken ‘rules’ of Medium. You don’t need to use headline analyzers, agree to everything an editor says or choose only one niche to be successful. I know because I’m the living, breathing proof.

I write true crime, history, crappy ‘poems’ and random things I just feel like sharing, and I do alright on Medium.

Today, I’m here to share another pattern I’ve noticed.

Your views are about to drop dramatically but you shouldn’t panic. Why? Because the holidays are soon upon us.

Since September, I have had anywhere between 1,500 to 2,000 views daily, on a consistent basis, even when I didn’t post for days. Some days, I get lucky and manage to hit 3k.

On November 11, I noticed my views DROPPED big time. Barely anyone was reading my work. No highlights, no claps, no comments, no new followers.

On November 8th and 9th, I had 3,552 and 3,480 views, respectively. On November 11 and the following weekend, my views ranged from 1,115 to 1,300 views.

That is a substantial drop in views, it’s more than cut in half.

And, like the drop in views, my heart dropped, too.

However, by the end of the weekend, I noticed my views went right back up, ranging from 1,700 to 2,000.

I racked my brain all week trying to figure out what changed, what I had done wrong, and suddenly, it hit me.

It was Remembrance Day on November 11.

I said to myself, “Not everyone is racing to the computer to read your stories Fatim, people have lives.”

When you begin to spiral and panic about low views, it’s important to remember people have their own lives outside of Medium.

I may not be an American myself, but today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States, and guess what? My views are down.

This got me thinking that views are likely to go down during the holidays too.

Yes, it’s ‘Corona Times’, but that shouldn’t stop people from (safely) celebrating the holidays. You can still enjoy a delicious turkey dinner with your family, (it might have to be on Zoom but at least you have them to celebrate with), you can still decorate a Christmas tree, you can still bake Christmas cookies, make ‘special’ eggnog, perfect your peppermint hot chocolate recipe (I finally got it right!), and more.

For your own sake (and probably for the sake of your loved ones too), don’t spend the Christmas holidays panicking over your views.

Enjoy the holidays (at least what you still can during the pandemic.)