The Future Of Digital Writing: Why 80,000 Followers On Medium Means Nothing

Nicolas Cole
6 min readSep 20, 2021
Nicolas Cole Twitter

Dear Writers on Medium,

Let me tell you a little story.

I started writing on Medium in 2018.

I’d heard about the site, but from 2014 to 2017 I was a obsessed with writing on Quora. Started near the end of 2014, 24 years old and fresh out of college, I challenged myself to write one Quora answer per day, every day, for a year straight to see what would happen. Best-case scenario, I thought, I’d launch my career as a writer (I had no idea how this would actually play out, but I figured something would happen). Worst-case scenario, I’d spend a year doing what I loved (writing), practicing my craft.

Win-win.

Well, about a month into my Daily Writing Habit challenge, I scored my first Quora answer with 10,000 views.

A month after that, I scored my next big hit—this time 100,000 views.

And then a month after that, I hit it big. One of my Quora answers landed on the front page of Reddit, accumulating 1,000,000 views in 48 hours. This Quora answer put me on the map, helped me launch my first eBook (I made $5,000 in a couple weeks), and wouldn’t you know it, “launched my career as a digital writer.”

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Nicolas Cole

100M+ Views | 5x Author | Co-founder of Ship 30 for 30 | Want to start writing online? Get the Ultimate Guide: https://startwritingonline.com