Reads Are Down For Me. What Are You Experiencing?

Online writing experience tells me not to be too concerned

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

I started a blog on WordPress in February 2017. I wrote every day on The Apples in My Orchard for five years. In 2022, I slowed down — posting only on Friday for Poetry Friday or occasionally for other topics. This was because we moved and I started writing on Medium more consistently. Currently, I have over 1,960 articles on The Apples in My Orchard and 662 on Medium.

Followers came and went on the WordPress blog, just as they do now on my Medium page. But to further complicate things, Medium has parameters that must be met for a read to count. As I understand it, a reader must stay on a page for at least 30 seconds to have it count as a read in your statistics.

Right now, readers must not be staying on my page. I have roughly the same number of views per month, but fewer reads.

To me this means I am not capturing my readers’ attention. It’s signaling me to write better, more engaging articles.

But life is busy. I published a book in April and have been marketing the book throughout May. Alison Acheson, who has no connection to the book or me, wrote a wonderful review. I am honored and grateful for her kind words about the book.

How the Way of Writing is a River and Poetry is the Water

We took a trip out west last week and I’ve been putting in a new garden bed. I have a list a mile long on possible topics for articles but my time for writing has been limited.

In reflecting on my pieces, they are more forced than usual and my readers can tell. I hope I’ll be able to rectify this in June. We are home for the summer, except for visiting my Dad in New York for a few days.

I want to get back to writing a compelling piece on the environment as I did in 2022 when I had almost 9K views and 4.5K reads. But, you know what? That article only earned me $4.55!