Inside Blogging Reached 500 Followers

And I’m proud of how it happened.

I started inside Blogging a couple of years ago. I felt the need to share authentic perspectives on blogging, renouncing to follow the inspirational trends or to provide the obvious how-to guides. There’s something about blogging that you don’t usually hear too much around. I wanted to give voice to the nonobvious side of blogging. Failure stories included. Issues included. Because we need inspiration, but we also need reality.

So, the publication collected posts very slowly, mainly from me, and a small group of outstanding Medium writers.

Not once I put followers, claps, links, or money above the content. The first and the last thought, with any article, has always been providing an interesting point, telling the truth, showing difficulties and failures along with successes.

We all know that 500 followers are not many. I didn’t accept posts from anyone, nor I could post daily. I’m selective. And I have a life. This is a side project.

But because of how inside Blogging arrived here, I’m proud of any follower gained in the process, post by post, clap by clap, comment by comment.

And most of all I’m proud of any single time that a reader got something out of the publication.

Of all the kind words received — for which I’m grateful — I’ll mention only a few appreciated words of review — from Casey Botticello on Medium Blogging Guide — just got exactly while the publication was crossing the 500 followers mark.

You may judge these reviews as common, and even tactical, but I’m happy that the author of the review chose exactly those words. Because I never wanted to stay in the mainstream. Bloggers need to know also the B side of their challenge.

And that’s how, slowly, inside Blogging got a reputation. Because you can have thousands of followers and subscribers, by daily publishing anything, but you can’t build a reputation if you don’t respect the time of your readers by being selective on what you propose to them.

These are the stats on Medium of one of the several evergreens published in inside Blogging (155 fans):

It’s a story of more than two years ago. And it continues to get attention, like several others.

This other one has much fewer fans, because traffic arrives from Google, but even much more views:

Not many publications with only 500 followers can show these results.

I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have published more. I wish I could have convinced more excellent authors to write for inside Blogging.

I wish I didn’t slow down in the last months.

But the publication is here, and slowly growing.

Today, an external “mirror” site is also there and a Facebook page too. Soon, I will also start informing you about my experience on Narrative — a content platform alternative to Medium.

This was not to brag. This was to tell you: know your goal. Unless the quantity game is exactly your game, don’t let it spoil the best that you want to share.

You’ll get slower results. But you’ll be proud of them, and you’ll be able to build on them.

Thank you all, even if you stepped by for a couple of articles. It’s been a pleasure to meet you.

All the best for your blogging venture.

If you want to contribute to inside Blogging, let me know at info@insideblogging.net.

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