Chapter 1: Overview of Medium Statistics

Each week, I receive an email from Medium summarizing my statistics for the prior week. For instance, the email's subject might read "Stats for your stories: Feb 18-Feb 25." Within, Medium provides insights into how many views and reads I garnered, highlighting only my top-performing stories.

Given my limited output and smaller audience, my weekly statistics tend to be modest. I typically skim through this information before saving it for future reference. However, I recently decided to dive deeper and analyze my statistical emails from the past three months. Below is a table illustrating the results, including views, reads, and the calculated read ratio for each week. Additionally, I sought to understand the impact of new articles on my overall metrics.

Table compiled by the author

As shown, I accumulated a total of 1,056 views and 634 reads over the twelve-week period, resulting in a read ratio of 60%. Weekly views fluctuated between 47 and 130.

The impact of new publications is particularly noteworthy. For example, an article published on December 7, 2021, significantly influenced my statistics, while another released on January 30, 2022, had minimal effect. Conversely, two pieces published in early February positively affected my view count.

In addition to tracking views and reads, I was curious about the popularity of individual articles. Thus, I created another table to outline the articles mentioned in the respective emails.

Table compiled by the author

Among the articles I published in the last three months, "Is Rammstein a right-wing band? No, here is the proof" stood out as the most viewed, racking up 274 views since its posting on November 15, 2021. Another article, "Neo Rauch — the silent storyteller," which I published over a year ago on January 7, 2021, still manages to attract readers.

I also released "The hidden life of the German super-rich" on October 24, 2021. The articles "259 mph on the Autobahn" and "Update on the largest darknet trial," both published in early February, drew some attention as seen in the earlier table. However, my piece "My experiences as an exchange student at UCLA," released in February 2022, attracted only a handful of readers, likely due to its placement in a smaller publication.

After creating the aforementioned tables, I was intrigued by the absence of my most successful article in terms of views and reads from the weekly statistics provided by Medium. My piece titled "Why Charlie Harper drank Radeberger Pilsner," published in November 2020, has amassed over 1,800 views, with 99% stemming from Google searches. It consistently ranks highly for those curious about Charlie Harper's beer choice.

Upon examining the statistics for this article, I found that it received 49 views from February 5 to February 11 and 37 views from February 12 to February 18. Interestingly, no other articles in the table had such view counts in those weeks. Yet, this article did not appear in the Medium email summaries.

Conclusion

This marks my first thorough examination of the weekly statistics, leading to some compelling findings. However, I remain puzzled as to why my most popular article fails to show up in these reports. If anyone has insights on this matter, I would greatly appreciate your input.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

The first video titled "Medium Stats for Beginners (complete breakdown)" provides a comprehensive overview of how to interpret Medium statistics, making it an excellent resource for those looking to understand their performance better.

The second video, "How much money can you make writing online on Medium? STATS ANALYSIS," delves into the financial aspects of writing on Medium and analyzes various statistics, providing valuable insights for aspiring writers.