I reached 100 followers without “Follow for Follow”, how long does it take?
For those who don’t know, Medium partnership is a program that enables writers on Medium to earn for their writing. It requires a minimum of 100 followers to apply and to gain 100 followers quickly, a lot of people use the ‘Follow for Follow’ tactic.
‘Follow for follow’ (F4F) means that you follow another person and the other person will follow you back. This tactic is usually used by creating an article about F4F, and then telling the reader to follow the writer and the writer will follow the reader back.
Or, you can search for an article about F4F, then comment in that article that you need followers and you will follow anyone that follows you back.
One source said that the success rate of this tactic is around 30%. This means that if you follow 10 people in such posts, then you’ll get about 3 followers. Therefore, you only need to follow 330~ish people to get 100 followers. Voila!
At first, I was tempted to follow this tactic. Getting into Medium’s partnership program was one of my motivations. But I didn’t do it because I know that I won’t feel the same satisfaction as when I gain followers naturally. I also want to train myself to become process-oriented, rather than goal-oriented.
So, without further ado, this is how long it took for me to gain 100 followers:
4 months — or around 110 days
That’s a long time. Compare that to the dozens of articles saying that they gained 100 followers in a few weeks, or even days.
Yet, I’m still grateful because, during this period, I’ve written 28 articles, I’ve improved a lot in my writing, I’ve created a good writing habit, and I’ve gained a lot of knowledge while researching topics for my articles.
If you’re someone who’s trying to gain followers naturally, I hope this article can inspire you to continue. But if you’re someone who’s using the F4F tactic, all the power to you! This article does not mean to discourage — or even belittle anyone who uses the F4F tactic. Whichever path you choose, the most important thing is to write.
I’d like to thank anyone who follows me because this wouldn’t happen if you didn’t follow me after all. And even though I can’t enroll in the partnership program due to geographical restrictions (I’m Indonesian and currently isn’t supported in the program), I’ll still write in Medium and my content will still consist of programming and book reviews.
Ciao!
