My Medium Publication, The Taoist Online, Reaches 10k Followers
My Medium Publication, The Taoist Online, Reaches 10k Followers
And enters Medium’s top 200 largest active publications!
I wanted to take a moment to recognize and celebrate an outstanding achievement that wouldn’t have been possible without several people’s support. Today, Sunday, August 18th, I received a notification that The Taoist Online, my original Medium.com publication, had reached 10,000 Medium followers!
When I started the publication, I thought it would be a one-man pub. In other words, I created the pub because I had mistakenly read that a publication helped you reach more readers. Unable to find any Taoist-specific pubs, I made TTO in early 2023. Initially, I created the publication name for my old Mastodon account and brought it to Medium, hoping it would reach more people.
I can’t even begin to thank all of the editors, writers, friends, family, and community members who have turned one person’s idea into a massive community for readers and writers to share their personal thoughts, beliefs, and philosophies no matter where they came from or how they started.
Here are just a few. I link to their Substack if I could find them.
nathanlovestrees, Nanie Hurley 🌿, The Sturg (Gerald Sturgill), Aniyah, Debra G. Harman, MEd., Robin Wilding , Simon Kupfer, Ahmadou DIALLO ✪, Amanda Weir-Gertzog, James Garside, Elle Becker, Golden, Flipboard, Oscar Soto ⚡and so many MANY more!
Each of the people or companies above had a huge part to play in the success of this publication and in my personal journey as a writer. So, to all of those names listed, THANK YOU!
Top 200 by Size
Ten thousand followers places The Taoist Online inside the Largest 200 Publications on Medium according to www.topmediumpublications.com (although we aren’t listed for some reason, and I’ve emailed them about it).
I found an old article by Robin Wilding 💎from April 2023, in which she created a massive list of Medium publications, including a general follower count for each pub.
The Big List of Medium Publications 2023
You’ll have to scroll pretty far down in the article to find us, but we are listed as “under 500” followers.
This means we’ve grown 1,900% in a short 16 months!
Ever since I began to let writers join, I’ve always stayed true to my original idea: The Taoist Online is for everyone to share their personal beliefs, thoughts, philosophies, and religions with the world. It’s impossible for people to separate their identities from their beliefs 100% of the time, and it’s healthy to have a space where you can disagree and be open. It can be scary, and sometimes, my feelings are hurt by reading responses to my writing. But if we don’t hear or at least read each other’s work, then we can’t grow.
Like the crooked tree that grew to reach the sunlight, we grow in the spiritual darkness. Only when we push forward and continue to overcome can we reach the light we so desperately need.
What’s next?
I’m not sure. I’ve created a podcast and book, hosted weekly live streams, written newsletters, created a Discord and secondary website where we paid authors more (now shut down), and even held writing contests! Some of those have been successful, while others have not and caused me to burn out.
So, what do YOU want TTO to do? Is there something we have never done before that you’d like to do with us or see us do? Do you have any crazy ideas? Let me know in the comments!
Do you want to write for us? Email patrick@thetaoistonline.org!