10 Lessons From 100 Medium Curations

Across a nine-month journey with over 250 stories.

It all started off in July 2020, thanks to the pandemic, when I decided to write again. The last time I had written anything was about eight years ago back in college.

It has been a fun journey so far and I’ve managed to be consistent for a whole nine months with over 260 published stories — a combination of poems, articles across various topics and areas of interest.

While the thrill of people reading your work and the odd dollars you get to make in the process were always good incentives, the mysterious process of “curation” was probably the biggest deal. That stamp of approval we all sought — until curation changed to a “de-emphasized” version of itself — but never the less, in my mind, still remained important.

I’ve had 100 curations to date — exactly a 100, and my curation rate in the recent month has been about 90% — with only a handful of pieces that are not distributed. However, a lot of people across the board have seen this spike — so I know this isn’t that big of an achievement.

However, my process towards curation has always been intentional vs. accidental, and specifically realizing why I missed curation when I did, is probably the most interesting.

So, without further delay, let’s get to the meat — my top 10 observations from the curation process.

#1 — Curation gives your story longevity

Curation doesn’t always get you more views than you’d typically get — at least not since the distribution changes — your followers, the publication you publish in, and the topic and a variety of other topics play a part in that.

However, it almost always ensures your story gets a stream of views for a longer period of time. And even after it dies down there is a strong chance of a second wind — because it remains active in the “distribution” system of Medium.

#2 — You can only be curated in certain “Topics”

Medium has a list of topics that it curates stories under. Topics are different from tags — so if your story doesn’t fall under any of these “topics” naturally — it won’t be distributed. Because the distribution is done strictly on the basis of these topics.

These topics were disclosed in the earlier version of curation, but not lately, however, curation still happens in one of these topics. You can find the list here.

Here is an example of a story that I thought was a good one, but surely didn’t really fit ANY of the Medium topics — and hence didn’t get curated.

#3 — Niche publications + Curation = Bigger shot at success

When you get curated under a certain topic, you get an extra fillip if you also got published in a publication that is absolutely meant for the topic of your story.

Why? Because the readers on the publication, no matter how few, are following it for a certain set of topics. They’ll now see your story and will have a higher chance of actually clicking into it and reading it.

Remember money = member reading time. Views don’t pay, reads do — whether full reads or partial reads (that don’t count in reads) — and also only member reads. Non-member readership doesn’t pay — it does still make you popular though.

#4 — Your title is the single biggest factor in curation

Medium curators are a few dozen folks looking at thousands of stories all day, every day. Of course, there is an algorithm that does the first screening but there is also a human element. They don’t like “guessing” what your story is about.

They like clean, descriptive titles.

The reader should have a good sense of what they’re clicking into before they click into it — and the story should deliver on it.

No clickbait. No cute titles — or at least not over-cute.

#5 — Write for yourself, edit for the reader

Make your stories reader-friendly. There isn’t a ton of formatting options available on Medium — but there’s enough. Use titles, subtitles, images, headers, subheaders, bullets, section breaks.

They’re your friends.

Not many people come to Medium to read chunky paragraphs with no coherence or formatting. Write your heart out but edit at least to make your formatting reader-friendly. I am guilty of not really even reading my stories twice — but I do look at formatting issues before I hit publish.

#6 — Don’t let the reader “skim through”

What really matters in terms of read-times is how long a reader needs to go through your story. Are your stories easy to “skim through?”

Listicles are often popular, but they’re also the ones with the least read times. If you list down 10 bullets for me — I am more likely to read the header and move on to the next unless you have a very engaging writing style.

What gets a reader to really be engaged to read through?

An element of mystery — not necessarily thriller mystery — but the thought of “I can’t tell where the author is going with this.” That’s what you want to invoke.

Keep your reader guessing and hooked and delay the “meat” of the story till the latter part or at least have some sort of hook that will keep your reader until the very end.

#7 — Certain topics bring in dollars, others bring in fame

The highest-earning topics for me have always been the most niche. True crime is what earns me most of my dollars.

But Self, Parenting, Race, Equality, Money are the ones that bring me most fans.

Some topics make you popular, others make you rich. Sex is typically one that’s often more read too, but less “appreciated.” People don’t want the world to know they enjoyed a semi-erotic story — we claim to be all progressive but we still care about “what people think” of us.

#8 — Choosing the right tags helps

I try and “hint” to the curators the right topics they could distribute my story in — by adding tags that are the same as the curation topics.

Most often, I am also curated on one or more of those very topics. It just is an easy way to remind the curators that this is where the story should find its home.

#9 — Auto-curation exists but isn’t be-all and end-all

If you didn’t know yet, there are certain Medium-partner pubs that get to curate the stories the moment they publish them.

The Writing Cooperative, The Ascent, P.S. I Love You, are a few of them. I’ve published with all three of these — but they haven’t done anything magical for my views or reads. I’ve never made more with these stories than I have with some others.

It is a quick and sure-shot curation method — but doesn’t always do the wonders you expect it to do.

#10 — Big publications may not always be worth the wait

I’ve challenged myself to wait and go through the long processes of some of the most coveted publications. I’ve been published in The Startup or their rebranded Start It Up as well as publications that had 2 followers when I published with them.

There isn’t much of a “publication” impact on any of my stories to be frank. Publications are increasingly not a guarantee for more reading times or more views.

There are a ton more lessons I could have put together but I’ll leave you with 10. Because, and this is a bonus one — 4–7 minute reads do the best on Medium, and so I want to stick to that — coz hey, I want this story to do well too, even though it won’t be curated because it is about Medium. And meta doesn’t get curated — another tip! Adios!

P.S. If you want any further advice, hit me up via a comment or a private message to this note — and I’d be more than happy to help/advise on anything you would like to know about writing on Medium.

Here’s my top earner on Medium — in case you’re wondering.