2 Methods for Beginners to Increase Followers and Earnings on Medium

This step is crucial to grow your following and increase earnings on Medium

Let’s talk about publications on Medium as a strategy to increase your follower count, increase earnings, and increase the reach of your stories.

Publications on Medium are critical to helping you grow as an author. While anyone can self-publish, getting your story into a publication can make all the difference, especially when you’re starting out with very few followers.

There are typically two routes you can take when you want to submit to a Medium publication: Either you have a great draft already and you’re looking for the perfect home, or you have a dream publication in mind and want to get a story into that pub.

Let’s walk through both. If you prefer video, I also talk about this here:

Method 1: You’ve Written a Story and You’re Looking for a Publication

This is a great place to be because you already have a wonderful story written, and now you’re shopping around for a home. Here’s how you find that perfect publication.

Determine your topics

First, go to the Medium topics page. Analyze it: Which five topics most closely match your story?

Once you have those five in mind, click through to each one and scroll down. Which publications keep showing up?

Find active publications

This step is absolutely vital. It is a terrible idea to use Search to find your publication because Medium is full of old, dead pubs. They have hundreds of thousands of followers, but they haven’t published anything in years.

You don’t want to waste your time submitting to those publications. By going to the topics page, you ensure that the publication you’re submitting to has published stories in your topics recently.

Secondly, some publications seem to have a higher chance of curation than others. For example, if you go to the Relationships topic page, you’ll notice one pub comes up again and again. Getting your story into that publication increases your chances of being curated into that topic, and not only accessing the publication’s followers, but also the followers of the topic you’ve been curated into.

Next, check out your shortlist of pubs. Which publications have the most followers? Which stories tend to get lots of claps? Which publish most frequently?

You can see the number of followers by going to the publication’s “latest” page, simply by putting in the base URL and adding /latest:

At this point, you should have at least three publications that would not only be a great fit for your story, but that you also know are active and have a high engagement rate. I recommend having three: a “stretch,” a “fit,” and a “settle” publication, just like we’re applying to college again.

Medium etiquette is that you apply to only one publication at a time, so you want to check out the submission guidelines for each one in order of your preference.

Go through the submission process

There is a cheeky little shortcut I want to tell you about: Smedian.

Smedian is a collection of all the publications on Medium. Many of them have a sweet “Request to contribute” button, along with a bunch of other helpful stats.

Check out each of your three chosen publications. They might show up here, and if so, you should certainly request to contribute.

OK, now let’s talk about the proper process. You should do both if possible to maximize your chances.

Go to each of your three chosen publications. Do they have a submissions page? If they’re a bigger publication, they almost certainly will. If they’re on the smaller side, you may have to dig harder, or you may have to leave a comment on a story written by the publication editor to ask for permission to be added as a writer.

Things to watch out for:

• Does the publication prefer unpublished drafts?
• Does the publication want pitches?
• Will the publication accept published stories?
• Is there a form you need to fill out?

You can go ahead and request to contribute to all three on Smedian, but if the submission process involves a draft, you should only do one at a time so that you’re not breaking Medium etiquette of one pub at a time.

Method 2: You Have a Dream Publication Where You Want to Be Accepted

This is a bit later on in most of our writing journeys, but still a super-important milestone. This is when you have been seeing these amazing publications all over Medium, and you want to write a story that will be accepted by them. It’s exciting!

So if you’re looking to get into those bigger pubs, here’s the strategy you’ll want to take.

Select your publication

Here, you’re looking for a combination of two things: First, what topics are you interested in? This will ensure you write something that you're passionate about.

Do not write a story you don’t care about just to get into a big publication, because it won’t work. That kind of thing bleeds through your writing.

Second, what’s the biggest publication on Medium that has to do with that topic?

We’re aiming for the stars here.

The best way to determine this is to go to Medium.com/topic/[your topic] and see what story is “featured.”

This is your goal. This is the publication you want to get into. Another great place to look at goal publications is the Medium Editorial Group.

Scour the submission info

OK, next, you’re going to read the submission guidelines to the letter. And I mean to the letter.

Why is it so important? Because you’re facing a ton of competition here, so you have to do everything right. These publications aren’t trying to trick you, but they’re looking for anything that will make their jobs easier.

For example, did you submit a draft when they prefer pitches? Did you email them with the subject title they asked for? Did you fill in the form they requested?

Every step here matters. Don’t give them any excuse to discard your story before they even read it.

If you can’t find their submission guidelines on their page, Google is your friend. For example, Heated Editors don’t have a submission page, but if you google “Heated Medium submissions” you get some guidelines Mark Bittman tweeted.

Study the publication’s stories

Every publication has something they want in all their stories. They won’t come outright and tell you, though — it’s your job to figure it out.

Read at least five of the most recent stories in the publication. I say at least, because honestly, the more, the better. Study what they all have in common. Do they all use the “I” voice? What feeling are you left with after reading them? Are they more topical or evergreen?

This is going to help you craft a story to meet their guidelines and be more likely to be accepted.

The Final Step for Both Methods: Follow-Up

In both cases, follow up is crucial.

If the publication has clear guidelines on what to expect, you should respect those. For example, Better Marketing asks that if you don’t hear back in 72 hours, expect the story has been passed on.

However, for publications that don’t make it clear, the onus is on you to follow up. If there are no guidelines, I’d recommend checking in 48 hours after submission. You don’t want to wait around forever, after all.

If you don’t hear back at that point, you can wait and follow up another 48 hours later, or you can try your luck with another pub. The choice is yours.

Writing online is tough — it’s a vast void of empty space, where sometimes all you can do is launch your writing into it and simply hope for the best. Submitting to publications on Medium is one way to get more attention on your stories because you’re not catapulting them into the void. No, you’re giving them a perfect home with an already-interested audience.

Getting eyeballs on stories is one of the most rewarding things you can do to help motivate yourself to keep writing. I, personally, live for comments and highlights on my stories because it means I’ve written something that resonates. As a writer, that’s the best feeling you can ask for.

By submitting to publications through either of the methods above, you’re giving yourself and your story the best chance possible to be read.