3 Reasons Not to Get Sucked Into Demotivating Articles About Medium

Don’t believe all the anti-hype you read.

If you’re a new(ish) writer on Medium, chances are you devour Medium-related articles. You want to know all the tips and tricks for helping your articles get reads and earn money. You may be here because you heard Medium is the place to be for aspiring writers. Whatever the reason, you read everything you can find from anyone who has more followers than you.

Don’t worry, I do the same thing.

There’s a whole category of meta articles floating around about how to succeed on Medium. They mostly fall into one of two subcategories:

1. How I made X dollars last month on Medium (motivating articles)
2. Here are all the things wrong with Medium and why you can’t be successful anymore (demotivating articles)

Both these types of articles can rack up views, especially if they’re written by successful writers. The latter category — demotivation — has grown in popularity over the past year and often comes from a place of frustration. I read a recent article by Tim Denning about demotivational writing, and I thought it applied to writing articles about Medium too.

Let’s get something straight right off, writing on Medium is not easy. That’s why these demotivating articles about Medium are so popular. Misery loves company. Don’t believe the anti-hype.

Here are 3 reasons writers shouldn’t fall for demotivating articles about Medium.

Medium is not your platform

Just because you pay a subscription every year doesn’t mean you own Medium. If you want to write here, do yourself a favor and remember that.

This is a wonderful — and imperfect — platform. Like any social platform, Medium runs on an algorithm. An algorithm is like a teenager in puberty, you have to feed it or it doesn’t pay attention to you.

Yes, there are stories of writers who write one or two stories a week and do really well. What you may not know is most of those writers have been writing here for years. Can you still use that strategy and still find success? I don’t know. It depends on your definition of success, I guess.

When it comes to how Medium makes decisions that affect your writing remember, we’re all playing on their field.

Medium doesn’t let writers make the decisions about how it works. If you want to write here, the best thing you can do is learn the rules of the platform and abide by them. And yes, you can be yourself and still write in a way that gets attention.

Many people who write demotivating articles about Medium don’t study the platform in-depth enough to know what works and how they can contribute to it. The key is becoming a student of the platform.

Change is constant everywhere including online

I’m not sure why we’re caught off guard when Medium makes changes. As the old saying goes, change is the only thing that always stays the same.

I’ve written on Medium for a year, and since I started it has changed and changed again. For a few months, everyone complained about low views and reads. Then last month, everything started to trend upward again for regular writers. It can be a roller coaster of change. Then again, what in life isn’t a roller coaster?

My best guess is that within six months, things on Medium will move forward, backward, and sideways again. But such is life. Things are always changing and you have to either learn how to adapt or fall behind.

The good news is if you’re a relatively new writer, big changes on Medium won’t affect you that much. So if you want to write here, make your peace with change.

The miracle of one

Try this little experiment and let me know how it works for you.

Start a blog with any platform (WordPress, Squarespace, Weebly, etc.). Throw up a few blogs and do absolutely no SEO, email marketing, or social media. Here’s your goal: get one view of your content.

It’s nearly impossible to drive traffic to your content by yourself. With Medium, you can get thousands of views because of the miracle of a built-in audience. While skills like SEO and email can help you, there’s enough horsepower behind the website to help you gain momentum without doing those things.

I’ll say it again for everyone in the back: writing on Medium is not easy. It takes time, effort, and determination. But where else online can you have people areas your words and get paid for it?

My point is, one view is a miracle. I have to work to maintain this mindset. But remembering it makes me like a kid in a candy shop. It will also save your sanity when things aren’t going well.

Final thoughts

In the end, it isn’t worth it to get sucked into the demotivating stories about writing on Medium. Why?

1. You don’t own this platform so you have no control over how it works.
2. Change is constant so if you don’t like something it will probably change sooner or later.
3. It is a miracle you can get one view of your content.

Writing on Medium is hard, and it takes determination and flexibility. I don’t foresee that changing. It can be frustrating at times, and I’m not pretending that one day I won’t go on a rant about writing here. But just know I believe this is a special place for readers and writers.

Don’t believe everything you read online. Sometimes it’s true for a week, and sometimes it’s true for longer. Most of the demotivating articles out there come from a place of frustration or despair. But my best advice to someone who is wondering if they should give this Medium writing thing a go is to jump in and see what happens.