4 Months on Medium — 9 Valuable Lessons
Sharing my experience and the lessons I learned
At the beginning of the year, I decided to start my journey as a content creator. I knew I wanted to create more and consume less. I wanted to be more mindful about how I spend my time. And I had a lot I wanted to share.
I was always fascinated by the thought of writing and when I discovered Medium I decided to give it a shot. And for me, an introverted and privacy-loving person this was the way to go. Starting with writing also seemed easier than jumping straight into hosting a podcast or starting a Youtube channel.
Today I will share what I have learned along the way, and what might also be useful for you if you are striving to become a creator.
I have turned this video into a YouTube video, as a part of my popular side hustles from scratch series.
1. Just Do It
Doing something vs doing nothing increases your chances of success by 100%. But it is scary because it also increases the chances of failure. But the only true recipe for success lies in trying, failing, learning, persisting, and trying again.
And you know what. No successful person started from the top. They all went through failures and embarrassments. And came out of those better and stronger. And so will you. So, stop waiting. Start doing. Perfection is a myth. And you got this!
2. It Get’s Easier
The sweet magic of creating content is, that once you create something it lasts a lifetime. (or until you delete it) The more you write, the more likely someone will notice you. You leave a trail of your work behind. And it stays there forever.
Better yet leave references to your own work. But shout out the work of others too, they might return the favor or just enjoy what you do and become your readers.
And yeah, you get better with time. You develop habits and acquire new skills. Success comes over time.
3. Medium Has High Domain Authority
One of the great things about Medium is that it has high domain authority. Meaning search engines like Google are likely to put Medium articles on the first pages of search results.
Especially if the topics you write about aren’t saturated. And if you manage to get your story in the top results of Google, external traffic will come. Which is a great way to acquire new readers or even referrals.
I wrote a story about Brave browser, and it got in the top results of Google search. And it felt exciting seeing traffic from these external sources.
I felt even happier about the success of this story when the official Twitter account of Brave shared it in a tweet.
Small victories like my stories getting noticed keep me going and make me believe that all of the work is worth it.
4. Don’t Focus on Followers
One of the milestones of writing on Medium is getting accepted into the partner program. And for that, you will need to have at least 100 followers. But other than that there is really no point in trying to increase the follower count. It’s a waste of your time.
People who follow you because you followed them are only doing it to increase their own follower count. And they won’t read your work. What you need are dedicated readers who care about your writing. It’s better to focus on improving the quality of your writing than to chase empty numbers.
If you are going to do follow-for-follow anyway at least focus on the right people. Paying Medium members. The ones with a green circle around their profile picture.
5. Interesting Stories Do Well
Why would somebody read something that you put together just for the sake of it? Would you spend your precious time reading something like that yourself? Then why would someone else do it?
Write about topics you yourself find interesting. Dig deeper. And you will be rewarded. One of my most-read stories is the one I had the most fun writing. It was something out of the ordinary for me. It was a sort of an experiment and I was curious about the results. And so were others. Here’s that story:
6. Momentum Matters
Once your stories begin gaining some traction, don’t stop. Keep doing what you are doing, it’s working. Once some of my better stories began getting noticed, other stories suddenly began getting views. Even the ones that were hardly being read before.
But then I stopped posting. Not because I didn’t want to write. But because I was traveling and all I had on me was my phone. And unfortunately, we can’t edit or even publish stories using our phones anymore. Why Medium?
After not publishing new stories for 2 weeks the momentum I had gained slowly died down. And I had to slowly build it back up.
7. There Are A Lot of Free Tools Out There — Use Them.
Work smarter not harder. Use the tools that make it easier for you. There are countless articles on free or cheap tools that will help with your writing. Find what works for you.
Out of the top of my head here are some must-haves I myself use very often.
- Grammarly — the free chrome extension, to avoid silly grammar mistakes.
- CapitalizeMyTitle — to keep my titles pleasing to the eye.
- Pexels — To find great stock photos for my stories
- Fractions — A great extension to follow my progress on Medium and see the earnings in a visually pleasing way.
And these days there are even some AI-powered writing assistants, that work exceptionally well. Jasper is the one I have heard the most about. I haven’t tried it out yet. But my curiosity is growing.
8. Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
Although Medium is great, don't depend on this platform alone. Have a backup plan in case something changes in the partner program, and Medium starts losing members. Or your account gets suspended for some reason. Be sure you are not left empty-handed.
Focus on building your mailing list. Medium has a built-in function for acquiring e-mail subscribers. And this mailing list is truly yours. You can use it to let dedicated readers know where to find you if something goes wrong with Medium.
Try other platforms. Because why not? If you already have content to share, you got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Here are some I’ve tried or have heard about.
9. Keep Learning
There are a lot of writers. Passionate, dedicated, and hard-working. You need to keep your game up. You need to stay curious and constantly learn, to grow and become better. Keep learning and keep going. And you will emerge at the top one day.
At least that’s what I am hoping for. But I will for sure keep learning, and keep writing to find out. And share my experience along the way.
Best of luck to all of you who strive to create.
If you found this useful, you might want to check out more stories from the list below:
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