Summary

A software engineer shares five writing principles that helped them achieve a $100 earning milestone on Medium, emphasizing the importance of quality content, readability, humor, audience engagement, and consistent writing practice.

Abstract

The author, a software engineer who writes on Medium, has reached a significant milestone by earning $100 for the first time. This achievement is celebrated as a success in their writing career, which has been informed by reading numerous posts about writing on the platform. To give back to the community, the author distills their experience into five key principles. Firstly, they stress that "Content is King," advocating for valuable, informative, and engaging articles over clickbait and advertisement-filled pieces. The second principle emphasizes simplicity and readability, suggesting that complex ideas should be conveyed with clarity and supported by visual aids like images and diagrams. The third principle encourages writers not to take themselves too seriously, making room for humor and personality in their writing. Recognizing the importance of every reader, the fourth principle advises engaging with the audience by reading and replying to comments. Lastly, the author highlights the significance of persistence, noting that top writers consistently produce content, which is essential for improving writing skills. The article concludes with the author's reflection on their journey and an open invitation for readers to follow their work.

Opinions

The author believes that good content is self-evident and that marketing strategies cannot save poor content.
They value the readability of articles, suggesting that complex concepts should be explained simply, and visual aids should be used to enhance understanding.
Humor and personality are seen as important elements that make reading enjoyable and distinguish Medium posts from academic papers.
Every reader's feedback is considered valuable for learning and improving future writing.
The author emphasizes the importance of regular writing and publishing as a path to becoming a better writer, drawing inspiration from the habits of top Medium writers and the advice of famous novelist Ni Kuang.
The author expresses gratitude to the Medium community and is open to continuous learning and improvement in writing.

5 Writing Principles That Help Me Enter the $100 Club on Medium

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This month is a milestone for my writing career on Medium. I hit the $100 earning goal first time. 🎉🎉🎉

It’s not too much for many top writers, but it makes sense for me since I’m a software engineer rather than a professional writer. I read many posts about writing on Medium and learned a lot during these months. Now, it’s time to return the favour to this amazing community. In this post, I will summarise my experience of success and failure into five principles to share with everyone who likes writing.

Principle 1: Content is King

There are too much useless and boring contents on the Internet. I usually open a post having a very attractive title but containing garbage content and trash advertisements filling my screen.

That’s why the Medium becomes one of the most valuable online platforms. I read lots of helpful and informative articles and learned so much from here. As the saying goes, good wine needs no bush. Good content speaks for itself.

Therefore, every time if I would like to write something, I will make sure it is really worth to write, truly useful to others and undoubtedly no boring ads. Writing rubbish content is not only wasting myself’s time, but also wasting all the readers time.

This is the primary writing principle for myself. Content is king! Great writers always concentrate on writing great contents. Some beginners usually care about SEO or other tricks to market their articles. There’s nothing wrong about that but we should always remember:

“Marketing strategies can make good content more popular, but cannot rescue bad content.” — Yang Zhou

Principle 2: Keep It Simple and Readable

Good content should be at the heart of writing principles, but we should care about the readability as well. Nobody likes reading a post full of long sentences, incomprehensible jargon or even complex mathematics formulas. A great writer can explain a complicated concept by simple and readable words.

A picture says more than a thousand words and an example is better than a thousand explanations. If I want to explain a process, a flowchart must be there. If I want to demonstrate relationships of some things, a relationship graph will be drew. If I want to describe a programming technique, a code example is never absent.

Principle 3: Don’t Be Too Serious

The Medium is not the right place to read or write academic papers. We like enjoyable and interesting posts here rather than tiring papers. Although I wrote many technical posts, a little humour usually appears.

“It’s crucial in this job not to take yourself too seriously and people appreciate it when they see a bit of humour and personality shining through.” — Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group

In my opinion, a good writer makes readers enjoy his or her articles rather than just read them.

Principle 4: Every Reader Matters

“Amazing things will happen when you listen to the consumer.” — Jonathan Midenhall, CMO of Airbnb

I respect everyone who followed me or responded to my posts. I will always try my best to read and reply to every comment from readers. Every reader matters. Reading the comments is the best opportunity to learn something new and think about how to improve my posts.

Principle 5: Keep Writing

Practice makes perfect. I followed many top writers in Medium and found they have one thing in common:

They keep writing and publish articles frequently.

Every time when I wrote a new article, I improved my writing skills a little bit. It’s impossible that a person can become a great writer only by reading without writing articles by himself.

Ni Kuang, who is a famous Hong Kong novelist, was once asked what advice he had for young writers. He said:

To Write. It makes no sense to want to write.

This simple answer is so powerful. The road to the top writer is made by writing day after day.

Conclusion

Since I joined the Medium, I learned and improved so much. But this is just the beginning, not the end at all. Writing is a whole life journey. My mind keeps open and my thoughts never stop.

Thanks for reading, if you like my article, please follow me to read more good posts about technology, investment, writing and others.