50 Things I’ve Learned Publishing On Medium For 5 Years

This June marks 5 years on Medium

The first story I wrote on Medium was a story called “The Truth About Millennials.”

It was written on June 2, 2016, which means I’ve officially been publishing on Medium for over five years now.

I have 50 things to tell you about Medium. But first, why should you listen to me?

Simple. I started with 0 followers. Now I have over 55,000.

I’ve garnered somewhere near 4,000,000 views on Medium since five years ago, and I make anywhere from $2,000-$3,000 monthly with the Medium Partner Program.

I know this platform better than most simply because I’ve been here for longer than they have.

Here are some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned writing here over the past 5 years.

50 Things I’ve Learned Publishing On Medium For 5 Years

1. Medium will have ups and downs. In May of 2018 I had the lowest views of my writing career. I thought it was the end for Medium, but things rebounded. Things will rebound again.
2. Volume is your friend. Publish five times per week. Practice, practice, practice.
3. Write listicles like nobody’s business. Be clever. Audiences love listicles. If you want more views, then write more listicles.
4. Create A Google Doc with all your past Medium stories in there. Kind of like mine. I cut it off because I only wanted to give you an example. Create a massive Google Doc with all your stories, their categories, along with their publish dates. You won’t be disappointed by the data you uncover.
5. Medium is the best place to write on the internet. “Come get paid to write about whatever you want.” I wish Medium had their Partner Program back in 2016 when I got started here.
6. Stay away from Medium Writer Facebook Groups. Many are run by great people, but most of the contributor posts there are whine fests. Wah, wah, wah.
7. If you don’t already love writing, you won’t have much fun (or success) on Medium.
8. Watch what the best writers do and copy them.
9. Stay true to your personal story. Find ways to make that story relatable to others and you’ve struck gold.
10. Don’t write about stuff until you have skin in the game with it.
11. There’s a surprising amount of pyramid scheme con artists out there who write about writing that don’t have any fucking skin in the game. Their opinions are about as useful as poopy flavored lollipops. Don’t pay attention to writers who write about writing after only writing on Medium for 3 months.
12. Your favorite writers only care about their views.
13. What you write about is just as important as how well you write it.
14. Medium is the best lead generator for my business that I’ve ever found. Start an email list and begin collecting addresses.
15. If you find success here, people are going to copy you. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
16. Write about a different topic for every day of the week. Do that for three months. Make a table with your data and see what topics got the most views. Great, now write more about that, bruh.
17. Not getting views? It’s probably because your headline is hot garbage. Make me want to click!
18. Not getting views (part 2)? It’s probably because you’re not publishing in a publication. Go get into pubs!
19. Not getting views (part 3)? It’s probably because you’re writing about life lessons you learned while knitting. Nobody cares. Write in popular topics!
20. Not getting views (part 4)? And you’re whining about it? Go fucking quit. This is literally the best time in the history of the internet to become a blogger and you’re whining after 4 blog posts. There’s the door.
21. My best posts were written in a matter of hours, not days. When you write fast, it’s a clue you’re onto something.
22. One blog post of mine got half a million views. It took me 2 hours to write. Time spent on a blog post doesn’t always equate to quality.
23. Some of my worst blog posts got the most amount of views. Don’t spend too much attention trying to figure out why. Write, publish, move on.
24. Most of the questions I receive from writers are irrelevant. What’s most relevant is writing often and publishing often. Everything else is secondary.
25. Limit 3–4 prepositions per sentence. Thank me later.
26. Blogging is the best way to become a better person. Write your thoughts, publish, and get attacked for them by trolls on the internet. Sometimes the trolls are right.
27. Can’t finish a blog post? Save it as a draft and come back to it a month later.
28. Read books voraciously. One book can give you dozens of writing ideas.
29. Look for writing ideas everywhere. In that conversation with your parents, while you’re stuck in traffic, when your 5-year-old fails miserably in their first soccer game. There’s fodder for content everywhere when you know where to look.
30. If you’re mad about something in your life, go to the keyboard and start writing about it. Some of my best posts were written while I was angry.
31. Scared people you know will read your writing? People don’t care as much as you think they do. My family has probably read 1% of the blog posts I’ve ever written.
32. Have a question about writing? Go ask Google. Seriously, I don’t have time to answer a question about “What is the Medium Partner Program.” You don’t think there’s a good answer about that online somewhere? Have some initiative and go find the answer online. If you can’t, then feel free to email me.
33. Writing is not easy. You won’t want to write every day. The best writers are the most disciplined, though, and they find a way to get going in their darkest days.
34. You’re competing with the internet for people’s attention. Dog memes and cat videos and Reddit. Make sure your post is dripping with reasons for people to pay attention.
35. Stop looking at your stats. Just keep publishing. The only variable that matters is to keep publishing.
36. Format your post correctly, please. I have a long post about it that might help you out. Use images sourced from Pexels, use subtitles, use pull quotes, and try to make your blog post look somewhat clean and respectable.
37. You’re going to get rejected. Deal with it.
38. Just because nobody read your article doesn’t mean it’s not good.
39. Write your blog post today. Go back and edit it tomorrow.
40. Medium is smaller than you realize. It’s pretty easy to get into the top 1,000 writers here.
41. At the end of the day, Medium always ends up making decisions that help their indie writers. Whether it’s the Medium Partner Program itself, or the recent bonuses. They need to keep us happy to maintain a thriving platform.
42. Did your post bomb? Fine. Write another one and publish it tomorrow.
43. Consistency is the most valuable trait on Medium.
44. On the other hand, if you need a mental health day, feel free to skip writing. It’s okay to take a break every now and then.
45. Spend 60 minutes per week analyzing your blog posts, seeing what went well and what didn’t go well.
46. Many writers don’t know how to be business owners. That requires a separate set of skills. Remember that.
47. With blogging, you need to wear dozens of different hats. Social media manager, graphic designer, community moderator, researcher, etc.
48. Cold email 100 of your favorite bloggers every few months. This might be the highest — ROI thing you can do in your blogging career.
49. Write about things you’ve never read before.
50. Tell perfectionism to fuck off.

Get my free 5-day Medium writing course right here. It’ll teach you how to write five posts per week and become a top writer on Medium. :)