6 Medium Myths to Abolish for Success

The lies you’ve been told are holding you back from achieving what you and I both know you can.

What Makes Medium Work?

I will not sell you a bunch of used goods or puff up my chest and say that I’m an expert. That’s not who I am. I’m someone who works, studies, and experiments and can make extraordinary advancements because of that work.

One of those being becoming successful on this site in a brief span of time. I didn’t think that was such a big deal, but recently, I’ve been writing, what I call, discussion posts on Medium similar to the type you’d see on Facebook. In these posts, I understand many people are woefully misinformed and unaware of what makes Medium work.

I get it.

When I first came to this site about 5 months back, I was pulled aside by lots of successful writers on here like Sean Kernan and given the skinny on what works and what is a waste of time. I wasn’t a newbie to writing and have had a Medium account for over a year, never really writing or publishing on the platform just observing, learning.

The writers who approached me had no idea my background, and I believe, saw me as an amateur they needed to set straight for bringing up such terrible terms like ‘reader engagement’, ‘community’, and ‘support’.

So when these writers who have been writing and publishing on the platform for years and have garnered a very high following told me “the secrets to how Medium works”, I honestly laughed. What they said, went against everything that I had learned.

Instead of heeding their words, I struck out at my own path based on what I’ve seen work for the average writer and not the whale writers who have such an amassing of followers, their writing has a higher chance of going viral/trending/being featured, fanned over, and seen as the golden ticket. I’m a nobody here and yet, I work less hard and make more on this site than most.

I’ll share with you some of the advice that I was given by big names and that I’ve seen floating around in the company of the frustrated Medium writer. Along with these myths, I give some action steps to help if you’re interested in trying something new or different.

6 Medium Myths to Banish for Success

There’s more floating out there, but these are the top ones I’ve picked up on. If you have one you’d like to share, drop it in the comments! I’m sure other writers would love to learn from what you’ve discovered. It’s how we grow and form community together.

I also want to preface before going into this that I am using the term success to mean whatever you define as success. What are your intentions on Medium? Why do you write and share here? Whatever your intent is behind why you come to this site to write and publish is your map to success, your unspoken definition.

Remember: success has nothing to do with a monetary value unless YOU say so.

Consistent publishing is rewarded

This one breaks my heart because I see lots of really good writers out there churning out a story once a week or every few days, maybe even once a month. Yet, they get little to no traction or attention, though they have read countless stories of writers telling them that if they keep publishing consistently on Medium, they’ll score big, etc., etc.

Medium doesn’t care if you publish consistently for X amount of years. What Medium wants is fast, content mill style publishing. I’m talking about publishing 2–5 articles per day every day or a majority of the week until you have well over 100 articles in circulation.

This is how consistency is rewarded.

Don’t fret, though!

You don’t have to start writing this way to achieve success on Medium. In fact, if you have somehow stumbled upon this article and have never published on the platform, instead of racing to hit send, spend a few months writing and gathering stories so that you can publish at a high rate on this platform without burning out or feeling that pressure of go-go-go.

Action Plan: Focus on writing powerful, longer stories in smaller niches targeting a specific reader sect. Use SEO best practices to the MAX. I mean doing as much keyword research as you’re doing on the actual content. Spend less time trying to catch up to the fast writers and more time honing what it is you do best.

Nicheless writing pays the big bucks

There are several writers out there who proclaim writing whatever you want on a whim is how you break into earning money and gaining a large, loyal following. There are tons of articles on it and even more bios written to the tune of it.

But I’m sure, like me, you’ve noticed that these writers are actually writing within multiple niches, blending their niches to cast a wider net. Like the writer who writes self-help articles, personal essays, and writing tutorials. They may seem nicheless, but they are writing in a wider niche surrounding personal development.

Same goes for the person writing humor, history, and business. Read through these authors' works, and you’ll find that they often use all of their none niche writing expertise across their entire catalog. Or you’ll see that a certain topic outweighs all others.

Niches are how your readers understand who you are.

It helps them determine if you’re right for them. But that’s only a small portion of the power of niche writing. When you write enough articles in particular subjects, you begin to have name recognition, clout, and, if you’re knowledgeable, you’ll position yourself as an expert in the field.

Action Plan: To write nicheless or at least appear to, pick 3–7 subjects or topics that you are very passionate about and begin to blend them together to inform your work and voice. What you’ll want to focus on is your personal writing style.

There’s no system or sense to Medium

This is the biggest one I hear. It’s said so much that many writers never think strategically about how they operate on the site. There’s no point in their mind. Just keep writing, and at some point, hopefully, success will find them.

Medium’s system is so easy to game, people have created courses and classes for hundreds of dollars or even free just to show you the simple secrets. People have also written extensively about how to get curated, how to hit viral status, which programs to use to take a peek behind Medium’s curtain, and more.

Even Medium offers guides, publications, and their workers as resources on the platform to help people get a handle on it. It actually surprises me how many writers don’t follow Ev or any of the other Medium writers, editors, and creators. They are the place to go if you want to get noticed, find out what’s going on at Medium, and learn the ins and outs of the system.

Action Plan: Follow Ev Williams, Medium Creators, Medium Creators Hub, read through the Medium guides for writers, and consume the top stories in your niche searching for similarities. Don’t just follow these people and publications and leave them dormant, get into a habit of studying the content published by these people and publications.

Medium is a professional writing site

Somewhere along the way of Medium’s creation it became known as a professional site. Writers believe that pitching an article on the platform is the same as doing it in the real world. They think behaving, writing, and coming up with ideas are the same. In certain situations, there are similarities, but more than anything there are glaring differences between the real writing world off of the platform and the one encased in it.

That’s one of the reasons why very few of the top Medium writers are successful off of the platform. Some are because they diversify their professional life and credits, writing and working far beyond the platform. Medium is a great place to add another income stream, figure out your voice, get your name out there, and to build a following. It should not be used in substitution for professional writing credits and work efforts.

Far too often, people invest time, effort, and money into figuring out the platform and working on it; instead, writers should use this as a testing ground for work they’ll take elsewhere to professional paying publications. Imagine instead of publishing 12+ articles a month and having maybe one or two earn over $10 or $20, you sell each of those articles for hundreds of dollars?

Action Plan: Start finding publications to write for off of Medium and pitch revamped versions of your most popular articles. If this type of writing isn’t your jam, find 5 new writing opportunities from other sources off of Medium.

It takes a full-time commitment to be successful

I work on average 5–10 hours a month on Medium and never more than 20/month. Yet, I’ve consistently ranked in the top %6 of writers with little to no effort.

I write smart. I market smart.

When I first got to the platform, I put in way more work than I should have. That’s my fault, I was trying to copy the full-time writers on the site. They work differently than the writers like me. Their end goal is this site. So they put their all into it.

My end goal is off of this site. My career is off this site. That’s where I spend my time and energy. This feeds into the last point I was making. You can choose to work on this platform for 40+ hours a week. That’s totally okay. But it’s not the only way.

Action Plan: Figure out what you want to get from Medium. What is your intention behind the work you do here? If you find that you’re sinking time into the platform you’d rather use elsewhere, step back.

Curation is king

I have a 95–100% curation rate and have since starting on this site. I can even go back and get old articles curated through a specific system I have used since starting out on the platform.

Yet, my curated articles aren’t the ones that are popular. My top earners are a lot of times the pieces that don’t get curated, or they become popular weeks or months after. What I’ve found to be king is reader engagement, topics, and follower count.

If you have a follower list of over 2,000, you’re likely to have a bigger chance of success and going viral. Double that if those followers are attached to a publication you own for your writing or a subscriber list that you can email directly. The money side of Medium is only one of the big bonuses about this site.

There are over 80 million active users on the platform. Those are readers hungry for your stories. Engage them. Find topics of interest and reach your readers. They’re waiting.

Action Plan: Focus on growing your follower count. You can utilize different strategies, but using engagement on the site will help your chances at fostering a deeper and more genuine connection. There are notable popular topics (Sex, Programming, Business), but steer closer to your passions to find readers who will follow you and your stories as you move deeper into your career.

Happy Writing

You don’t have to listen to me. You don’t have to follow my advice. If something that I’ve written here doesn’t jive with you, toss it and move on.

But what if you didn’t?

What if you tried the things I outlined and suggested above? What would you lose?

What would you gain?

Writing is a giant writhing serpent we’ve each chosen to ride and tame. We have our own ways of charming it. These are some of mine. They work for me. They may work for you. There’s no harm in trying.

There is, however, harm in not trying. As we buck and sway to the whim of our loves, being rigid and stuck in the same motions will only lead us to a breaking point.

Further Reading

Aigner Loren Wilson is a queer Black Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer of America, Horror Writer of America, and Codex writer. Her work has appeared in and is forthcoming from WIRED, Lightspeed Magazine, Anathema, Tordotcom, and more. She is a Hugo Award finalist for her editing and is the author of several speculative fiction books and games.