60% of My Articles Were Curated By Medium Last Year

Lessons from an unpopular Medium writer

Since you came here because of that title, let me repeat it.

60% of my articles were chosen for further distribution by Medium.

Yep.

Now, take a breath and analyse this information. A lot of questions should pop up. Did I write a hell of a lot of articles? What kind of stuff got chosen for further distribution the most? How frequently do I write on Medium? How does curation impact my profile?

First off, I hate tables and lists but I made a database so I could share my discoveries with you. Here’s what I have to say.

You Don’t Need To Write Like Crazy To Get Curated

Medium is watching you. Even when you don’t have a hundred articles and a thousand followers, and possibly, two publications to your name.

In the past one year (Aug 2020 — Aug 2021), I wrote 32 articles on Medium.

14 got chosen for further distribution.

By the way, there is no mechanism on Medium to show this otherwise I’d have put up a screenshot. I manually looked at all my articles and figured this out.

Honestly, I joined Medium for the love of writing.

I’ve been writing on Quora for 9 years with 1000+ answers on my profile. I’m a Top Writer and all with a million views, most viewed rankings, etc. Well, guess what? Quora doesn’t pay anything to writers (until very recently and that hasn’t begun yet). But I continue to write a lot on Quora because it’s my comfort zone and I do have an honest fan base over there. Some of them are good friends. (Shout out to Satwinder Singh.)

In contrast, I’ve been writing only twice a month on Medium. And still, 60% of my articles were chosen for further distribution by Medium. This gives me faith that the editorial team sitting at the Medium office gives a shit about good writing. That it hasn’t all become a bloody ‘earn-from-telling-people-what-you’ve-earned’ gimmick.

What you need to do is this:

Have an original thought. Write it in a compelling way.

That’s your best bet, I’d say.

Yes, Offbeat Genres Get Curated Too

A lot of advice on Medium is around how you need to write on trending topics like start ups and personal development to get curated.

My curated articles were from the following categories:

Writing — 2

Book Review — 5

Life Lessons — 2

Fiction — 3

Personal Essay — 2

Consider this:

3 of my 5 fiction pieces were curated.

5 of my 7 Book Reviews were curated. (This one surprised me, too.)

As you can tell by now, I don’t write on popular topics. But the few pieces I did — on popular genres like ‘life lessons’ and ‘writing advice’ — didn’t get curated a lot.

Why?

I think it’s because there’s so much stuff written on the popular topics that it’s much harder for the curators to sift through. My advice is to write on original topics that you know well and only pick popular topics when you have something unique to say.

My forte is fiction, book reviews and perhaps, personal essays. And Medium sees my work.That makes me happy. What this translates into is that I stay authentic to my writing while I get validation from Medium editors.

You Don’t Need To Have A Thousand Followers To Be Curated

I have a little upwards of 200 followers on Medium. This number grows at a snail pace and I’m fine with that.

I think Medium editors are looking for good writing and originality of thought. They’re the ones doing the back-linking so we can’t fool them with outward stats like followers, claps, etc. Now, I’m not saying that people with a lot of followers don’t get curated or write stuff that doesn’t get curated.

I’m saying the opposite. That if you write with your heart, you do get curated off and on.

You Don’t Need To Write In The ‘Medium Format’

My pieces are long form and filled with rich text. I like lengthy prose and I don’t run my pieces through Grammarly. A good amount of my sentences are in the passive voices and I love rolling words like ‘exuberant’ and ‘quandries’ in my story titles.

In truth, I don’t understand this fuss about writing ‘in a native speaker’s way’. Or ‘steering clear of imagery’.

Think of Medium as an international buffet. If everyone is expected to cook their pasta the same way, what variety do we bring to the table?

The global society today insists on tolerance and diversity. Medium knows this, and trust me, they follow this, too. Otherwise a nobody like me won’t have been curated as many times.

I’m an Indian who loves prose heavy fiction and book reviews. Come on, what’s more un-medium-like than that?

Curation Doesn’t Mean Views or Money

So, let’s talk about the real reason you read this article uptil now.

My articles — curated ones — have got very little views. My one poem that got a 100% read rate and quickly got a good number of views did not get curated.

I don’t know if it’s the algorithm or what, but curation will not ensure more views. I still don’t know what gets more views. A lot of popular writers say that it’s quantity of articles that determines views. I might agree.

Here’s the botton lime. I wrote well. Medium agreed. Medium distributed.

But ultimately, what I write does have little reading audience on Medium.

You choose a popular topic to gain traction but your chances of getting curated are greatly reduced. And when you do get curated, nobody really read your stuff. It’s a loop from hell.

Still, Medium selected me for it’s Creative Writers Fellowship (Aug — Oct 2021). I’m getting a couple of hundred bucks for the next three months, which puts in the sliver of writers that earn on Medium.

It’s not about the money so much as it is about knowing that your writing gets the nod from an experienced team of editors.

Thank you, Medium. Honestly.