Announcement of New Writers Joining ILLUMINATION Today #46
Welcome pack and a quick acknowledgment of your acceptance to ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium
New writer applications to Illumination are via our registration portal. Please review our checklist and the onboarding pack before submitting your stories to our publications. Non-member writers, please read this important bulletin using our friend link to understand the rules of our publications for smooth publishing.
Dear new contributors, This post informs you that you now have writer access to ILLUMINATION or our other pubs. You may start submitting your great stories, only one story per publication daily. Due to the large number of our writers, we can no longer support multiple stories from the same writers daily. We only accept one per day.
Recently, some of our experienced volunteer editors needed a break, so we replaced them with new ones. However, it takes them a while to learn the process. Unfortunately, Medium does not allow more than 30 editors per pub, and running a large pub like Illumination with only 30 editors is not an easy job. So, if your stories are delayed, please be patient. We will do our best to publish them timely. For urgent inquiries, if Dr Mehmet Yildiz, our chief editor, cannot respond on Slack, please contact his backups Aiden (Illumination Gaming), Mike Broadly, DHSc, Lawson Wallace, K. Joseph, or InYah who can contact him in the editorial room where he spends his time.
Thank you for joining us and being part of ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium.com, which supports 28,000+ writers. ILLUMINATION is a diverse, inclusive, supportive, and collaborative community. We support every ethical writer who wants to delight their readers. We posted our monthly newsletter, which included our recent updates. It was special as 19 March was ILLUMINATION’S 4th birthday.
If you write meaningful and captivating stories, we will publish and promote your stories and help you build your audience quickly using our large community and increase your income through meaningful engagement with our readers and writers. We make everything easy for you. All you need to do is write great pieces and engage as an avid reader. It is a pleasure to have you onboard. We look forward to reviewing, publishing, reading, and promoting your stories.
As you may have heard/read, Medium recently suspended many accounts that were involved in fraudulent activities. A few of them were accidental, and Medium restored them, but there are people selling claps, highlights, and guaranteed reads to increase income through Fiverr or other sites. Please don’t fall into that trap, as they are illegal, and Medium monitors them. You can read the details in our latest bulletin. Please share it with your writer friends to protect them.
Please also review the new partner program rules that Medium published recently. We simplified them for you.
This is our supplementary onboarding pack to give you quick updates. The attached master onboarding pack covers every aspect of our pubs.
Master Onboarding Pack
First, please review the onboarding pack before submitting your stories. This pack includes the necessary information and guidelines for all our publications. You don’t have to read the entire post, but reading the key points regarding submissions is necessary. From now on, we want to ensure that when you finish, please leave a brief message pointing out that you read it. If you are a nonmember, we provided a link on the top.
We link the profiles of writers joining us today at the end of this collection so you can connect with each other meaningfully.
As an important update, Medium identified some fraudulent activities and suspended some members. As a new writer, please follow platform policies and rules and never attempt cheating.
If you are a non-member, please consider being a member.
While adding writers, we noticed that more than 30% of applicants are non-members. That’s fine; we support them, but as you may know, unless you become a member, you cannot monetize your content, and you cannot easily grow your audience on Medium. So it will be great to invest $5 a month for your own benefits. It can pay it back very quickly. Dr Yildiz explained it in a recent story. Here is the friend link you can read for free.
Our administrators were unavailable during Christmas/New Year times, soour chief editor took the responsibility and onboarded new writers. He provided additional advice to new writers. You may connect with the writers who joined us during that period from the attached stories.
A Special Welcome to New Writers on New Year’s Day from the Chief Editor
A Special Welcome to New Writers on Christmas Day from the Chief Editor
Adding over 150 new writers each time, onboarding them frequently, and managing the workload of our publications is a tedious task. Dr Yildiz recently wrote a personal piece about it to give writers an idea of the challenges of publications on Medium. Our publications don’t generate income and are only run by around 149 volunteer editors, administrators, curators, and moderators.
Dr Yildiz set the strategy of our pubs to align with Medium’s new direction for the new year. Strategic Changes on Medium in 2023: How I Adapted to the New Strategy. Recently, Dr Yildiz interviewed several great writers. You may find and read those interviews in this link.
Collaboration and Promotion
As publications thrive with collaboration, we initially introduce you to our readers and other writers via our curated collections when writers join because it is an excellent opportunity to meet some of our writers, and you may collaborate with the ones who resonate with you.
Apart from ILLUMINATION editors, other editors like Mike Broadly, DHSc, Aiden (Illumination Gaming), Elin Melaas, and The Sturg prepare curated collections for our readers. We link their latest one so you may get an idea. They may tag you in their upcoming stories to introduce you to our readers.
New Friends of Medium Subscription for Readers
Our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz, upgraded our publication accounts ILLUMINATION and ILLUMINATION-Curators, as well as his tech account Dr Mehmet Yildiz (Tech), making them Friends of Medium. Reading from these accounts will allow writers to earn four times more. While curating stories, we read many stories from these accounts, so it will be great for writers. Most of our publications, including Illumination, support non-members, but we encourage all writers who can afford the cost to be a member to consider Medium Friendship subscriptions. Writers need to read to to perform better. You may check out the details in his story by Dr Mehmet Yildiz (Tech) Why I Became a Friend of Medium
We interviewed him on how Friends of Medium (FoMs) can share stories to create more visibility and increase reading times, even from non-members. The good news is when non-members read the links from FoMs, they generate income for writers.
How Friends of Medium Can Amplify Important Stories Via Customized Social Media Sites
Dr Yildiz also upgraded his own accounts to support writers and inspired our readers to upgrade if they can afford it so that our writers can earn more income and write better stories.
As the quality of content is our priority now, we updated our submission guidelines as listed below. The changes are reflected in our new submission guidelines, which are linked below. Please review the submission guidelines for the publications you contribute to.
ILLUMINATION Videos and Podcasts: Submission Guidelines 2023
Publishing and Conduct Guidelines for the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION
Policy Documents for Our Writers
Every writer contributing to our publications must review these guiding policies before submitting their stories. We are tolerant, but these are non-negotiable rules.
AI-Generated Content Policy for ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications
Helpful Guidance for Beginners in 4 Steps
The following are the most frequently asked by beginners. If you are on Medium for a long time, you may skip some points in the following sections.
1 — How to submit your stories to publications
Now that you have joined Medium and written your first story, Please follow these simple instructions. Once you do it a few times, it will be second nature. Not knowing this feature caused many new writers to wait for days.
After drafting your story, when it is ready to submit, please click on the … (3 dots) on the top right side of your screen. Click on the add to publication, choose Illumination or other relevant pubs, and submit your story. When the story arrives in the publication queue, editors will review and publish it if your story qualifies. If not, they will leave a private message and return your story to fix, resubmit, or transfer to one of our other publications if it does not suit ILLUMINATION.
We no longer publish certain types of stories on ILLUMINATION and ILLUMINATION-Curated, so please review the new submission guidelines.
2 — Use Copyright-Free Images and Caption Them
A crucial issue is some new writers forget to add captions to photos and use copyrighted images. Violating copyright rules can lead to substantial penalties imposed by legal institutions.
Several writers got hefty fines; our editors don’t want this to happen to you. Therefore, our editors are diligently working to safeguard our writers. We kindly ask that you honor their requests, as they have your best interests at heart. You cannot use every image on stories behind the paywall.
If you are a new writer on Medium, please review the Photo Handling Policy before starting, as it is the most time-consuming issue for our editors and causes delays in publishing. Writers failing to meet our photo handling policy will be removed from publications.
3 — What is Slack, and why should our writer join this group?
Slack is a collaboration and communication tool. Unlike social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, Slack is a private tool. Therefore, it is not just another social media platform. We use Slack because Medium lacks a chat tool, making it challenging to communicate with writers, editors, and publication owners to address issues.
For instance, when your stories encounter problems, or you have questions for our team, you can easily access our editors and moderators, who can help resolve your concerns. Our Slack is free and moderated, with over 20,000 members.
Additionally, you can share links to your story and get more views. Joining our group can provide numerous benefits. It is a valuable tool to build your audience easily. Furthermore, it is configurable; for example, you can turn notifications off if you prefer not to receive notifications. You can learn more about Slack from this story.
We also have a Discord network owned by Aiden (Illumination Gaming). You may contact him on Slack to get access to Discord. He made a YouTube video about it.
4 — We don’t publish AI-generated content per Medium’s new strategy except for one dedicated publication [The Lampshade of ILLUMINATION]
Our publications do not accept content written by artificial intelligence tools, but we have a viable solution to make writers and readers happy.
Those writers who use generative AI tools like Jasper or ChatGPT can send their stories to our new publication, the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION. Details are attached.
AI-Generated Content Policy for ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications
Now, Medium does not allow monetizing AI-generated content. So will publish a new policy about it. Please check the ILLUMINATION account soon.
ILLUMINATION-Curated and ILLUMINATION-Gaming as Boost Nominating Publications
Medium recognized our special publication, ILLUMINATION-Curated, serving experienced and advanced writers as a formal boost-nominating publication. This gives us an opportunity to nominate stories that meet the boost guidelines.
Joining ILLUMINATION-Curated requires proof of your experience in submitting high-quality stories. If you believe your stories meet our requirements in the submission guidelines, please contact our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz, who can review your stories and invite you to this publication with the blessings of other editors.
We recently interviewed Dr Yildiz to understand the boost program process and the chance of increasing boost nomination. This interview can be helpful for you to understand the process. Here is the link to the interview How ILLUMINATION Publications Support the BOOST Program.
As of 1st December, ILLUMINATION Gaming has also been accepted as a boost nominating publication. Its owner Aiden (Illumination Gaming) will inform readers shortly. You can contact Aiden on Slack or Discord. Aiden started an education series to increase the chance of boosting our writers. Here are some samples of his educative series.
As a new writer, this series can be valuable for your learning. valuable
Sample Boosted Stories to Understand the Criteria
You may find sample boosted stories from the collection recently posted by ILLUMINATION-Curators
Collection of Boosted Stories from ILLUMINATION Publications — V2
Collection of Boosted Stories from ILLUMINATION Publications — V3
More information about our boosting services is in the attached story.
How ILLUMINATION Publications Support the BOOST Program
You can use a comprehensive checklist about boosting increasing the chance of boosting in the attached story.
Recent Safety and Security Issues on Medium that You Need to Watch Out
It came to our attention that some serious issues happened on Medium, affecting the earnings of writers in the last week of September. Our editor Mike Broadly provided a comprehensive update. Here’s What Seems to Happen to Medium Last Week.
Significant cloning of accounts also happens. Mike wrote three important stories about it as hackers cloned his account and tried to deceive his readers FOUR times. When you see such activities, please report them to Medium.
Frustration: Now My Account Was Duplicated 4 Times in a Week by Scammers
Now, Time to Meet New Writers Joining Today
Let’s welcome writers who joined our publications today. This is an excellent opportunity to explore the stories of these writers and follow them if their content resonates with you.
Victoria Shirley, Aishah Ahmad, Scott Fisher, MaryJane, Lily R Marie, Robert Wright, Jeffrey Kass, William Mullally, Heidi Nobel, Elvia M., Chandni Challa, Ivan Douglas, Quentin Plume, shanaisse IRL, Uche Nwaobi, Aiman Hanif, Ivaylo Zen, Uncomfortable Observer, Azhar Haris, Autistic Fish, Anastasiia Sarana, SoulWriter, MaryJane, George Yu, Kameron Snow, Ancient-T-, Sachin Kashyap, Raven W., Brandon Foster, Destiny, Neo Young, Blockchain Social, Jyoti Prakash(JP), Richard Kanca, Morgan Fox, Diana’s_Diary, Kelsey Gerks, Tamika Cole, Natalie Gasper, Michael Naylor, Epic Dreamweaver, Albert Sundve, Carolyn V. Hamilton, MonalisaSmiled, Three Moon Magic, Matt Heyn, Janet Ridsdale, Thomas Wedge, Souad Younes, AIVidX, Sophia Tell- Stories 🤓📢🤓, Carol AI, Claudia Faith, Jorge Ch., Thomas Glover, Tejus Yakhob, Kicki E Johansson, Carolyn V. Hamilton, Shayla Renee 💖, It’s Ayesha, Sue Reid, Brittany Alicia Carter, Abdullah Khadijah Ibrahim, shanaisse IRL, The Black Yogini, Samy V, Marketta Allison, Berkay, Andrew LaRussa, Elijah Prince, Lori Cristine, The Curiosity Gap, Michael Braun, Amna S., Tarek, Markanny, Kimberley Blythe, Ben Le Fort, — Generalist Insight, Ibrahim Saliman Zainab, Vijay Vijay, Shilpa Bankapur, Dev Thakkar, Aymane Mansouri, Shanmu Raja, Saad Afridi, Danielking, Health And Beauty Hub, ShahBaz Ansari Muhammad, Danielking, Ramond Susetyo, Muskan Jain, Manoj Reddy, Raven, Manjeetyadav, Amay Sonar, Ekta K. Kalra, Melvin Y.Harry, Noushaba Tariq, Abhishek Mittal, Saman Sayahpour, EnderBoy, Sachin Sedai, Duratuf Products, Shamim Bhuiyan 📝 🔥 💡, Jobanpreet singh, Adhesh Suryatej, LoveherMindset, Shibaji, Tony Ify,
Change of Perceptions and Expectations of Publications
Unlike some perceptions, ILLUMINATION editors don’t publish every story. Your stories must be well-crafted and valuable for our readers. Our focus is “curate-able” and “boost-able” stories, even though Medium cannot boost every story, even if they are written well. Our goal is to delight readers who support the growth of writers. We do our best to create visibility for well-written stories on important topics. We always appreciate personal voice and experience.
Guidance to Increase Earnings from Content Creation
Apart from the boosting opportunity on Medium, which can increase your income, our chief editor, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, recently answered this frequently asked question by many writers on how to increase income from writing engagement. Many writers desire to make a living from their craft. Using Medium as a single source is not a viable option. There are other opportunities that you need to consider. We believe this story will give you valuable perspectives.
You may also check this new case study posted by Dr Yildiz today, which gives aspiring writers unique perspectives.
And reality check for bloggers…
Collaboration and Promotion
You will receive an invitation to our Slack workspace to collaborate with other writers, share your story links, and contact editors and our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz. It is a free and moderated service.
You may meet some of our editors from the attached collection.
Introduce Yourself in a Story
Sample Self-Curated Story Collection
You may self-curate your stories to gain visibility. Aiden provided a sample example, which is attached. You may follow a similar format by categorizing your stories based on topics.
You may also enjoy a recent story from one of our new writers and editors, Mike Broadly — Healthier Lifestyle, who made significant progress in the last two months. You may contact Mike on our Slack workspace, who volunteers to support our new writers.
Writer and Editor Introductions
We recently introduced more writers and editors.
Meet Seda Anbarcı, Meet Dr Emmanuel Ogamdi, Meet Jozsef Kovacs, Meet Davor Katusic. Meet Thomas Allen Moon, Meet Sneha Nagre, Meet Zondra Dos Anjos, Meet Ani Vals Meet Ammara Hassan. Meet Sridhar Pai Tonse — Leadgen Coach- Tech Startups Chosen Stories from
Recent Announcements for Connection
To follow our recent writers, you may search stories titled New Announcement of New Writers for ILLUMINATION followed by numbers like #1 to #40 now.
Writing Challenges and Prompts for New Writers
Helpful Resources for Beginners
You may find helpful stories from the content management collection of Dr Mehmet Yildiz written to help new writers join Medium.
Invitation to New Writers
To join our vibrant publications, please send a request via this link.
We will help you gain visibility and succeed as a writer on Medium. Please mention the publication name with your Medium account ID in the request.
ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications include:
ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters, The Lampshade of ILLUMINATION, Technology Hits, SYNERGY, Readers Hope, Illumination on YouTube, Illumination Gaming, ILLUMINATION’s Blog, EUPHORIA by Dr Mehmet Yildiz
