9 Obstacles In The Way of Your Medium Success

Lessons from mentoring dozens of writers on the platform.

The end of the month is the worst when it comes to writing in these parts.

You dread the end of the month because you’re going to be reading article after article about people succeeding on Medium.

Every month new writers are hitting the three-figure mark and even more people are hitting the four-figure mark.

These writers have been around as long as you have and started the same time you did so what gives?

How are they becoming so successful and earning so much on Medium? What’s the secret that they’ve figured out that you haven’t?

I had been writing for a year before hitting my first four-figure month in April 2021. I had been trudging along and trying to figure out what would work on the platform.

A couple of weeks after this milestone, I decided to start a free mentorship program for other Medium friends and writers. I wanted to provide insights and suggestions to help other writers succeed as well.

In the course of running this writing mentorship, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to dozens of writers, see their work and support them with their writing.

In the process, I also noticed what people were doing that was preventing their success on the platform.

These were the common obstacles that I found with the writers that I worked with. These were the things preventing people from finding success on Medium.

9 Obstacles in The Way of Your Writing Success

1. You’re not writing often enough

I can’t repeat this enough: Medium is a content monster. It continually needs to be fed with content. To succeed on Medium, you have to become a prolific writer. You have to write a lot.

You have to write to feed the algorithm. The more that you write and publish, the more the algorithm works for you. I’ve found that writing 10 articles to be the minimum you have to publish every month. I’ve set a monthly goal of 15 articles and have been writing closer to 20 posts per month.

The second reason that you may want to write more is that the more you write, the more opportunities you have for your articles to go viral. If you write one post a month, you have one shot a month for a post to do well. If you write 20 times a month, you increase your odds of writing success by 20 times.

2. You’re not introducing yourself into your writing

Here’s how you stand out on Medium — bring your life into it. Every person has a unique life story, unique experiences and unique interests.

Every person has very unique life experiences with family, relationships, educational and career experiences. Every person has unique professions and things that have happened to them but believe that what has happened to them is mundane and commonplace.

It’s not. As a writer, our job is to make the mundane, interesting. Your new job could be a boring story you recount or the most exciting one you could share. You could share a friend’s passing with a run-of-the-mill post or a very sentimental one.

The way to stand out on Medium is not to write a typical morning routine or “how to be happy” post but to weave in your life experiences into your post.

3. You’re not focusing on your headlines

I wouldn’t say I’m the world’s best headline writer but I can’t stress how much headlines matter. When someone reads your headline, it has to be so enticing that they must want to click on it. This is nothing technical, just something super practical.

If you want people to read your posts, they have to read your headlines. You can write a headline to bore or to excite people. You can write headlines that reveals all in your headlines or ones that evoke curiosity. You can write a boring listicle headline or make a promise in your headline.

Never give away your answer in the headline. People have to read the article to understand what’s going on or to answer the question you’re posing in your headline. The headline raises the questions which your articles answer.

4. You’re not focusing on your readers

Writers might not realize this but Medium is not about you. You might think that you want to write what your soul calls you to write but Medium is not about your soul or even you.

Medium is about connecting with your readers. What are your readers experiencing? What are your writers wanting to hear? What will help your readers life? What will be of interest to them?

I’ve been mentoring many writers so I know that articles like this will help them. I’m writing this because I know that many of my readers who are writers themselves will benefit from what I write. I’m sharing lessons to help them and keeping the focus on them.

5. You’re not writing what works on Medium

I hate to be the bearer of bad news to Medium writers but you can’t show up on Medium and write whatever you want. You can do that but that is not the path to success. You cannot do writing challenges, poems and write journal-like entries and succeed on Medium.

If you know any writer who has done this and succeeded, please share their work in the comments. What you have to do instead is write what works on Medium. People come to Medium to learn, to acquire knowledge or read about people’s lives and personal experiences. Most readers want a take-away in the form of knowledge, insight or understanding.

Why does anyone read anything? Readers want to take what they read and apply it to their life. This is what works on Medium. There are whole publications that are focused on taking your personal experiences and translating it into the life of the reader. If you don’t know what else to do on Medium, just continue to do this repeatedly.

6. You’re focused too much on what everyone else is doing

You see what other writers are doing and you want to follow suit. You see them talking about personal growth so you talk about it. You see them talking about weight loss so you write it. You see articles on personal growth so you’re doing that.

Stop focusing on others and instead figure out what your magic sauce is. You have unique topics, a unique voice and a unique story. Your whole goal on Medium should be to figure out what that is for you.

The less you write like others and the less you write about what others are writing about, the more unique you become. Write stories that people aren’t used to seeing elsewhere. Write vulnerable, honest and authentic stories. Write stories that will have a strong emotional connection with people.

7. You’re too focused on the results

I know you want to get results. You want an article to go viral. You want thousands of views and hundreds of dollars. This is the wrong approach to Medium and everything else in life.

The art of Medium is to figure out what your audience wants and to serve it to them. It’s to write interesting articles that contribute to bettering someone’s life in some way.

It’s to work on the craft of writing. It’s to get better at what you’re doing. It’s to get more reads and better engagement. Instead of aiming for results, focus on the work in front of you and the results will follow.

The work is continued writing, continued improvement and more engaging articles. It’s to use feedback and your analytics to get better at delivering content people want to read.

8. You’re forgetting the stories in front of you

As I was mentoring writers, I would exchange emails with them about what to write about. Many would say they didn’t have story ideas or know what to write about. Yet in the very same email that they told me that they didn’t know what to write about, they would share the most unbelievable stories about their lives.

If your life is an open book, then you come to Medium to share the chapters of your life story. Everything in your life that made your life unique deserves an article on Medium. Your observations and opinions deserve an article on Medium. Your unique take and perspective are prime reading material for readers on Medium.

You are a collection of stories. Your Medium challenge is to cultivate and share your unique stories with readers on the platform.

9. You’re here for fun and fulfillment

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being on Medium for fun. You can have a great experience on Medium and completely enjoy yourself.

You can find meaning and fulfillment on Medium by writing about poetry, writing what your heart calls you to write and participating in writing challenges.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with treating Medium like a fun hobby. I just want to point out to you that if you choose to treat it as such, you won’t get the kind of Medium success you might want.

Your path to success on Medium is diligence, discipline and writing what your audience wants. Again, it’s not what you want.

So although being here for fun and fulfillment is the best thing you can do for yourself, don’t expect to succeed on Medium with this formula.

The formula for Medium is to write a lot, publish a lot, analyze results and continue to produce more content that connects with your audience.

You can walk your own path and win on Medium

Over the past year, I’ve likely made many of the mistakes that I talk about here.

Over the course of running a mentorship program, I was able to get a better glimpse at what was working for other writers and what wasn’t.

You too can follow the crowd and do what everyone else is doing OR follow your own path, write unique stories and write a lot of them.

If I was able to achieve success on this platform in less than a year, I’m certain that you can too.

Medium success is available for anyone but you have to be willing to play by Medium’s rules and serve Medium’s audience.

What other obstacles are getting in the way of your Medium success? Please leave a comment and help your fellow writers.