9 Subtle Mistakes That Are Sabotaging Your Medium Success
These mistakes are costing you
New writers sabotage themselves on Medium without realizing it.
You get on the platform, and you start writing, trying to earn some money and get more eyeballs on your writing. You know that you’re a writer and want to become a successful one. You hear about all the A-list writers who are making $10,000 a month or more, and you’re wondering how they do it.
You’re barely making 2 figures on the platform and not seeing the kind of success that you hear about. Your articles are earning pennies, and not many people are reading them. If you’re wondering what’s going on here, let me share some commons mistakes that I see Medium writers are making.
Who am I to be pointing these out to you? Just another blogger on the internet. I have been blogging online for about a decade. I have a personal blog that continues to do better each month, and I have improved my Medium earnings by 25-fold since I took it seriously when the pandemic started.
These are my observations and insights, spending an unhealthy amount of time writing on Medium. I want you to succeed as a writer because I know that the more we succeed, the more this platform succeeds. Oh, and I have no Medium course to sell you either, so please take my message to heart :)
(There’s no upsell after you read this post, but I do hope you sign up for my newsletter to get more writing tips.)
Let’s get started.
9 Subtle Mistakes You’re Making On Medium
1. Not asking people to sign up and keep up
They read your post and loved it, but they didn’t follow you or sign up for your newsletter. You can subtly remind people to follow you, and you can put a newsletter sign-up in your bio or after your posts. Many writers don’t know the importance of this when it comes to doing well on Medium.
If your readers get your newsletter, you can communicate with them and send them future posts that they will enjoy. You can notify them of books you’ve written or other projects you’re doing.
The best way to do this is to ask them by creating a newsletter for them. You can start one for free on Mailchimp. You can get more reads and comments by emailing your readers. If Medium no longer exists, you’ll still have their email address to communicate with them.
This is important: don’t use the email newsletter thing that Medium offers for free. You can’t collect or see people’s email addresses. Medium owns the email addresses, not you. Get a third-party provider like Mailchimp, Aweber, or Constant Contact so you can contact your readers directly.
2. Not staying out of negative writer groups
Are you part of one of these Facebook Medium groups? Why do I ask? Well, I have not seen one productive comment when perusing these groups. Sure, you can get on there to ask questions about Medium, but there are many better places to find your answers.
Half the people in these groups are complaining about Medium and talking about how terrible it is. They share how their earnings and views have gone down. They complain all day and night about how Medium used to better when it started. The other people in these groups are braggarts trying to show off to inspire you on your writing journey. Or they are selling you a course. Stay out of Medium groups to stay away from complainers, braggarts, and course sellers. You can read more about Medium Facebook groups here.
Find your inspiration elsewhere. Build your own community.
3. Not publishing in publications
Are you always self-publishing? This right here is a major error. At the beginning of your Medium writing journey, do not publish on your own publication because no one will see it.
I cry a little every time I see people self-publishing on their own publication or without any publication. Many publications will publish your work. Even the smallest publication will have followers who will be exposed to your writing.
When you publish in a publication, more people get a chance to read your work. Some publications have engaging and niche audiences who read everything in that publication. I personally prefer smaller publications, as I spoke about in this post about why you should write for smaller publications.
4. Not going more into depth for each post
I’ll keep this one straight to the point. Go more in-depth in each of your posts. Provide as much value as you can. Don’t offer 3 points when you can offer 7. Don’t just tell them what to do but tell them how to do it. Make your posts value-packed. There are three reasons for this.
One, people will get a lot out of your articles and will keep coming back because they know you will provide a lot of value. Two, you will stand out from many other writers on the platform who are writing superficial posts. And three, you will get a chance for people to leave more detailed comments. When you write more in-depth, you get better questions and comments that you can write about and respond to. When you write in-depth posts, people will ask better questions that allow you to write even better follow-up articles.
5. Not saying anything new
You’ve probably read about half the points in this article about things you should be doing, but I hope that many of these points are new to you. I’ve always thought about them and have not seen other writers talk about them, and that is why I want to share it with you. I hope that some or most of these tips are new to you so you’ll read them. I don’t want to bore you with the same kind of articles that you read all day on the platform. I’m definitely not writing a morning routine post for you or going to tell you to meditate the right way.
There’s not enough original thought or unique ideas on Medium. I wrote about this last month in this post about writing with new ideas and perspectives. I write that the best way to succeed on the platform is original and creative thought. If someone has said it before, don’t write that article. Brainstorm some unique angles and new topics with a different perspective.
6. Not narrowing your list of topics
If you write about many topics, you’ll do just fine but just another observation and personal experience. I started writing about every topic under the sun on Medium. I wrote about humor, culture, relationships, writing, politics, and the list goes on. Many of those articles did well. I became the top writer in culture, humor, creativity, and others, but you know what? I started doing better when I narrowed my list of topics. I now write only about writing, personal growth, and relationships.
People want to know what they’ll get when they come to you. You can be a jack-of-all-trades writer, writing about investing and happiness, but which are you more of an expert on? Which are you more passionate about? Your task, if you’re willing to do it, is to figure out which of your posts resonate most with your readers and keep writing on that topic. Do you know why you’re reading this post right now? My previous writing-related posts have had hundreds of views. One article last week (this one) went beyond 1000 views and is continuing to be read. People like to read writing posts, so I’m delivering.
7. Not analyzing your writing
To follow up on the previous point, I’m writing about writing because my analytics tells me that you like reading about writing. Also, I love to write about writing, and I enjoy encouraging other writers to write. This is a win-win.
On my personal blog, I only write about breakups and divorces. Was I passionate about breakups and divorces? Well, I can say that I was writing all over the net, and these posts resonated. I went through a divorce myself, and I am passionate about helping people get through theirs. Today, I coach people and sell courses on topics of breakup and divorce. All of this was possible because I paid attention to my analytics and what my readers wanted.
If you look at how much your articles earn, how many views you get and what you enjoy writing, you will be coming upon your path to success. Don’t ignore the statistics that are readily available to you. Also, look at how many comments you receive in popular articles. Use your statistics to your advantage.
8. Not building community with other writers
You may not know this, but blogging and Medium-ing is a community-centered activity. If you want to maximize your success on the platform, you have to get to know other writers. How do you do that? Read and comment on their posts. I go back and try to read as many people who read me. I try to comment back on as many people who comment on my posts.
Why network and build community? It’s less lonely when you have other writers on the same path. Knowing other writers will help you get to know more publications, get you more readers, and get you more followers. Knowing other writers will mean more people are looking out for you, more people are sharing your content on social media, and more people actually reading your posts. In the beginning, other writers are your primary readers. They can help give your articles a boost and even go viral.
You can exchange information, insights and post ideas with each other. A friend on Medium looked at one of my posts and offered suggestions to improve it. The post was curated and did better than expected.
9. Not keeping the focus on your readers
This is a common mistake that I see many writers make who write in diary formats. If you notice this post, I share some of my experiences with you, but my primary focus is you. I want to help you improve your writing and improve your Medium experience. I could have written an entire article on my experience and my learnings, but that wouldn’t help you as much.
I want to use my experiences to help you, so I share my experience in the context of what you can do to improve. Many writers share their life stories and experiences with no message or nothing relevant for the reader.
What can your reader ultimately learn about your experience? How can your reader improve? How can your reader make changes in their lives? How can your reader learn something from you?
Read through your articles and see how much of your previous posts are about you and how much are about your reader. Change the focus to your reader and improve your Medium success.
Tiny changes for bigger success
These are all subtle mistakes, but if you’re doing them, you’re sabotaging your success. More than likely, you might not even know that you’re making these tiny mistakes.
A few small changes can help you improve your Medium writing experience significantly. You will notice that your reads, reading time, and earnings will increase. You will see your follower count go up and more people commenting on your posts.
You don’t need an expensive course to make these changes either. Today, you can do the following to make improvements on Medium:
- Ask people to sign up for your newsletter.
- Stop hanging out on Facebook Medium groups.
- Publish all your posts in publications
- Go deeper into your articles.
- Have something worth saying.
- Narrowing down the number of topics you write about.
- Seeing what works in your writing and previous posts.
- Building your own community of writers.
- Focusing on helping your readers.
What other common mistakes do you see people making on Medium? Leave me a comment below.
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