A Tribute To The Five Authors Who Influenced Me On My Medium Journey

No matter your level of writing, these five writers will help with outstanding advice

I must acknowledge five of the people that have given me the best advice and guidance before and after joining Medium. I am not a professional writer, and like many of you, I had ideas to try to write stories and articles. How can I do something I know nothing about?

The first piece of advice that I found was that writing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but rather a slow-building scenario. You must like writing as you may not be able to make a living from it. Or like me, you are not trying to make a living from it, but rather doing it for a little extra cash.

I was a programmer for over 40 years and am now semi-retired. Like many in my position, I need to supplement the Social Security income I receive. I have a few ways I am going to attempt it as I am too far up in life to devote years to building a writing career.

So here are the people and a little about how they influenced me and how they can be valuable to you.

1. Zulie Rane

Looking for ways to earn income from home on my computer, I started searching YouTube for side income. After finding a few suggestions about ways to earn that were not good, I found a YouTube Channel from Zulie Rane on writing on Medium.

I had no idea what Medium was but writing was intriguing to me. I only wrote technical documentation and user guides while programming, but I liked the writing part of the process. On Zulie’s YouTube Channel I ended up watching almost every one of her videos. (You can tell by the red line under each video).

If you are starting as a new writer, go to her Medium Profile or her YouTube channel and look at all her advice for writing on Medium, using Publications or not, and other tips for beginners.

As you get experience, you can then follow her advice on turning your writing into a career if you so choose to do. Thank you Zulie.

2. Kristina God

I keep seeing many people call Kristina God the “God of Medium Information.” I quickly started a dialogue with her through one of her posts and she was extremely nice and helpful.

She does her investigations and finds out information on Medium that you may not hear about. Not sure how she does it, but I benefit greatly from her posts.

She also has a course for new writers (or any level) of a “Medium Kickstarter Boot Camp and Freebies”. She also fits in time to be an editor for the publications “The Short Form” and “Online Writing 101”. My guess is that she never sleeps.

I commented on many of her articles and have used them to ask questions related to the story. She always answers them in an easy to understand way and will advise you where else you can get information. Thank you Kristina.

3. Susie Kearley

I found Susan @susiekearley early on when I started on Medium. She tells you exactly how it is when writing on Medium and other platforms.

She also gives good Medium advice and tells of her journey of writing for different types of media. She tells you exactly what is good and bad on topics you probably have wondered about.

A great person to follow for learning her writing techniques and writing for Medium, magazines, clients, etc. I exchange comments with her, and she responds with answers and other words to have a conversation. (I hope I haven’t just caused her to get loads of comments because of what I say here.) Thank you Susie.

4. Burk

I found Burk little later in my journey in Medium. He is the person who gives a lot of information on various ways to make money from your writing. He gives advice on side hustles, email lists, and many other topics.

Practicing what he preaches, he was able to go full-time with his writing career. But it was a lot of experimenting and hard work that he put in. He writes all about the way he accomplished this and he reminds you that you have to put in the hard work as he did. Thank you Burk.

5. Sinem Guilum

Sinem Günel is the person to go to when you are ready to commit to a serious writing career, She informs you on how to accomplish a thriving business. She pulls no punches and tells you straight up that it took a lot of hours and work to accomplish her goals of making a powerful business.

You can follow her as a beginner because you can learn the mindset to grow as a writer. And as you progress, you can follow more of her advice at each level through her articles and videos. She creates courses, has a YouTube Channel, does consulting, and has lots of other income streams. One course she created is MWA, the Medium Writer’s Academy.

She is the one to follow if you are serious about making writing a career. Thank you Sinem.

Other writers

I have lots of other authors I follow and converse with, but these are the standouts in my experience on Medium. Each has their own way of helping all of us that want to better ourselves in writing and maybe earn money or have a great career.

It is worth the time to investigate them and learn from their advice. Thank you to all the other writers that help me and others.

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