Breakthrough Stories Make All the Difference

I’ve been on Quora for four years now, and on Medium for six months. I’ve put in steady effort on both platforms. Some of my stories hardly get attention. Others went viral, received hundreds of thousands of views, and drove traffic to my less well-known pieces. Much of my total viewership on both platforms comes from only a few stories, but until I publish them, I can never tell which ones. My solution has been to set increasing but realistic goals for myself and make a consistent, strategic effort.

January 2020: I subscribe to Medium

Tired of only being able to read a limited number of Medium articles, I began subscribing to connect with the community and read what the site had to offer. Many of my friends from Quora.com, where I was a Top Writer, had moved there already. I wanted to get a flavor of the Medium site.

May 2020: I join the Medium Partner Program and make my first post

Having written a number of essay pieces for Quora Spaces and seen the Quora platform give them little visibility and less recompense, I decided to add these pieces to Medium. My first Medium essay, which was moderately successful, was a personal introduction. I figured I wanted to place the rest of my Medium writing in a personal context.

Soon after publishing, I read advice about how to gain a following and viewership for my pieces, such as placing them in a publication. I found the fast-growing publication ILLUMINATION, which has a large following and quickly accepts pieces on any topic. It was exciting to get my first piece published! Since then, the piece has received hundreds of views and became a featured ILLUMINATION writer bio.

In addition to the publication itself, ILLUMINATION also has a Slack channel for writers to share their pieces, as well as discuss the process of gaining visibility on Medium and any other topic. Even if it provides less visibility than other publications, it’s nice to keep in touch with this group.

Writing my bio and publishing it on Medium has probably saved me time. Now I can just share the link instead of writing it all out again. In my first month, I wrote other pieces that were answers to frequently asked questions about myself, such as how I — an American — became so interested in countries halfway around the world.

Not all my pieces received much attention. Some, such as this one, only got a few views. I was surprised because I thought it had valuable advice. I guess not every swing is a hit.

At the end of the month, I had published five pieces on Medium, all of which had been accepted to publications. It represented a steady effort I could sustain. Publishing at least five pieces per month became a goal to reach for and often exceed. I had also earned $1.24 from the Partner Program. I was heartened, though, that the attention the stories received seemed to compound. Even with so few stories, my later pieces were bringing attention to my earlier ones.

June 2020: My first breakthrough post

In my first couple months, I got accepted as a writer into several publications, including some of the more prominent ones — The Writing Cooperative and Better Marketing. I was also accepted into some less well-known and specialized publications, such as Dog Tales.

I experimented with various topics, publications, and publicity methods. Sharing on popular Quora Spaces gave a short boost that led to a fair number of views, but most were not subscribers. Sharing on Slack and Discord groups was sometimes helpful. Sharing popular pieces on LinkedIn, where I had a large number of followers, also led to a boost.

Encountering people who found the Spaces feature of Quora confusing, I wrote a piece for Medium with instructions for how to contribute to Spaces. I submitted it to the Writing Cooperative and it was rejected. Lesson: Never be disheartened. It would probably be published somewhere. My second submission was to Better Marketing. At Better Marketing, it was not only accepted but became my first piece to be curated by Medium. This meant it was specially selected to be distributed to additional people. I consider it my first breakthrough piece. Now, my writing on Medium was getting views almost daily. People are still reading this piece, months later.

Again, not everything was a hit. This piece was rejected from Better Marketing, was not curated, and only received a fraction of the views and income of the other piece about Spaces I wrote.

At the end of the month, I received $3.51 from the Medium Partner Program. I still had a long way to go but was coming up in Medium life. If an increase in income like this were exponential…

July to August 2020: The doldrums

Sending at least five pieces a month to Medium consistently, I got less lucky. None of my pieces were picked up and shared as widely as June’s piece about contributing to Spaces. My income in July, $2.08, was actually less than June’s.

Being an obscure writer is not without its advantages. You’re freer to just write, and you don’t have the fans to please. Out of frustration, and while I still could, I wrote this piece.

I figured I might as well learn from the experts. I shared it on the ILLUMINATION Slack channel and got the advice that I needed to give other pieces more follows, applause, and comments. Nowadays, I try to follow a new writer and give the full 50 claps of applause to a new piece at least once a day. I also frequently comment on other people’s pieces. This has increased my following and viewership faster. By now, my writing is viewed more than twenty times a day, with a growing Medium partner income to match.

September to October 2020: Onward and upward

I was able to write additional breakthrough pieces, which boosted traffic even more. I had spent a long time co-writing this one with Emanuel Shahaf and submitting it to some of the major American Jewish periodicals, but it was rejected. Since its topic was time-dependent, we decided to quickly publish it in Medium’s publication Dialogue & Discourse instead. It was not only curated by Medium but was also featured at the top of Dialogue & Discourse, an honor they only give a select few pieces. It remains my most popular Medium essay and has since been published, in slightly edited form, in LevantX.

Other well-viewed pieces were based on popular comments I wrote, such as this one about Mike Pence in response to the vice presidential debate of the 2020 U.S. election. I joined Dialogue & Discourse because some writers I respected had published there, and found this publication gave me more exposure than many others.

For the first time, I broke even with respect to Medium subscription fees, making $5.26 in September. My Medium partner program income again grew in October, reaching $8.93.

It doesn’t seem like very much money, but having a place to connect with a larger writer community and share my thoughts is worth a lot. Long-form social media sites are a scratchpad for my ideas as they mature. I’m the kind of person who loves to work in a group, on a more self-directed project involving my special interests. Writing on social media is important for creating and sustaining that type of lifestyle. I also enjoy freelance writing and am making the transition to gaining a living from my writing, through professional writing assignments. Wish me luck.