Cracking The Medium Success Code: The Secret Power of Engagement
So I’ve been a Medium Head for a few years now.
Though I didn’t start writing, which was casual, until a little over a year ago, I’m pretty sure I started reading when they first started and became a Member when they first offered Membership.
I’ve been a heavy Medium reader since day one.
But since January 15th, starting with an article read and a message received from my Medium Angel Jan Sebastian 🖐👩🦰, Medium has been an obsession.
I can’t stop thinking about it.
And I can’t seem to put my phone down.
I literally can’t seem to stop myself from reading, highlighting, commenting, and clapping.
And I’m determined…unless God smites me from this Earth with a thunderbolt or a tractor-trailer (statistically more likely)…to make $1000USD plus per month on Medium.
So, like many of you, I’ve been racking my brain, combing through articles, running experiments, reading, writing, commenting, picking through my stats, and picking through the stats of others to get a clearer operational theory on how the Medium recommendation engine works.
I say operational because I want to make it clear…this isn’t an academic exercise. I’m not a cartographer trying to make a concise map to turn into the surveyor's office.
I’m an explorer lost in the woods, determined to make it to the promised land.
Let's get to it!
Here’s my THEORY on how it works:
You build a following of supporters who read what you write.
This does a few things.
It brings your view-to-read ratio per new article up.
Supporters, not Looky Loos, Tire Kickers, and Clapper-Dashers are reading what you wrote because you wrote it.
Now — while you can conceivably build an income this way, the maximum scale of which, I’m not sure, you are going to need a very large and devoted network.
There’s only so much $5 and $15 a month to go around.
You’re going to have to do more engaging and networking than writing.
You have to earn the loyalty and support of other writers, for your work, by showing consistent and enthusiastic support for theirs!
From there, here’s what I believe happens.
As your friends and supporters raise your articles’ key performance indicators or KPIs — views, claps, reads, read times, highlights, comments—your article rises in rank among less supported, similarly tagged articles, in Medium’s recommendation algorithm rank.
Conceivably the larger your support network, the faster your article rises.
This is where your writer craft kicks in.
First, to be clear, writer craft matters, even among friendly supporters.
They have other friends to support too and they only have so much time and energy to:
- Read
- Highlight
- Comment
- Clap
The order is important!
That’s the Hua Sequence from John Hua Technology ☕️🐄🐄🐄
So the more inviting your articles are to read; the easier and more rewarding they are…the more priority reading your articles will get, among friends over their other friends.
You want your friends to read your content not just because their your friends, but because they want to.
So now that your article has risen among a friendly filter, it gets more exposure to your followers who are not writers in your support network and also to the gen pop.
Here is where it must stand on its merit, your writing craft, and your brand, alone.
You’re not going to blog to the bank on writer friends alone.
But their support can serve as a catalyst to kickstart a Medium recommendation algorithm positive feedback cycle.
That’s my operational theory anyway!
That’s what I’ve learned on:
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