The context provides an onboarding pack for new writers joining Illumination Integrated Publications on Medium, offering guidelines, policies, and resources for successful writing and publishing.
Abstract
The context is an onboarding pack for new writers joining Illumination Integrated Publications on Medium. It covers various topics, including the purpose of the article, how editors communicate with writers, Slack workspace, non-member writers, plagiarism policy, photo handling policy, AI-generated content policy, submitting stories, publishing guidelines, conduct guidelines, new writer checklist, and more. The pack also introduces the publications, their purposes, and their editors. It provides guidance on increasing followers, readers, and subscribers, writing viral content, and creating a passive income stream. Additionally, it offers resources for writing challenges, prompts, and social media tools to amplify content.
Bullet points
The context is an onboarding pack for new writers joining Illumination Integrated Publications on Medium.
It covers various topics, including the purpose of the article, communication with writers, Slack workspace, non-member writers, plagiarism policy, photo handling policy, AI-generated content policy, submitting stories, publishing guidelines, conduct guidelines, new writer checklist, and more.
The pack introduces the publications, their purposes, and their editors.
It provides guidance on increasing followers, readers, and subscribers, writing viral content, and creating a passive income stream.
Additionally, it offers resources for writing challenges, prompts, and social media tools to amplify content.
ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications
Master Copy: Onboarding Information for New Writers
Welcome and information pack for new contributors of ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium
We noticed that non-members couldn’t read this story so please find the friendlink as this story is essential for all writers joining our pubs.
New writers, please check this new editorial update, which includes a comprehensive checklist aiming to improve the quality of your writing and increase the chance of visibility and building your audience on Medium.
Thank you for joining our writing and reading community on Medium. We are delighted to meet you and look forward to reading and promoting your stories.
Please note that writers added to our publications in the last two weeks are listed at the end of this post. This post provides helpful information for new writers to be successful on Medium.
Reviewing the key messages might speed up the publishing of your stories and start earning income quickly.
Every new writer must read Photo Handling Policy before starting as it is the most time consuming issue for our editors.
Reminder: Writers failing to meet our photo handling policy will be removed from publications. This is our biggest problem wasting the precious time of our volunteer editors and causing publishing delays.
How to submit a story to Illumination and other publications
The most frequently asked question for new writers is how to submit a story to Illumination. The answer is:
When you draft your story, please click on the … (3 dots) on the top right side of your screen. Click on the add to publication and then choose Illumination and submit. Then editors will review and publish if your story qualifies.
Publishing and Conduct Guidelines for the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION — NEW
Many thanks to previous writers for the feedback on the new format of our onboarding pack from the previous version and for ideas to improve this important resource. Based on feedback, we made some changes.
This is a new and more comprehensive copy of our onboarding pack aiming to inform you. Thus, we call it the “master copy”. Instead of sending a copy for each group of applicants, we decided to keep a reference copy, add writers’ accounts at the end of this copy, and announce applicants in a daily bulletin. So we will link this post to our daily curated posts to create more visibility for the accounts of our contributors.
Creating onboarding packs is tedious and time-consuming for our editors. Since we support over 19,000 writers, editorial and administrative tasks take significant time.
To address this issue, our chief editor, Dr Mehmet Yildiz constantly performs optimization activities to reduce the time for administrative tasks. As a result, he automates some activities, but not all jobs are automatable.
Please note that our publications do not generate income and run with the support of volunteer editors who are writers like you. In addition, publications have a limitation of only 30 editors. Therefore, even though we have 87 volunteers, we cannot add them, so we keep juggling daily to meet our workload and delight our writers and readers.
This approach will enable new writers to be recognized by our readers and writers who follow our curated collections. In addition, we add writers daily instead of waiting for a week.
The post looks long in size. Nevertheless, you may skim and only review relevant parts to understand our requirements for new writers. New members on Medium ask the following questions frequently. Therefore, we need to answer them in this initial post, what we call the onboarding pack for new contributors.
We usually use private messages to inform our writers during the publication process. However, as there are limitations to private messages, we established a virtual workspace to keep our writers informed.
By using Slack, we extend collaboration capability. Our chief editor and owner of these publications, Dr. Mehmet Yildiz, will invite you to the Slack workspace via your registered email addresses in the writer application form. If you don’t get the invitation, Slack, please leave a comment pointing out the problem in this article.
What is Slack, and how can we join?
Slack is a tool we use as a virtual communication tool to support our writers. Participation in the Slack workspace is free and optional.
However, we highly recommend all contributors to our publications join the Slack workspace, as it is a useful tool for maintaining communication and collaboration. Our members enjoy this free service.
Currently, more than 14,000 members have meaningful interactions via this tool. Writers can easily access publications resources and editors using the Slack workspace.
Yes, we currently do. However, we have some concerns about their growth as they cannot achieve desired results. Therefore, we highly recommend all writers become members for various good reasons.
First of all, non-members can write on Medium, but they cannot read more than two stories a day. Writers are also avid readers learning from the content of others.
Engagement is a critical success factor for writers’ growth on this platform. When we studied our writers' performance, we found that member writers were multiple times more successful than non-member writers.
One of the reasons is engagement with the content of other writers. Medium is a collaborative platform. In addition, when we surveyed our readers, we found out that most of them only follow and read content from member writers. Because of these known reasons, we recommend non-members upgrade and reap the benefits of the Medium audience to gain more readers and earn more income.
Besides, membership is only $5 a month. We believe that almost all writers can afford such a negligible investment equal to the cost of a cup of tea. This $5 investment can pay dividends for freelance writers. In addition, contributing to a platform that gives voice to writers is a noble act. Writers of Medium are only paid by the reading times of members.
So, if you are a non-member, you are not contributing to the income of other writers. This is an important consideration for non-members. We provided a link at the end of this post that you may use to upgrade your membership. If any writer cannot afford Medium membership for financial reasons, we’d like to know and discuss the options to guide them.
If you want to become a member, you can use our referral link to join. It will not cost you extra.
Editors regularly check plagiarism. They reject plagiarised content. We remove your accounts and stories from our publications when you attempt plagiarism. Medium also penalizes plagiarists.
We usually tolerate mistakes and support our writers in correcting procedural and writing errors. However, we do not tolerate plagiarism and copyrighted photos.
Do you have a photo handling policy?
Our publications don’t accept content with copyrighted images. Using copyrighted images is against Medium rules and our publication policy.
When you submit articles with copyright-free images and cite them properly, your stories can be published faster because editors don’t have to wait to fix the photo issues.
No, we don’t. Our readers don’t like animated gifs, so they don’t add any value to your stories. We explained other reasons in our photo handling policy.
Do you accept AI generated images?
Yes we do. You need to caption the image pointing out that it was created by an AI tool and preferably point out its name.
Do you accept AI generated content?
We only accept AI generated content in our new publication the Lampshade of Illumination which is designed for this purpose. Readers of our other publications don’t want us to publish them so we honor their request.
When you click on your photo, you will see this address. So all you need to do is copy and paste this address to our application form.
How can we access the Medium Helpdesk?
You cannot send email requests to the Medium Helpdesk anymore.
You must send your requests via https://help.medium.com to create a support ticket for your issues. However, Medium replies back via email.
Where can I find publishing guidelines for your publications?
We have multiple publications serving the various needs of writers. They all have the same fundamental requirements.
We aim to help you reach a broader audience on Medium and beyond. Since our publications operate on Medium, all contributors must adhere to the platform's policies and rules.
We outlined our policies in the following articles.
Our publications don’t censor content as long as your stories meet Medium guidelines, such as not including hate speech, defamation, conspiracy theories, and porn.
As our readers expect a basic level of English in your content, you need to meet language requirements. Our publications accept only English. Different publications may support other languages. Please search Medium for desired languages.
However, if you want to share raw content, we have a new publication to serve this purpose. So, you can submit your raw content to the Readers Hope publication designed for this purpose. Our other publications require the use of structured language in English.
Do you have advice to writers to increase their income from content?
We had many inquiries about creating passive income streams from writing. To this end, our chief editor posted a new article guiding writers based on his observation and decades of experience. You may learn from his insights.
How can we increase my followers, readers, and subscribers?
This is a critical question for all writers as stories generate income based on reading times by paid members of Medium. Thus, performance metrics such as claps don’t matter for payment.
However, followers count for getting at least 100 followers to join the Medium Partner Program, according to new MPP requirements. Y
ou may check the following articles guiding new writers to gain followers, build an audience, and increase subscribers.
Illumination YouTube Coordinator also created a video presentation of this checklist as a giveback activity for writers and bloggers.
A Brief Introduction to Illumination Integrated Publications and their purposes
We have multiple publications. Here are the brief descriptions:
1 — ILLUMINATION
Our most significant publication is ILLUMINATION. It is visited by over 50,000 unique members daily and gained two million minutes of reading this month.
This diverse and inclusive publication accepts every topic that Medium supports.
In addition, some stories went viral and brought many new readers. As a generic publication, we accept every ethical topic meeting Medium’s guidelines. Link to publication: https://medium.com/illumination
2 — ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR
This publication was designed for the requirements of prolific writers who need to submit multiple stories in a day. You can submit several stories to ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR within 24 hours.
This diverse and inclusive publication accepts every topic that Medium supports.
This unique publication was designed for experienced and accomplished writers. Senior editors select the contributors for this publication using stringent criteria.
This diverse and inclusive publication accepts every topic that Medium supports.
This specialized publication was designed for writers and readers interested in technical topics, digital entrepreneurship, digital transformation, information technology, artificial intelligence, IoT (the Internet of Things), Cloud computing, quantum computing, tech news, digital economy, blockchain, bitcoin, Nun-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and futuristic topics related to emerging technologies.
This specialized publication is a specialized publication that servesfreelance writers who want to share writing, blogging, and editing content. It connects writers, editors, and bloggers through their stories.
We invite freelance writers from other platforms, such as Vocal Media. Here is the purpose of Synergy. Besides, you may find a sample collection to get an idea of the type of stories we publish on Synergy: Engaging Stories on SYNERGY.
This generic was designed for absolute beginners. You may submit raw content to this new pub. We don’t edit content submitted to Readers Hope. But, our editors provide valuable and helpful guidance via private notes or in our Slack workspace to members.
This diverse and inclusive publication accepts every topic that Medium supports.
Here is a story introducing the purpose of Readers Hope: What If We can Transform Readers into Micro-Writers. Editors introduced the values of Readers Hope. We compiled their perspectives into a single story. Our editors are willing to support new writers to gain experience.
This specialized publication is our newest one. It is owned by Illumination YouTube Coordinator. The purpose of this pub is to create a bridge between YouTubers and Medium writers using our YouTube channel and seven prominent publications.
Many YouTubers are also bloggers, and we believe that Medium is an excellent platform for them to tap into a new audience. Besides regular stories, you can also submit short-form stories.
You can write a few short paragraphs introducing your YouTube videos and creating links to your channels or podcasts.
While writers can earn income from stories on Medium, they can also gain new subscribers to YouTube channels. Link to publication: https://medium.com/illumination-on-youtube
This diverse and inclusive publication accepts every topic that Medium supports.
Illumination readers prefer only human-generated content, so we created a new publication to support our writers experimenting with these tools. The new publication is called the Lampshade of Illuminationto support writers invested in AI tools.
We published the conduct guidelines for the Lampshade of Illumination. If you are using AI tools for writing and editing, the following article can be helpful. If you plan to contribute to the new publication, please review it before submitting your stories.
If you are interested in contributing to this new publication, please send your Medium ID by adding a comment “Please add me to Lampshade” in our writer registration form.
All our publication rules apply to this one, too, so please review the onboarding pack especially review the photo handling policy.
This diverse and inclusive publication accepts every topic that Medium supports.
Our Other Publications
In addition, our chief editor keeps all publications-related stories in a separate publication called Illumination’s Blog. This publication can be helpful for new writers to find guiding articles.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz hosts his personal stories in his publication called Euphoria. If you enjoy health, wellness, science, self-improvement, longevity, and fitness type of stories, you may check his personal publication.
Several writers also have their own publications. We listed them in an article to create visibility. You may consider submitting your relevant stories to these niche publications.
Becoming a top writer can be valuable to earn extra income on Medium. Besides, top writer status can increase your chance of gaining more readers.
You may check the accounts of top writers contributing to our publications in this post, and please inform us when you gain the status by leaving a comment on the post so that we can add your account for visibility.
Please check the following link providing guidance on quickly becoming a top writer on Medium.
The fasted way to become a top and influential writer on Medium is writing viral stories. Medium now started a boosting feature. Please use this checklist to increase the chance of your stories for the boost.
Yes, certainly. Your success as a writer is vital to us. Therefore, we propose writing challenges to boost your performance on Medium. These writing challenges can be valuable for your growth as a writer.
Your participation in these challenges can help you gain new followers and readers and can increase reading times. You may join our 100-day writing challenge.We invite writers to this writing prompt.
You mayintroduce yourself and your favorite stories as part of this prompt. These backlinks might increase your reading times.
We also created a challenge for prolific writers interested in posting multiple short stories a day. Here is the challenge: 1,000 Short Posts in 100 Days. Here are more prompts that can help you meet the challenges.
Who are your editors, and what is their role in your publications?
Our editors are writers on Medium. However, they take extra time to support our writers. They understand your needs with empathy and compassion.
Our editors are not paid by our publications or Medium. Their purpose is to help you gain experience and visibility voluntarily. They review your stories, screen harmful materials, provide improvement guidance to new writers, and publish your stories timely.
You can meet them by reading their profiles in this collection. They all have varied backgrounds and support our publications from different time zones.
Yes. Our chief editor regularly analyses viral stories and guides our writers, as writing viral stories is critical to increasing your reading times. Dr Mehmet Yildiz reviewed and assessed viral stories and provided valuable ideas.
Yes, we do. As affiliate marketing is a great opportunity for generating passive income, our chief editor published a book about affiliate marketing and shared it on Medium. This book is free for members.
We only restrict hate speech, porn, conspiracy theories, defamation, and other harmful content for society. Medium does not support publishing these types of harmful content, so please check the platform rules.
We don’t censor content as long as stories meet Medium policies. We see publications as tools to amplify content. We established several publications appealing to different types of readers.
Yes, we select, feature, and curate high-quality, interesting, engaging, and informative stories based on the needs of our readers. Here are some samples:
YouTube is an excellent tool, so we created a channel to help our writers. In 2022, we created a new initiative to help our writers to create bios on YouTube, and Illumination YouTube Coordinator helps writers by creating promotional videos for them. We provided details in the attached article.
If you are interested in creating similar videos, you can contact Illumination YouTube Coordinator on our Slack workspace so that he can add you to our waiting list. He creates a few videos in a week voluntarily.
Do you support different levels of writers?
Our publications support writers at all levels, aspiring, experienced, accomplished, and influential.
All types of contributors are equally important to us. Most experienced writers contribute to Illumination-Curated, and published authors post their book chapters to Illumination Book Chapters. Other publications have from most experienced to aspiring writers.
We encourage new writers to find their voice in a safe and supportive environment. Beginners learn and build skills gradually. Some writers might learn faster. And some may learn slower. Our goal is to create a diverse and inclusive writing and reading group on Medium.
All Medium members are welcome to join our writing and publishing journey. We don’t discriminate. Instead, we always support all levels of writers, help them cross-pollinate, and get benefits from the readers of our publications.
We don’t tolerate toxic behavior in our publications. We remove online bullies and report to Medium. However, we always encourage giving and receiving constructive feedback within the platform rules.
Do you accept self-published stories?
Yes, we accept both draft and self-publish articles. However, we highly recommend draft submissions to gain better exposure from the publication readers. It is your choice.
Self-published stories quickly age and sink to the bottom of the front page. If you have curated articles from closed publications, you are welcome to transfer them to ILLUMINATION-Curated.
We encourage giving a home to previously distributed stories. Contributors who joined us from PSILY moved their stories and gained new readers on ILLUMINATION-Curated.
Do you recommend your contributors write for other publications?
You can join and contribute to other publications. We support your writing and marketing goals as they suit your needs. You don’t need to obtain permission to leave.
All we care about is following Medium rules if you want your stories published in our publications. We don’t compete with other publications. Instead, we collaborate with them.
Can I remove my published articles from other publications and add them to yours?
Yes, it is up to you. You can remove your articles from other pubs or ours if you need to introduce them to a different audience.
Can we leave your publications?
Yes, you leave our publications without any notice or permission. We consider publications as tools for the growth of contributors. We support whatever works for your growth.
Do you help your writers to create their own publications?
Yes. Dr Mehmet Yildiz, owner and chief editor, helped several writers start their publications. He enjoys promoting them in his social circles. If you are interested in creating your own publications, we may help you promote them.
How can we add my stories to your publications?
New writers ask this question frequently. Adding stories to our publications is easy and quick to add articles to publications.
To submit your draft or self-published articles to our pubs, you can click on the three (…) dots in the edit mode placed on the top right part of your screen. You can select your preferred publication and click on the submit button.
When your story is submitted to our publications, editors will review it. If the story meets Medium rules and our guidelines, the editor will publish it. If you don’t see our publications in your list, you need to request access via this weblink.
My account is tagged in your posts as a new writer, but why cannot I submit it to your publications?
If you don’t see our publications on your list, please let us know to add your account again by leaving a comment on this post.
Glitches happen in publications and our process, so some writer accounts disappear beyond our control. We don’t ignore any ethical writer on Medium. Our doors are open to all members who want to serve their readers. We are a catalyst to your success.
Please leave a comment requesting access to our publications or send a new request via this weblink. Alternatively, you can contact Dr Mehmet Yildiz on Slack directly if you receive a request to Slack.
Can we reuse our content on different platforms?
Yes, you can. Repurposing your Medium stories on other platforms can be useful. You can earn additional income
. For example, you may consider sharing your Medium articles on Vocal Media. You can also join Vocal Media challenges at this link.
6 — You may check ILLUMINATION-related articles and writer resources on ILLUMINATION’s Blog publication.
7 — You must check private messages sent by our volunteer editors in your stories. You can see private notes on your story checking * sign.
Where do you host publication-related articles?
We keep publication-related stories on the ILLUMINATION Blog managed by our chief editor. This pub was created to hold all stories related to ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications.
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz keeps a majority of his non-pub-related stories in his personal publication called Euphoria. He can help you create your personal publications and promote them for you if you contact him on Slack workspace.
We created numerous social media platforms to amplify your stories. Details for each item can be found in this story. You may find useful guides to get you started with our social media tools in the following stories.
We tweet your stories after reviewing and publishing them. ILLUMINATION Twitter Account is https://twitter.com/illum_official. You can follow Dr Mehmet Yildiz on Twitter and LinkedIn. He enjoys sharing your stories on several social media tools generously. He has many followers on multiple social media platforms.
We syndicate links of your stories to several Flipboard magazines using Medium’s RSS service. Here are the links to Flipboard Magazines: such as ILLUMINATION on Medium, ILLUMINATION-Curated, and SYNERGY.
We have a writers’ community on Reddit. You can join this community to share links to your stories. We know that Reddit is a useful tool to create further visibility of your content. More information about our social media platforms is in the following articles.
Our editors are volunteers who help writers succeed on Medium. They are also contributing writers. We are grateful to our editors as they review and publish your stories daily on their own time.
You can check their profiles from the following links.
We will add more editor profiles soon. Thank you for reading the profiles of our editors. You can find their profiles in the attached collection for future reference.
We believe that writers want to meet other writers. Our onboarding tools are excellent for meeting new writers. Upon request, we decided to add links to these packs here to give you an opportunity to meet writers who joined our publications.
It is impossible to find 21,000+ writers in a single list. Medium publications cannot handle such a large number. Therefore, we create workarounds for writers to find other writers easily. It is a tedious task for us, but we invest this time to create vitality among writers.
We have many packs but add only recent ones to help you start meeting other contributors easily. Here is the list starting from the most recent.
We have more onboarding packs; however, it is not possible to link them all here. We believe these packs can get you started finding accounts of recently joined writers. Please note that members can only follow 150 accounts on Medium within 24 hours. You may search for ILLUMINATION, and ILLUMINATION Amplifier accounts for older versions of our onboarding packs.
Here is guidance on how to increase your followers on Medium. This story is particularly helpful for beginners who need 100 followers quickly.
We answered common questions and provided essential resources. You can contact Dr Mehmet Yildiz on Slack if this post does not cover your questions.
REMINDER: Writers failing to meet our photo handling policy will be removed from publications. This is our biggest problem wasting the precious time of our volunteer editors and causing publishing delays.
To join our vibrant publications, please send a request via this link. We will help you gain visibility and succeed as a writer on Medium. Please point out the publication name with your Medium account ID in the request.
We’d appreciate your generosity in sharing this post with your friends who might be interested in our publications.
We are an open and supportive group of writers and readers. New members are welcome to join Medium using the following link. As members, writers can monetize content, and readers can read a limitless number of stories.
Thank you for reading the essential information on this pack.
When you have questions, please feel free to contact our owner and chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz on our Slack workspace. He is also happy to speed up publishing your stories if they are delayed 48 hours or more.
Our stories are amplified by ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curator, and ILLUMINATION Amplifier so please consider following or subscribing to these accounts so that you can be informed when they post curated and amplified collections.