Five Overlooked Beginner Mistakes That Cost Me on Medium.
And you should avoid it at all costs.
#1. You have to get 100 followers before monetising your story
This is a common misconception individuals have when signing up for Medium because of the previously established model.
Medium has since updated its requirements.
This is no longer a requirement; so the quicker you apply to the medium partnership program, the quicker you can start earning from your story.
The only current criteria are:
- You have to be a medium member
- Have published a story within the last 6 months
- Be located in an eligible country
- Be at least 18 years old
#2. Self Publishing the first story without followers on account resulting in no views.
This, as a new writer, can be disconcerting, considering the time and effort spent honing the article or prose before finally pressing submit.
The solution?
Submit to publications with established following that are geared towards newcomers for your first story.
Publications like:
Use this first step to hone your craft and systems. Understand what content you will be posting and your strategy.
#3. You can include links to older articles in your new Medium articles.
The art of self-promotion.
It took several published articles to realise that this is something people did within their articles.
Used sparingly; it is very effective at driving traffic to other articles.
It’s easy to perform:
Click the embedded link option
Paste the URL of the Medium article you wish to link to your new article
Press Enter.
#4. Medium is not just about writing and scurrying away. You have to engage with the community.
Engaging with the community is key to building your audience. So follow these three steps:
- Read a lot of articles: the more you read other people’s articles that you like, the more you can write better content.
- If you stumble onto an article you like, make sure you leave a comment and clap.
- Follow people whose articles you love.
#5. Wall of text: Not spacing out text.
One of the biggest mistakes of beginner writers on Medium is the sin of not spacing out text.
Huge paragraphs have the effect of boring a reader, and in this climate of short and quick media; short concise paragraphs are very effective at retaining readers’ attention.
Ways to space out text:
- Large Quotations for key points
Use quotations: click the quotation twice to create this for key points within your text
2. Smaller quotations when appropriate: typically for quoting studies
Utilise quotations when appropriate
3. Utilise images when relevant to create the spacing.
Copyright-free images can be procured from different places however the most used site on Medium is Unsplash
4. Use subheadings when applicable.
Subheading
5. Use bullet points and numbered lists.
6. Use the three dotted lines to break up sections.
By reading these I hope you skip these mistakes I made and start creating Medium-worthy articles.
Thanks for reading
