Five Truths to Maximize your Success on Medium

Five suggestions for maintaining a happy writing life while reaching your goals for writing on Medium.

It seems that everyone who publishes on Medium writes a “How To” or “Hacks for” or “Tips and Tricks” article providing advice for succeeding on Medium. Although it has taken me some time to get around to this, there are several things that I haven’t seen in other advice articles. Some of these are basic suggestions, and others deal more with your mindset as a Medium author.

1. Determine what you mean by “success.” This may seem obvious, but it’s something you should to do when you first start out. Success is different for different people.

Some Medium writers have full time jobs and their effort on Medium is a stress release or hobby. Others who have jobs, write on Medium to supplement their income perhaps in the category of beer money rather than out of necessity. For some writers, Medium is their main source of income. Then there are those who aren’t concerned so much with the money they make here but are more interested in increasing their reputation as an expert, their popularity as a writer or simply the number of people who read their work.

The way you go about creating work and publishing it on Medium will depend on what your goals are for writing here. Don’t feel like you must have the same goals as other writers. Medium is a diverse platform that respects writers of all types and those with different goals and ideas of success. You are welcome here no matter what your purpose for writing on this platform is. I wrote an article on defining success that you might like to read to get a better handle on what success means to you.

2. Don’t compare yourself to others. You will undoubtedly come across people who are making a lot money on this platform or who have tens of thousands of views. There are different reasons why this might be the case, but for the majority of writers here to achieve these types of outcomes, if they ever do, it takes consistent work writing new posts and self promotion.

If you think that these types of outcomes are the norm, you will feel disappointed when you fail to achieve what other writers have achieved. You may also wonder about your skill, talent, ability and capacity to become a success. This will eat into your motivation to continue writing or to keep working at the level you need to in order to succeed.

We aren’t likely to put in huge amounts of effort when we believe little will come of it. Maybe you’ll be one of those people who succeed beyond your wildest dreams but it is more likely, that achieving any notable following or income will take time, patience, perseverance and plain old hard work.

3. Marketing and self promotion go hand in hand with writing. Following up on the previous point, you aren’t likely to succeed here if your goals are a sizable income or tons of recognition and readers if you don’t market yourself. This is something most writers have trouble with. However, the days of publishers marketing their work while they are just responsible for the actual writing are over.

You need to find outlets to list links to your stories and find ways to create back links.. Some of the ways you can do this include social media sites, other writers willing to promote you on their blogs or websites, experts to give positive reviews of your work, bookmarking sites, email lists and networks to promote your work.

Self promotion and marketing are things you have to do regularly. I usually do this first thing in the morning and while not all sites work the same, this can be a good practice. This is because on many sites your link or comment with a back link only stays visible on the front page as long as there aren’t enough other stories to push it down to the second page. More visibility equals more views and follows.

4. Determine the best writing and publishing schedule for you. Many “How to Succeed on Medium” posts, indicate that successful Medium writers publish every day or more than once a day. While this is great for those who can do it, for many, keeping up this pace is overwhelming. Trying to force yourself to publish more frequently than you’re comfortable with can lead to burnout and not wanting to or being able to keep writing.

There are some people I know who tried to follow this advice and published one or more articles every day for weeks, reached a point where they couldn’t do it anymore. In the first couple of weeks they were excited. They managed to come up with topics, which may not have always been overly novel but which they had something to say about. In the third week, it got tougher but they settled in and still published daily. At the beginning of the fourth week they got another burst of energy as they got closer to the report for the last week of the month.

After they saw their number of views, reads, follows and what they made that month, they often felt discouraged. They usually kept pushing themselves to continue through the second month and often the third as well, but when they didn’t see the results they wanted by the end of the third month, they gave up. Writing had become tedious and they had lost the joy they previously felt when creating a new piece. They didn’t see enough of a benefit in other outcomes like readers gained or money earned that compensated them for what was now just work.

Not everyone is cut out to write one or more new articles every day without a break. If you can do this great. If not, cut yourself some slack and figure out what is the best schedule for you. Some people write several rough drafts on Monday and then come back to them during the week to complete and edit them. Some people keep a journal where they keep a list of ideas they get from reading other posts, the news, or by other things they experience in their day to day lives. They then use those to create posts daily.

Some people spend tons of time researching and developing ideas so that the writing process is lengthier. Other people are great at composing opinion pieces or posts that are discussions of something they believe or a problem they have that they either solved or are hoping to solve. Some people need to take a break after they’ve written something to recharge their batteries while others can go from one piece to the next without any trouble.

Everyone is different and while I know you want to be successful on Medium, you can’t do this if you burn out. Find the best writing frequency for you that allows you to continue to enjoy the writing process.

5. Balance submissions to publications with posts you publish on your own page. One of the things I struggle with is the need for reinforcement after I finish writing a new article. For me, this comes in the form of publishing it. I tend to get impatient when I write something and submit it to a publication and it takes days for them to review and publish it. When it comes to the end of the week and I have several pieces that are still being reviews, it can be hard for me to find the motivation to write another article.

While articles in publications often get more views and result in higher earnings and more followers, deciding to submit every article you write to a publication may lead to delays in them being published. If you are like me and need to have work published regularly to feel like you are achieving your goals, you may be better off publishing some articles on your page instead of submitting them to an editor. This way they can be published immediately.

I think it can be good to strike a balance between articles you submit to publications and those you don’t. I usually submit my more substantial and longer articles and my creative writing to publications. I write shorter posts which take less research and less time to publish on my page. This strategy can also help you publish regularly instead of having several that are published on one day and nothing else for the rest of the week.

I think one of the secrets to succeeding on Medium is to remember to always view yourself as an individual. It doesn’t matter what others are doing to succeed. If something doesn’t fit your needs regarding writing or your style of working it is unlikely to help you in the long run.

Asking for feedback or suggestions from others or reading articles about Medium can definitely benefit you. But this will only be the case if you can use the advice in a way that helps you achieve a satisfying work routine. Learn what strategies work for you and use them to benefit your writing life.

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This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +430,678 people.

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