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noticing that toll more and more each day. I spend hours writing and revising quality stories… and the truth of the matter is very few readers are seeing them. My stories about Medium still do okay, but my stories on <i>pretty much anything else </i>are getting mostly ignored.</p><p id="8b37">On Monday I had a break in my teaching schedule and I was able to write three new Medium pieces from scratch. One about 9 things you should do when you wake up took me two hours. I just poured my heart out on the page, writing about life lessons and fiction writing and Medium etiquette. On Monday I gave this site my all, and I was excited to see what might be in store when I published these stories yesterday.</p><p id="6439">Well, as it turned out, they all kind of fell flat…</p><figure id="c95c"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*ggPQEuyi1yaXOThGwJrIkA.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="21f4">I took that screenshot about eight hours after I had published them. Sure, these pieces will get more reads and claps in the hours and days to come. That screenshot isn’t a clear representative of how these three pieces might do for me a week or a month from now.</p><p id="e5b4">But still, two or three months ago, these stories would have done a whole lot better, certainly those bottom two if they had been curated. There are just so many writers on Medium these days, it’s hard to stand out if you’re not curated, simple as that.</p><p id="bbdd">I thought I could still manage. I have more than 3,000 Medium followers, and more than 1,100 followers to my Medium publication, and more than 500 subscribers to my e-mail list. I’ve written nearly 1,300 articles for Medium in the course of nineteen months. I’ve produced a <i>lot </i>of content.</p><p id="0527">You would think even <i>without</i> curation I would still be earning quite a bit, but as it turns out, I’ll only make it to $600 in November on Medium, and that’s if I’m lucky. That’s a far cry from my usual$ 900 to $1100 per month I’ve been making on the site since May.</p><p id="fe92">I say all this to tell you that even if you’ve had some relative success on Medium in the past few months, it’s very well possible your numbers will drop considerably if you don’t get at least the occasional Medium story curated. I mean, just look at the difference in the amount of reads among my inspirational author series posts of one that got curated and one that didn’t.</p><p id="b487">Curated…</p><figure id="6058"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*Z07799L3pBu5YV0ojFMZhw.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="0576">Not curated…</p><figure id="bf89"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*y4Gm3_malCPh0sszqpGxQQ.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><p id="5d0c">I’m not saying that second one would have hit 168 reads by any means, but it certainly would have hit 50 or more I bet if it had been curated!</p><h1 id="889e">So this leads me to the ultimate question: what am I to do about it?</h1><p id="82e8">You used to be able to e-mail Medium to get them to resume reviewing and curating your work. I’ve e-mailed them three times in the past ten days, and I get basically the same response back: <i>there’s nothing we can do about your curation concerns at this point.</i></p><p id="5b51">Okay, so writing quality work isn’t helping, writing lots of content isn’t helping. So what is there to do?</p><p id="d2d0"><a href="https://medium.com/@JasonADeane"><b>Jason Deane</b></a> gives some great advice in an article he published on Monday, which opened my eyes to some steps I can take in the days to come…</p><div id="284f" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/in-curation-jail-finally-your-way-out-a113f1c83b7f"> <div> <div> <h2>In Curation Jail? Finally, Your Way Out</h2> <div><h3>After 4 months inside, my parole came through. Here’s how you can do it too.</h3></div> <di

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v><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*n6mIHIjKk8Ni5llcIttcxQ.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><p id="88af">Both Jason and Shaunta have recommended that the best thing I can do at this point is get my writing published in<i> larger publications </i>on Medium. This is a practice I’ve mostly stayed away from, mostly because I like to publish my work when I want it to be published, and I get antsy when I have to wait five days, seven days, two weeks, waiting to hear back from a publication.</p><p id="2923">But now, finally, after nineteen months of writing for Medium, I’m finally ready to gain some courage, think outside the box, and start writing work for the major publications on Medium. It’s something I’ve felt in my gut I should have been doing months ago, and now I finally have an incentive to get working on that aspect of my Medium writing career in the months to come!</p><p id="1922">Since I will try writing at least two to three new articles a week specifically for these major publications, I have decided I will now reduce my output to two Medium stories a day instead of the usual three. There might be the occasional day where three get posted, but for now, I’m going to aim for two. It’s time to put 100% focus on quality over quantity.</p><h1 id="0e32">It’s time to do anything I can to get out of curation jail!</h1><p id="f36f">Shaunta recommended that if for whatever reasons I can never get out of it, it’s probably in my best interest to create a new Medium account and start over from scratch.</p><p id="9076">It’s so hard to imagine starting over on this site, mostly because I’ve written so much content over the course of a year and a half and have gathered the amount of followers that I have, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be successful on this site.</p><p id="2c3a">It’s so important, no matter what stage of Medium writing you’re in, to make changes when you need to, to take risks and try new things and show a little courage once in awhile. It’s something I instill in you every week in my stories about writing for Medium, and yet I’ve definitely shown a little too much fear when it comes to putting myself out there more and submitting new work to major Medium publications.</p><p id="8242">I’m going to give this new practice a try in the weeks to come, and we’ll see what happens. Cross your fingers I might be able to break out of curation jail one of these days, and I wish the same for any of you trying to break out, too.</p><p id="2d05">This process can be super frustrating at times — trust me, I know — but as long as you believe in your writing and believe in yourself and believe that you can grow your earnings on the site by switching gears and doing something scary and new, you<i> will</i> be able to make things happen eventually, I guarantee it!</p> <figure id="3a97"> <div> <div> <img class="ratio" src="http://placehold.it/16x9"> <iframe class="" src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fupscri.be%2Fa051df-2%3Fas_embed%3Dtrue&dntp=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fupscri.be%2Fa051df-2%2F&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=upscri" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="400" width="800"> </div> </div> </figure></iframe></div></div></figure><p id="c1da">—</p><p id="1d92"><b>Brian Rowe</b> is a writer, teacher, and constant dreamer. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his BA in Film from Loyola Marymount University. He’s on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/brianroweauthor/">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/mrbrianrowe">Twitter</a>, and you can read more of his work at <a href="http://brianrowebooks.com">brianrowebooks.com</a>.</p></article></body>

Help! I’m in Curation Jail on Medium and I Want to Break Free!

Okay, gotcha, so this is what curation jail feels like…

I didn’t believe it for the longest time, but it’s true — I’m in curation jail on Medium.

I’ve been writing on Medium since May 1, 2018, and there have certainly been stretches of time when I wasn’t curated much.

Last summer I was being curated almost every day, which was awesome, but in September and October I noticed I wasn’t being curated as often, and that was okay. I was still producing quality work every day. I was still getting lots of reads and claps.

About two weeks ago, right around the time the earnings system changed on Medium, I recognized I hadn’t been curated for anything in a while. Still, I figured I was just being paranoid. That things would pick up eventually and more of my pieces would be curated soon.

So I spent even more time writing my pieces, revising my pieces, making them the absolute best I possibly could. I know articles about Medium don’t get curated, but I figured at least my pieces about fiction writing could start getting noticed by the curators again.

It wasn’t until a fewdays ago that my pal Shaunta Grimes pointed out that I might be in curation jail. I didn’t know what that meant. But she said there was actually a really easy way to find out. I just had to click on the Details section of my published Medium stories and look for a specific kind of language.

If I saw the phrase “high volume,” uh oh, watch out. Because that meant curators weren’t even looking at my work anymore. I could write the best Medium content in the universe… and they wouldn’t even consider me.

So I looked at my last few published pieces, and there it was, the dreaded phrasing. I have a red flag on me or something right now. Medium curators are ignoring everything I publish.

I did some digging and saw that this started about a month ago, on October 19. My last article ever curated was on October 17. The three articles I published on October 18 have a particular phrasing, like this one…

The key phrase there that says curators looked at that piece is “Read our Curation Guidelines to see what curators look for.” That’s what you want to see there if your latest piece isn’t curated.

But then, starting on October 19, and for every single Medium story I’ve published after that (about 100 stories at this point), the language has read like this…

The key phrase that says curators did NOT look at the piece is “Our curators were not able to review this story for distribution in topics due to high volume.” If you see that phrase, you’re doomed, you’re dust.

So are you completely out of luck on Medium if you’re no longer curated?

Until maybe a week or so ago, I thought to myself, it’s not the end of the world if I’m no longer curated. I’ll just keep producing great work day after day, three stories a day or maybe even four, and things will work out, I’ll still be able to make close to or a little less than what I’ve been making on Medium in the previous months.

The problem is… I won’t. Not getting curated for the last month has absolutely taken a toll, and I’m noticing that toll more and more each day. I spend hours writing and revising quality stories… and the truth of the matter is very few readers are seeing them. My stories about Medium still do okay, but my stories on pretty much anything else are getting mostly ignored.

On Monday I had a break in my teaching schedule and I was able to write three new Medium pieces from scratch. One about 9 things you should do when you wake up took me two hours. I just poured my heart out on the page, writing about life lessons and fiction writing and Medium etiquette. On Monday I gave this site my all, and I was excited to see what might be in store when I published these stories yesterday.

Well, as it turned out, they all kind of fell flat…

I took that screenshot about eight hours after I had published them. Sure, these pieces will get more reads and claps in the hours and days to come. That screenshot isn’t a clear representative of how these three pieces might do for me a week or a month from now.

But still, two or three months ago, these stories would have done a whole lot better, certainly those bottom two if they had been curated. There are just so many writers on Medium these days, it’s hard to stand out if you’re not curated, simple as that.

I thought I could still manage. I have more than 3,000 Medium followers, and more than 1,100 followers to my Medium publication, and more than 500 subscribers to my e-mail list. I’ve written nearly 1,300 articles for Medium in the course of nineteen months. I’ve produced a lot of content.

You would think even without curation I would still be earning quite a bit, but as it turns out, I’ll only make it to $600 in November on Medium, and that’s if I’m lucky. That’s a far cry from my usual $900 to $1100 per month I’ve been making on the site since May.

I say all this to tell you that even if you’ve had some relative success on Medium in the past few months, it’s very well possible your numbers will drop considerably if you don’t get at least the occasional Medium story curated. I mean, just look at the difference in the amount of reads among my inspirational author series posts of one that got curated and one that didn’t.

Curated…

Not curated…

I’m not saying that second one would have hit 168 reads by any means, but it certainly would have hit 50 or more I bet if it had been curated!

So this leads me to the ultimate question: what am I to do about it?

You used to be able to e-mail Medium to get them to resume reviewing and curating your work. I’ve e-mailed them three times in the past ten days, and I get basically the same response back: there’s nothing we can do about your curation concerns at this point.

Okay, so writing quality work isn’t helping, writing lots of content isn’t helping. So what is there to do?

Jason Deane gives some great advice in an article he published on Monday, which opened my eyes to some steps I can take in the days to come…

In Curation Jail? Finally, Your Way Out

After 4 months inside, my parole came through. Here’s how you can do it too.

medium.com

Both Jason and Shaunta have recommended that the best thing I can do at this point is get my writing published in larger publications on Medium. This is a practice I’ve mostly stayed away from, mostly because I like to publish my work when I want it to be published, and I get antsy when I have to wait five days, seven days, two weeks, waiting to hear back from a publication.

But now, finally, after nineteen months of writing for Medium, I’m finally ready to gain some courage, think outside the box, and start writing work for the major publications on Medium. It’s something I’ve felt in my gut I should have been doing months ago, and now I finally have an incentive to get working on that aspect of my Medium writing career in the months to come!

Since I will try writing at least two to three new articles a week specifically for these major publications, I have decided I will now reduce my output to two Medium stories a day instead of the usual three. There might be the occasional day where three get posted, but for now, I’m going to aim for two. It’s time to put 100% focus on quality over quantity.

It’s time to do anything I can to get out of curation jail!

Shaunta recommended that if for whatever reasons I can never get out of it, it’s probably in my best interest to create a new Medium account and start over from scratch.

It’s so hard to imagine starting over on this site, mostly because I’ve written so much content over the course of a year and a half and have gathered the amount of followers that I have, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be successful on this site.

It’s so important, no matter what stage of Medium writing you’re in, to make changes when you need to, to take risks and try new things and show a little courage once in awhile. It’s something I instill in you every week in my stories about writing for Medium, and yet I’ve definitely shown a little too much fear when it comes to putting myself out there more and submitting new work to major Medium publications.

I’m going to give this new practice a try in the weeks to come, and we’ll see what happens. Cross your fingers I might be able to break out of curation jail one of these days, and I wish the same for any of you trying to break out, too.

This process can be super frustrating at times — trust me, I know — but as long as you believe in your writing and believe in yourself and believe that you can grow your earnings on the site by switching gears and doing something scary and new, you will be able to make things happen eventually, I guarantee it!

—

Brian Rowe is a writer, teacher, and constant dreamer. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his BA in Film from Loyola Marymount University. He’s on Facebook and Twitter, and you can read more of his work at brianrowebooks.com.