Content Strategy and Freelancing
Here’s Why I Changed My Mind About Short-Form Stories on Medium
After a year of systemic analysis, I found short forms on Medium were not as helpful as I perceived, so I apologize for my initial enthusiasm. Still, they offer value to some.
The 1,000 short form in 100 days challenge did not produce the desired results, but 100 long-form stories in 100 days made a significant impact on the views and reading times of writers.
Background and Context
When Ev Williams announced the short forms in December 2020, I got excited and joined the bandwagon with great enthusiasm.
As an open-minded and curious scientist, I wanted to take the opportunity and relieve the pains of writers who struggled with visibility issues on Medium.
My initial impression was that short forms would be a panacea for the visibility, findability, and readability problems. But my impression did not reflect reality. There was no harm in trying. Like savvy entrepreneurs, I failed fast and cheaply.
Short forms were first introduced in December 2020. As soon as I learned about it, I discussed it with my editorial team, and we unanimously agreed to accept short forms.
So, I created an editorial bulletin and informed the writers of my publications in a story titled ILLUMINATION Accepts Short-Form Stories: Answering questions from hundreds of writers about new short-form story format on Medium.
Since they looked so promising, I investigated the use cases of short forms and posted another article titled Short-Form Stories Not For Income But For Visibility: Think of them as a metaphorical tripwire.
Then I proposed a writing challenge to the community, posting a bulletin titled 1,000 Short Posts in 100 Days: How experienced writers can create more visibility on Medium by taking this writing challenge.
Then I made a mistake due to a blind spot. Medium identified a few of my short forms duplicating each other as I used to copy and paste the content from long forms.
The medium staff was right, as my short forms accidentally caused duplicated content with long forms. Thus, I sincerely depicted my apology for the error. The helpdesk was very supportive as they understood the problem was not intentional.
I immediately corrected them and informed the community with a bulletin titled Warning — Medium’s Algorithm May Flag Your Short-Form Stories as Duplicative of Your Long-Form: You may need to take two important actions today.
As you might know, Medium also does not distribute short-form stories to topics. So they don’t gain as much visibility as the distributed ones. Recently, I also heard rumors that those who frequently posted short forms had lost the opportunity for their long terms stories to be chosen for further distribution.
As a passionate leader in some fields, I always walk my talk. It means that I don’t recommend something I don’t do. It is a life principle for me. What I do might be wrong, but at least I have the experience to articulate my conviction.
I don’t live my life with second-hand knowledge. Instead, I experiment sensibly and apply knowledge by triangulating with existing knowledge, my findings, and the experiences of other people.
How did I study the performance of short forms on Medium?
In this section, I provide an overview of my approach to analyzing the performance of short-form studies without boring readers with research details.
Understanding the approach is essential to assess my results which might mean different things to different readers.
I can assure you that I held no bias apart from my optimism and initial enthusiasm for the benefits of short-form stories. My mistake was to keep my expectations too high. I learned my lessons after the trial.
My approach started with the observation of my short-form stories. Then I reviewed the stats of around 50 writers who joined the initiative. They are relatively new writers whom I mentor to give back to the community.
Upfront, my results might not be typical due to the small size of writers compared to thousands on this platform. However, they might give insights to new writers.
The results in my study might not align with other people as they might be using different observation methods and used different styles of short forms.
I created a few hypotheses, made informed assumptions, and leveraged my content marketing strategy.
The first hypothesis was the more we post, the more visibility the content can gain.
The second hypothesis was that adding links to long-form stories in short form could create backlinks for original stories.
The third hypothesis was new followers through short forms might increase reading times, subscribers, and income of writers.
Using these three hypotheses, I reviewed and recorded the stats of short-form stories. My findings did not support or partially support the three hypotheses that I explained in the next section.
In addition to looking at the stats, I interacted with some writers and obtained their feedback on the progress.
Furthermore, to triangulate the initial findings, I surveyed 80 of my subscribers who regularly read my content and interact with me via email and Slack. I asked them whether they found short-form stories useful.
Since I established a very good relationship with these readers, they were honest about their opinions. They did not hurt my feelings when they gave me realistic feedback.
What do results indicate, and what do they mean to writers?
In this section, I summarize my findings without going into detail.
First of all, none of my short forms gained more than 100 views internally. Some of them gained over 1,000 views from external sources, mainly from Google. It was the same pattern for the stories of other writers that I analyzed.
The average views remained under 100 views in a year. Only one short form of a protege gained around 20,000 views from Google. It was a controversial topic.
No short-form story earned more than $1 based on the lifetime learning stats. When I started the research, I had around eight thousand followers and 350 subscribers on Medium.
I used the typical 150 words to comply with the short-form rules. However, most of the writers I observed used 100 words or fewer on average. Some only used 50 words or just one sentence, such as “check this story titled XYZ.”
After a year, most of the stories did not gain a single view. So I assume that the algorithm does not show them to my followers or new readers on related topics.
I am unsure whether it is a glitch or intentional programming of the algorithm. In either case, it does not matter as they don’t work for me. They did not work for the small group I observed.
All writers who participated in the short-form challenge gained significant followers. Their followers increased between 50% to 300%.
These percentages aligned with the number and frequency of their posts. It means that the more they wrote and the more frequently they posted, the more followers they gained.
The disappointing finding was that none of the participants gained any noticeable reading times or income increases. However, around 12% of the participants gained around a 10% increase in their reading hours.
I assume their income increased as I did not have access to this data. However, some writers who directly interacted with me confirmed this anecdotally.
But as there was no control group, I couldn’t verify whether their short forms made an impact. A few of them posted at least two or more long stories a day. Those who posted more long-form stories gained more followers and reading hours.
I interacted with some writers whom I mentor. Most of them were happy with intangible results but disappointed with tangible ones like reading times.
Some writers expected that views and reading times of their stories would increase and they would earn more money. It was not the case.
However, most participants showed satisfaction with their increased followers. Nevertheless, increasing followers on Medium does not equate with more reading time or income.
It seems that when someone sees a short form, they just click on it and follow the writers hoping they might see something valuable from them in the future. It is just my assumption.
It looks like not many readers really open the original story in the short form. There might be exceptions, like a very compelling heading or statement that intrigues readers.
Analyzing the reader’s perspective created more disappointment. I thought that readers would love short forms and open long stories frequently.
The survey results of 80 subscribers indicated that only 17 of them found short forms helpful, but they didn’t always open them. Interestingly only three of them regularly opened the links for long-form stories.
Out of 80, 23 of them informed me that they did not click on long forms from the stories because they assumed they were clickbait links.
I was grateful that they opened some of my long stories in short forms. I did not feel bad about those who did not, as I understood their concerns.
After I shared my findings on the forum, one of the proteges humorously said that there was no way millions of short stories would bring six-figure income to writers on Medium.
Conclusions and Takeaways
As soon as I gained these insights, I informed my proteges. Gratefully, none of them felt upset with the results, even though they felt disappointed as their expectations did not manifest.
It was a valuable lesson for my proteges and me. Therefore, I want to spread the word and inform other writers who might believe that short-form stories are a panacea for increasing reading times and income directly.
My findings show that there is no direct correlation between the number and frequency of short-form posts with views and reading times. However, there might be an indirect benefit, such as the findability of content on this platform.
After seeing no noticeable benefits, several proteges and I stopped posting short-form stories. However, some of them still believe in intangible value, and they continue. I agree with them.
We all have different goals and approaches to content development and marketing. Something working for one person might not work for another one.
My findings do not mean that short-form stories are entirely useless. They might still bring some value to some writers. For example, short-form stories might be helpful for beginners who need to gain 100 followers to be eligible for the Medium Partner Program.
In fact, I helped several writers meet this goal and provided practical guidance in a story titled Beginners: Increase Followers on Medium In Six Easy and Proven Steps: Followers matter to new writers. Here’s how to gain more followers meaningfully without stressing too much.
Another use case is increasing audience, such as subscribers. For example, some of my proteges gained new paid subscribers as they shared their short forms on social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Pinterest, and Facebook. I created several tools to share stories on these platforms and guided them on how to use social media smartly.
My goal in this story was to inform writers that experienced writers should not keep their expectations for the value of short forms too high as they might get disappointed like me and some of my proteges.
The key point is that short-form stories can bring intangible benefits such as increasing followers and perhaps subscribers. However, they don’t seem to contribute to views and reading times substantially. There might be exceptions, of course.
I have confidence in my observations. However, the results in my study might not align with others as they might be using different observation methods and use different styles of short forms.
This story is not professional advice. I have no intention of misleading people, so please do your own research to make your decision.
I also noticed that some publications specialize in short forms. However, my proteges mentioned that one of them got overwhelmed, and editors stopped accepting the works of new writers.
I’d love to obtain feedback from contributors of short-form publications. They might have obtained different results. It will be great to learn from experiences of each other.
Posting content regularly can bring both tangible and intangible benefits. The 1,000 short forms in 100 days challenge did not produce the desired results, disappointing us.
However, 100 long-form stories in 100 days made a significant impact on the views and reading times of writers, taking them to another level on their writing journey. Writing challenges can bring numerous benefits to writers and delight readers.
Participants of the 100-day-long story challenge became top writers and even tasted viral stories bringing them substantial income. I plan to share the results of the 100-day challenge in another post.
Interested readers might read my preliminary report posted in 2021 in the attached bulletin titled 100 Day Challenge for New Writers to Shine on Medium: How to grow and become a top writer on Medium in three months.
I’d love to obtain your observations and the kind of results that you might gain from using short-form stories on Medium.
Epilogue
As I keep highlighting, followers don’t mean much on Medium for established writers, as I see it as a vanity metric rather than a gold standard for outcomes.
However, subscribers mean a lot, as I documented in a story titled Here’s Why Subscribers Can Produce 50 Times Better Results Than Followers for Freelance Writers: How I gained 100K subscribers in a decade. Twelve powerful strategies, tactics, and techniques to create a solid mailing list.
Successful writers create a loyal audience. I provided guidance on a story titled 8 Proven Tips to Build a Rock-Solid Reading Audience on Medium: A game-changing strategy for freelance writers to turn loyal readers into advocates for sustainable business outcomes.
In addition, freelance writers can triple their income by repurposing their content, as I documented in a story titled Here’s How To Triple Your Writing Income Methodically.
Besides writing stories that can guarantee views and reading times, and increasing the chance of viral stories, turning stories into e-books can contribute to tripling income.
I explained the benefits in a story titled Here’s How to Create A 30,000 Words E-book in a Month: Practical steps to produce a manuscript with 1,000 words a day.
Quantity matters! Nevertheless, the quality of our articles is crucial. Therefore, in addition to obtaining review from peers, self-editing is critical.
I provided a practical checklist for writers that can significantly increase the quality of stories and improve stats on this platform. Here is the link to the Essential Checklist for Writers and Bloggers: Improve the quality and readability of your stories.
We experience a significant decline in stats, but I feel optimistic the situation might change soon, and writers can gain more views and reading times.
Here’s my perspective on the recent situation on this platform: I Started Feeling Unappreciated on Medium, Just Like Jessica Wildfire.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
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