How I Got Back What I Paid For My Medium Membership in 2 Weeks
The lessons I’ve learned during my first successful month on the platform
I plead guilty. I have just posted an article about my January earnings on Medium. And it got even worse than that: I immediately felt the urge to write about what I learned from that first month on the platform.
I know, these are like the least original articles anyone can come up with, but I found that I actually read lots of them with genuine interest and I thought that maybe I might inspire somebody as well
If you’re interested in the original article, here’s the link:
Meanwhile, let’s move to what I did and didn’t, what strategies I’m planning to keep, and what will go to the garbage. Obviously, this is only my personal opinion, and I encourage you to disagree with me!
1. Write for yourself
Probably the most important one on the list. I joined Medium because it seemed like a place where I could finally share what I wanted to share. Not what I’m paid for.
I think we should love our own articles. We should like to read them all over again. Let’s not fall into the trap of “What sells” or “What does the audience want.” How about what you want? Write about that instead, and I’m sure it’ll be so ten times better. Because when you write about something true to you, something that is your real passion, it always shows.
2. Don’t ‘niche down’
This leads to point two — I’m not gonna ‘niche down.’ You hear that everywhere: “If you want to succeed on Medium, you need to pick your niche!”
Well, I want to write about my fucked up cat as well as my mushroom trips. I want to teach people how to travel cheaply but also share what a pain in the ass my alcoholic father is. And I’m planning to keep on doing that, because are we really all here just to “be successful?” Or are we here to share our stories and become better writers?
I understand that other members are more likely to follow us if they see that we write in a ‘niche’ they’re interested in. But is the amount of followers more important than you having fun with your writing? If you usually write about meditation and mindfulness, but all of a sudden, you feel like writing a true-crime story about a murderous monk, please.
Go for it.
Plus, if you want to look at it from a strictly ‘profitable’ point of view, isn’t it actually better exposure to write on many different subjects for various publications instead of focusing just on a few of them?
3. Fuck the SEO
Aren’t you tired of it? It’s all everybody on the Internet ever talks about anymore. Being a freelance writer these days requires 60% digital marketing, 25% advertising, and only 15% of actual writing skills.
I understand how important SEO is for your website to be discovered on crowded Google, but Medium is our safe haven. This platform comes with its own audience, so you don’t have to fight the algorithm for readers. And there’s the boost program, which actually promotes true, human-written, worthy stories instead of keyword-stuffed posts on the “10 Best Ways To Brush Your Teeth”.
Just to avoid any confusion, I’m not saying you shouldn’t write about SEO. There are plenty of amazing articles about it here and plenty of readers who want and need them. But I don’t think we necessarily have to optimize each story we want to post on Medium to please the mysterious algorithm. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the creators of this platform were aiming for.
So, if Google Keyword Planner tells you to name your article: “The Best Cat Toys You Can Find Online,” but what you actually wanna call it is: “These Are Fucking Dope, My Cat Is Going Crazy,” follow your heart.
I am so much more likely to click the second one anyway.
4. Promote yourself in a conscious way
I have to admit I joined all the Medium Facebook groups I could find, and I posted every new article I wrote on each one of them. I learned a lot in the process, and I’ll certainly be modifying this strategy in the future.
I think this is extremely helpful when you are just starting out on the platform, like me. You meet many new writers, get your first followers and some initial engagement. What I don’t like is this ‘clap for clap’ approach, which, I have to confess, I adopted without even noticing it.
There are so many people who will ask for engagement right at the beginning of their post before you even have a chance to look at the title. That’s odd for me. People will engage if they like your article. I tried a modified version where I’d explain that the amount of claps you give actually reflects in the earnings of the writer (I didn’t know that for the first 3 weeks), but even that didn’t feel right.
Now, I simply write something like, “In case you’re in need of a little cat humor today,” plus my link. I hope that only the people who find my article genuinely interesting will click. Because when you’re taking an honest look at your usual Facebook interaction on this groups it kinda goes like this:
You click an article you‘re not even remotely interested in. You skim it, highlight some completely random words, and then leave a comment: “I read more than 30 seconds, left 50 claps and a comment, please reciprocate.” The other person obviously feels compelled to do the same, even if they’re 100% aware that you didn’t read a word from their article and they’re not interested in the one that you sent either. The whole thing starts to feel kinda… Robotic.
I think these Facebook groups are great, but it would be even better if we all tried to engage only with the articles that are actually interesting to us. I mean, what’s the sense in forcing ourselves to read a story that we don’t give a shit about just so that another person who doesn't give a shit about our story forces themselves to read it too?
Aren’t we missing the point? Again?
5. You don’t have to publish daily
I think it’s amazing if you challenged yourself to write an article every day and you stuck to it. Good for you! But I also think that if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons (like: “This is the best way to earn more money!”), you are quickly gonna burn out and compromise the quality of your writing.
I published 11 articles in January. I like to write when I’m inspired, sleep on my articles, and check their grammar and punctuation multiple times. Sometimes, I want a certain story to appear in some particular publication, and I don’t mind waiting a few days (sometimes weeks) until they accept it. I really don’t believe we need to publish every day cause otherwise, our followers will forget we exist. I’ve got enough of that bullshit on Instagram.
That being said, I’m also kinda lazy. I might try to write a little bit more in February because my ‘articles ideas’ notebook is exploding.
Another thing I wanna do is to keep my articles under 5 minutes cause that’s more or less when my own attention spam starts to vanish. On that note, I hope you enjoyed that article, and I really hope I didn’t piss anybody off. It was definitely not my intention.
Agata Szymula is a travel addict with an impressive 11$ writing income a month. She spends it all on coffee, even though she’s been trying to quit for five years now. Agata’s biggest dream is to become a better writer and one day be able to buy food as well. She hates writing about herself in 3rd person, but she made an exception this time cause she saw cool people on Medium do it. If you want to support her addiction, you can buy her the next coffee ❤