How to Break into Medium with Four Strategies
That actually work.
Medium is an exciting place to be a part of. Recently, the platform rolled out more changes to the site, making it more blog-like. There is now more you can do with your Medium homepage to personalize it and have it reflect your personality, or “brand” if you have one.
While it is harder to break into Medium simply because there are more writers than ever before here, it isn’t impossible.
If you’re just jumping on now and want to make a part-time or full-time income, it is still very possible. If you are willing to put in the work.
In 2017, when Medium rolled out the Medium Partner Program, which pays writers based on Medium members’ engagement, writers joined in droves. It is a great way to make money. If it weren’t for Medium I wouldn’t be making as much as I do by working from home.
I’m making close to 4K per month, sometimes less, and sometimes more, Medium’s public data suggests I’m well above the average in terms of earning. Medium’s public data states,
- 55% of writers or publications who wrote at least one story for members earned money.
- 7.1% of active writers earned over $100.
Medium offers the possibility to make money from your stories.
Some writers earn 15K per month, that is where I want to be. And it is entirely possible if I don’t abandon my writing goals.
Here are some things I did in the first six months on Medium to grow my follower count and earn money the first month.
You probably won’t be making $1,000 a month the first month, but I hit that number fairly quickly back in 2019, but who knows, you could write a viral story your first time out, it happens.
It’s possible to make some extra cash if you put in the writing and marketing effort.
Your strategy going forward:
One. Start your own writing challenge.
I need a challenge to motivate myself. So, I picked a day to publish my first story; it was not perfect, and my writing has improved since then. The important thing was that I started.
Then I gave myself the challenge of posting every day.
In June 2019, I started a 30-day challenge of writing and publishing once a day. I didn’t miss one day of publishing. It wasn’t easy, but I made sure I wrote and published once a day, sometimes twice.
What this does.
It forms a habit. The act of showing up forms a habit. Think of it as a small win. You are adding to your identity as a writer. When you show up to write; you are a writer.
The more you do that, you add to the belief that you are a writer.
Every habit is just an obstacle to getting what you want. Running is an obstacle to getting fit. Investing and saving is an obstacle to getting financially stable. A daily writing habit is an obstacle to getting paid for your writing.
Get past the obstacle, and you will see the results of your effort if you stick with it.
At the end of 30 days, your writing muscle will be fit.
Two. Plan for a tough day.
Writing isn’t easy. It requires deep work.
A lot of people who start writing on Medium — even if they see a little success — when it dips, and it will, they give up. I know because I was one of these people. I posted one article in 2016, and when I saw little traction, I didn’t post again until I was serious about sticking with it. When I committed fully, the results were significant.
Medium isn’t a straight trajectory up. It is a slow burn like Pinterest, and a small percentage of your stories will make up the bulk of your income. They compound over time. Some of your stories will have long legs, meaning they will be promoted across the site years from now, especially if the story is curated.
Medium’s algorithm just served up an article on my homepage from 2019 from a writer I follow.
One of my stories that went viral did nothing for the first three months, and then it took off. It died down after the first surge, and they took off again. It currently has over 165K views and still generates income.
You just never know.
That’s why consistent writing and publishing is one strategy often written about by successful writers who have names you recognize.
The writers you hear and read about show up every week, if not every day. They show up come rain or shine, come Saturday or a holiday.
Action you can take.
To plan for a tough day when you want to give up (I want to stop writing every day, but it doesn’t last long), set up your environment to support your habit.
On tough days, you want as many things working in your favor as possible, so you can overcome the urge to give up on your writing dreams.
When you set up your environment to support the habit you want to establish, it reduces friction. When you reduce friction, you make it easier to stick to your goals.
Optimize your environment to make actions easier by reducing friction in your home office or where you write. You’ll have less success showing up for your daily writing habit if you start when your home life is insane or expecting the whole family in town for the holidays. Make your writing habit the path of least resistance. The greater the friction, the less likely a habit will stick.
How to reduce friction:
It takes time to figure out which routine works best for you. When do you have time to write? It should be a time when you have a few uninterrupted hours. When do you have the most energy? Morning, noon, at midnight?
Try to write at the same time every day. I write mostly in the morning when I’m at my sharpest, and the house is at its quietest. Have a specific place where you write — a certain desk. Pick a trigger or a ritual that you do every time you sit down to write. Ritual and pattern signal the body and the brain that it is time to get to work.
Other ways to reduce friction:
- Put your smartphone in the other room.
- Use a timer to write for 40 minutes straight. Stretch for five, and then write for another 40 minutes.
- Don’t have anything on your desk except for a book on writing or a book for inspiration.
- Turn off all notifications on your laptop. Have only one document open, your writing document.
- Use noise-canceling headphones (this can be a trigger that tells your brain it is time to write).
- When you organize a space, like your desk, for an intended purpose, you are priming it to make the next action easy — writing.
Having a ritual helps the writer get into the writing mindset. When I don’t follow the same routine in the morning or wake to a messy desk, I know the day will be rough.
Three. Read writers in your niche.
When I started publishing on Medium, I had one advantage, I’d been reading Medium for years before writing here. I know the content that readers want, and I try to emulate what does well.
Read writers in your niche and write similar stories. But don’t obsess; you are you, and your journey will be different from every other writer’s journey. Bring your view, opinions, and personality to your stories, and you’ll be different from anyone else.
Medium is just like any other social media platform in that engagement counts. Success on Medium comes with consistent writing and publishing and engaging with the community to find what works and make connections with other readers and writers.
Highlight, read, and comment on other’s writer’s work; it adds to engagement, as does responding to comments from readers on your posts. Leave meaningful and thoughtful responses for your audience, although it gets more challenging the more comments you receive. (I’m currently behind on responding to readers’ comments on my articles, but I will get to them.)
There is no gaming the system at Medium. Genuine responses and thoughtful remarks to your audience let them know you are trustworthy and care that they took the time to respond to your article.
I also strongly discourage the follow/unfollow method. It isn’t authentic. Follow people whose writing you really enjoy, who you follow will determine what articles appear on your homepage.
Action plan.
Join Medium-centric Facebook groups and be active in them. You will meet a lot of great writers in these groups. Some that I like are:
Just remember that these are Medium writers who contribute and are a part of the broader Medium community. Take the same professionalism into these groups as you would a job.
If you want to make money from writing, you need to treat it like a job. It can be tempting to add to negative threads in these groups, but I would suggest staying away from the negativity — it will impede your success on Medium; at the very least, you’ll be giving energy to drama when you could be giving energy to your next viral Medium article.
Read, comment, highlight, and clap for the writers you love to read. Read all sorts of stories on Medium, and you will get an idea of the type of quality Medium is looking for.
Four. Focus on quality.
Quality articles land. While success comes from some magical combination of quantity and quality that you’ll figure out by doing it, don’t publish anything but your best writing.
How you do this.
Write articles people want to read. Ask yourself what stories you click on when you open the Medium app. What resonates with you? Chances are, if you are dying to click on a headline, others are as well. Notice what those stories are and write something in the same vein.
- People don’t want to read a story that reads like a personal diary entry.
- Keep the reader in mind when you edit.
- Step away from your story before you edit it. You need a little distance before you edit so that you are coming at it with fresh eyes.
- Write from the standpoint of the reader; what will the reader walk away with after reading your article? You want to make them feel something through emotion, and the way you share emotion is through story. Getting the reader to feel something for your story is why they take action — share, interact, comment, buy your course. If you can move the reader, elicit emotion through a well-written story, you’ve captured the reader.
- Read your story several times before you publish it. Aloud.
- Good writing is in the editing process; this is where you rearrange words, sentences, paragraphs, and cut anything that isn’t serving the story. It is an essential part of writing. Don’t skimp on the editing process.
Readers turn to Medium to help them understand the world more deeply and find ideas that can help them live their lives in a better way.
The Medium Partner Program pays self-published writers; you don’t need an editor, an agent, or a publisher. It is a huge opportunity for the indy writer. Medium is a great opportunity to tell your stories and, in the process, learn how to write better.
It may have been a better time to jump on and earn in 2017, but there is still room to grow as a writer, find your niche, find an audience, and grow your earnings.
Write on.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
