How To Get Added as a Writer to Medium Publications

Tips designed to help you earn the greatest visibility for your articles

One of the best ways to leverage Medium for publicity is to have your work featured in a publication. Some of the largest Medium publications have hundreds of thousands of followers and their home pages receive tens of thousands of visits per day. Being featured in a publication gives your article the kind of boost that can lead to enhanced visibility, greater engagement, and significant earnings.

Writing for Medium publications follows a similar process to submitting to any other type of magazine or journal. Some publications have “submit” or “contribute” buttons right on their home page, but others require writers to go through a more complex process. In this article we’ll discuss a few different methods you can use to get added as a writer to Medium publications.

Follow the publication and the editors

Before you even think about submitting, you should read a dozen or so articles on the publication. You should leave comments on all of these articles, become followers of the editors, and clap for their work.

With any luck, you’ll make enough of an impression that by the time you are ready to send a draft, they will recognize you. Medium is set up for interaction, and you really don’t have to cold submit anywhere.

Preparing a draft

Before you ask to be added as a writer to Medium publications, you need to write an article. It can sometimes be difficult to get the attention of an editor, and you don’t want to blow your shot by not having an article ready.

Be sure to write your draft to the formatting specifications of the publication.

Most publications prefer to evaluate an article that is still in draft form which has not been previously published. Once you have written your article, click on the three buttons in the upper right hand corner.

Go down to “Share draft link” and click to get the URL of your draft. You’ll need this URL for when you fill out the submit request forms on various publications.

When you have been added as a writer to a publication, you will be able to use the menu item to submit directly from there.

Finding the contribute form

Keep in mind that not every publication on Medium is open to receiving new writers. Others make it very easy. The first thing you should do if you wish to write for a publication is see if anything is listed on the landing page. Here is an example from The Writing Cooperative.

Clicking on “contribute” takes you to the submission guidelines that also contains formatting information. After you’ve read these, you’ll eventually be taken to their request form that looks like this:

The Start Up has a request form that looks like this:

Sending drafts in an email

Some publications specifically request that you send them drafts in an email. Here is an example from the submission page of P.S. I Love You.

Query Letter

The best practice is to include a brief cover letter. I would recommend not more than four lines. Be sure to list a couple relevant achievements in writing.

A good example of a query letter would be something like:

Hello,

I am a well-established writer with over 20 years of experience, but I am relatively new to Medium. I’ve had multiple works selected for curation and I’m a top writer in travel. Please consider the following draft for publication.

Thanks for your time and consideration!

Be sure to include the draft link. The sooner you get an editor actually looking at one of your articles, the better your chance of getting added as a writer.

Harvesting emails

Some publications say they are open to contributors but there is no form and no email. In these cases, your best bet is to scroll down to the bottom of the publication’s landing page and look for the “about” button:

Clicking on this will take you to a page that lists all the editors and writers of the publication. If the editors list their emails in their profile, send your draft there:

Keep in mind that many of these editors get hundreds of emails a day and many are deleted unread. Don’t become discouraged if you don’t hear back. The best practice is to send an email and give the publication about a week to evaluate it. If you don’t hear back, you should submit elsewhere.

Contribute requests with Smedian

Smedian is an accessory to Median that allows you to promote publications, share articles, and send contribution requests. They have a wonderful list of Median’s top publications listed here.

Here is what their top publication list looks like. Note the little green “contribute” buttons:

You can link your account to Smedian for no cost and then you can click on “contribute” buttons to your heart’s content. Once you click on the button, you will be taken to another page that allows you to paste in writing samples or draft links.

Smedian works pretty well, but I’ve had more success getting invited to publications via forms and emails.

Quick turnaround

Writing for Medium is fun once you get accepted to a variety of publications. You can send off a draft that morning and have it be accepted and published later that afternoon. I do virtually all of my writing on Medium through publications because I appreciate the extra traffic they afford me.

It might take several tries to be added as a writer. Don’t be discouraged. The nice thing about Medium is that you can begin by submitting to the top publications, and then just travel down the list if the article is rejected. You’re certain to find a place for all of your articles sooner or later.

It can take a while to fully understand what a publication is looking for. As part of your work on Medium, you should be reading and commenting on other articles. Comments are a great way to get the right kind of attention from the editors that ultimately decide whether to accept or reject your work.

If you’d like to write for my publication, you can contact me here:

Good luck in your quest to get added as a writer to Medium publications!