How to Get Published in Publications on Medium

Learn the many avenues you can take to get your stories in front of your target audience.

Publishing your ideas on the internet can be daunting, especially if you feel you are alone. We as humans are wired to favor categorized content that is nicely packaged with other content that we understand and enjoy. Readers are humans, too, so they also favor content that is familiarly packaged.

Beyond simply liking the idea of grouped content, we depend on the groupings to guide us as we search for and decide what to read. The groupings that exist for content on the internet help us judge the amount of trustworthiness, entertainment, or education we can expect from the content that are bundled together.

Think the New York Times versus Breitbart and BBC vs. Fox News. When it comes to trustworthiness, a reader can easily distinguish between which article will best fit their needs. Of course, a large component at play here would be the reader’s existing biases from their lived experiences.

Your target reader will already have a good idea of which article they want to read because they already decided which publication they favor more. This is a good thing for you, the writer.

If you can get your article published in the publications that your target reader already favors, there’s a higher chance of them choosing to read your article a similar article published in a publication that your target reader has little inclination to visit.

Those are the reasons Medium publications and the writers fortunate enough to be a part of them have succeeded.

By now, if you weren’t already convinced of the value that publications have to offer you as a writer, I hope it’s clear what you stand to gain by being published in a publication that your target audience enjoys. With that established, let’s talk about the hard part: how to become a contributor to a publication on Medium.

We’ll start big so you have something to aspire to, and we’ll narrow down to somewhere you can start and grow from.

We’ll discuss how you can discover the most popular publications on Medium, the fastest growing publications, and newer publications. From there, we’ll discuss the many ways you can reach out to the editors of the publications you think would be a great fit for your content and increase your chances of being accepted as a contributor.

How to find the most popular publications on Medium

There are thousands of publications on Medium. Efficiently sifting through them is impossible on Medium. That also means that trying to rank them on your own will be a pain. Sure, there are some articles out there that capture a snapshot of the top publications on Medium at any given time — I’ve written many such articles — but they get stale quickly.

You will need to use a tool that actively tracks and ranks all the publications on Medium in order to discover the most popular ones among them.

For the last four years, Smedian has tracked over 11,000 Medium publications on its Toppubs leaderboards of the most followed and fastest growing publications. The platform reports how many followers each publication has, which topics they focus on, and how fast they’re growing.

There is no other leaderboard that comes close to it, which is why it ranks number one on Google for the phrases “top medium publications” and “contribute to medium publications” among others.

Full disclosure: I built Smedian in 2016 because I and thousands of other editors of Medium publications needed it. Learn more here.

How to find the fastest growing Medium publications

Yes, contributing to the top publications on Medium would be great, but it’s awfully competitive. If you’re just getting started on Medium, it may be more beneficial to set your sights on fast growing publications that may not necessarily be the top, yet. Fortunately, Smedian’s Toppubs leaderboard makes that easy, too.

There’s a separate page on Toppubs dedicated to tracking and ranking the fastest growing publications. You can browse over 11,000 publications that are ranking by how many followers they are gaining daily. This leaderboard is vastly different from the aforementioned top followed ranking.

With the help of this growth leaderboard, you can find and join a young, growing publication and grow with them. You wouldn’t be the first to do it. Many of the publications that are now the most popular started out by rising through the fastest growth leaderboard. It may take more time to see the level of success you may achieve with an existing top publication, but it’s an investment in your future as a writer on Medium.

Remember that, in many cases, a smaller more engaged audience is better than a larger unengaged audience that has many articles to choose from.

How to submit to publications on Medium

We’ve discussed how to find the most popular and fastest growing publications. That’s the easy part. Let’s discuss the hardest part of this process: reaching out to the publications you’re interested in.

First, let’s manage our expectations. Becoming a contributor to a publication takes time. It’s exciting to see all the wonderful publications you would be a part of, but remember that your relationship with the publications must be mutually beneficial for it to work.

Now that we have our expectations set, let’s discuss how to decide if a publication is right for you and how you can apply to be a contributor.

Find and read the publication’s submission guidelines

The first step in your journey to contributing to specific publication is finding and understanding their submission guidelines. Because there’s no standard for that among publications on Medium, you’ll have to get creative.

Search for the guidelines

One thing you can do is try going straight to the publication’s home page and searching for their submission guidelines using the search bar. Type a query along the lines of “submit” or “submission guidelines” to determine if they have their guidelines written out in an article.

You can do this generally across all of Medium by going to Medium’s search page: here’s a direct link to an example search query.

This will work for many of the best run publications because they want to attract more writers who are a good fit for their audience.

Infer the guidelines

If you can’t find a document that outlines what the publication looks for in submissions, you’ll need to do some extra work to figure it out on your own. Read through a random selection of their stories from their homepage. Try to decipher the common thread among them. Learn the kinds of writing styles that are used. Get a sense for the flow of the various stories. Analyze the quality of the grammar. Take note on the visuals that are used, if there are any.

Figure out how the publication accepts submissions

Once you have a sense for the publication’s submission guidelines, you need to figure out how they want to receive submissions or applications. Many publications leverage the Smedian platform to accept new contributor applications.

If your target publication does use Smedian, your work at this stage is done. Smedian makes it exceptionally simple for publications to accept attract, review, and accept new contributors. That’s why over 1,000 publications, large and small, have used Smedian over the years to grow. Many of the publications on the Toppubs most followed leaderboard got where they are today by using Smedian to add thousands of writers to their team.

If the publication you’d like to contribute to isn’t using Smedian, you’ll need to do some digging to determine how best to get in contact with them.

If a publication has a document of their submission guidelines, they likely include their preferred submission process. Some will embed a Google form that you can fill out with your details and a link to an article you’d like to submit. Some will use other means, such as requesting that you email them your submission details. If you’d like to contribute to their publication, follow their process as they ask.

Whether you use Smedian or other avenues to send in your submission, it’ll take time for the editors to review you and decide if you’ll be a good fit for their audience, so be patient.

Contribute a story that fits the publication

If you’re accepted as a contributor, congrats! However, you aren’t a contributor until you contribute something. That means your story has to get published. If you included an article with your submission, the publication will likely be ready to publish your article once you’r accepted. Otherwise, you need to prepare an article that will be a great fit for the publication’s readers.

Follow the submission guidelines that you obtained earlier in the process. Write something valuable and insightful. Make it relevant to the readers of the publication.

When you’re ready, follow Medium’s instructions on how to submit your draft to a publication:

Conclusion

If you’ve made it to this point, you have all the information and tools you need to find and submit to thousands of publications on Medium. Take your time to do your research on the publications you’d like to contribute to.

When you’re ready to send in your submissions, don’t be afraid of rejection. We’ve all been rejected; it’s a part of the process. Send in your submission, be patient, and continue writing. If you’re a good fit, the publication’s editors will be in touch one way or another.