I Never Found My Niche, It Found Me

How the writing process on Medium helped me find an audience

When I began writing on Medium two and a half months ago, like many other writers, I read numerous articles about how to get curated and attract a loyal following. Several of these included phrases like “marketing your brand” and “finding your niche.” I foolishly rejected that notion.

“I am a writer.” I thought. “I can and will write whatever I please about whatever I want and to hell with this marketing mumbo jumbo. I will not package myself like a PlayStation bundle™.” I was wrong to take that attitude, and here’s why.

The creative mind craves an audience

During my first two weeks on Medium, I learned a bit about how Medium works. I self-published poems I’d already written and produced some pieces on political subjects. My stats chart looked like on a heart monitor, but I wasn’t dead yet.

I shared friend links of what I’d written on my Facebook page and emailed them to relatives. I received some encouraging feedback, but, naturally, I wanted more. Those I reached out to have been supportive of my writing since I could pick up a pen. I wanted to know if strangers would read what I wrote and how they would respond to it.

Running it up the flagpole and seeing if anyone salutes

I have a wide variety of interests, so for the next two weeks on Medium, I wrote about a number of them. Here are some:

I also learned about publications and started submitting my poems to some of the ones that might be open to accepting them. My first successful submissions were to Weeds & Wildflowers, and I am eternally grateful to Dennett for giving me my big break. My poems have also appeared in Written Tales, Illumination, and Haiku Hub.

I’ve had a fair amount of success with my poetry on this platform: lots of claps, highlighting, and positive comments. I suppose it’s a niche of sorts, but here’s the problem: poetry doesn’t pay.

In the past six weeks, I’ve had 16 poems accepted by Medium publications and have so far earned a total of $1.55. I will still publish my poetry because it’s fun, and the feedback is gratifying but, because I want to make money, it’s not where I plan to focus my energy.

The day I hit paydirt and what it taught me

Just over five weeks in, on March 23, 2020, I reached a pivotal point in my Medium writing experience. Several things happened at once:

The Writing Cooperative published one of my stories.
The History of Yesterday published one of my stories.
Medium’s curators promoted both of them.

I was especially excited about having a story in the Writing Cooperative because of its massive readership of 197,000. I thought this might be the story that would finally make me some money. With curation in Writing on top of that, how could I lose?

The History of Yesterday piece was near and dear to my heart. I had long been fascinated by the story of the 19th-century phenoms, the Seven Sutherland Sisters, and was just hoping that other people would find them as interesting as I do.

As it turns out, they did. Five weeks after it was published, although The History of Yesterday has just over 3,000 followers, the Sutherland story had generated $41.13 in income and logged 2,600 views. The curation in the topic of History certainly helped.

My piece for The Writing Cooperative, “To Scan or Not to Scan,” despite the publication’s legion of followers and its curation in the hot topic of Writing, has logged only 112 views and generated a disappointing $0.56.

Here’s what I learned:

Finding the right publication for your story matters
The number of followers that publication has is mostly irrelevant.
Curation helps, but not always as much as you might expect
The subject of your story should be unique, but not so obscure that few people will be interested

The failure of “To Scan or Not to Scan” was because the general interest in converting printed hardcopy into e-files is minimal. The success of the story of the Sutherlands was because, although other pieces about the sisters have appeared elsewhere, it’s not well-known, and it is fascinating.

It took me a while, but it’s finally sinking in

If you’re thinking my experience with the Sutherland Sisters piece inspired me to start cranking out history stories every day, you would be wrong.

I wrote and published eight more poems and a story about cookbooks loaded with affiliate links (that alas has gone nowhere) before I wrote another history piece, “No Secrets: The Beating Heart of Natacha Rambova Exposed.” Medium’s editors curated it in both Culture and History. It hasn’t gone viral, but it earned a respectable $2.08 in the three weeks.

I then tried out a few new topics:

Like my poems, these stories have garnered a respectable amount of claps, highlighting, and kind comments. They’ve generated more income than my poetry, but not a lot.

I like to keep contributing to the publications that have accepted my work in the past, so I decided to write another history piece, “The Astonishing Truth About Vomitoria Revealed” for The History of Yesterday. This story also acquired a curation in History. In just over ten days, it got 257 views and earned me $6.14.

The excellent return on writing time investment is chiefly because the Vomitoria piece has a lifetime member reading time of four hours and thirteen minutes. The length of time members spend reading your story is the only metric that generates income. So it stands to reason that, the longer the story, the better you do, assuming that it’s something people want to read in the first place.

Something else happened that made me rethink my aversion to niche writing. About a week ago, I was named a top writer in History on Medium. It looks like I have a niche, whether I want it or not.

It’s my niche, and I’m crawling into it

Here are the reasons I’ve decided to devote most of my writing on Medium to historical subjects:

It’s something I’m passionate about
There is an infinite number of stories to tell
I seem to be pretty good at it
I have yet to have one of my history stories rejected by a publication
Medium’s editors have curated every one of the stories I’ve tagged as “history”
History lends itself to lengthy narratives that can rack up reader hours
People who enjoy reading about history have long attention spans, so views are more likely to translate into reads
The stories that have made me the most money to date have historical subjects

I’ve been writing for a long time, off and on. I’ve been a professional writer and editor, so this isn’t my first time at the rodeo. But achieving success on Medium is different from making it on other platforms.

Since I started, I’ve written something every day, and most of what I’ve written has appeared in publications. I’ve made a little money. I’ve learned a lot from other writers who have shared their experiences writing on Medium, and I’ve been able to apply some of it to my work.

I’m still not going for the brass ring of branding, but I’m willing to admit that a certain amount of marketing knowhow is essential if you want to do well here.

In the musical Gypsy, there’s a song called “You’ve Gotta Get a Gimmick,” and that’s how I used to think about niche writing. But niche writing, if it’s any good, isn’t about gimmicks. It’s about finding out what kind of writing you’re good at, what subjects inspire you, and readers who want to hear what you have to say.

It may take some experimentation to discover what works best for you, but I think you will enjoy the process. I know I am.