I’m in Medium Curation Jail (and I’m OK with It)

If there’s one thing that shows up in the ubiquitous Medium success articles across the platform, it’s that curation of your work is essential.

It’s the goal that all writers aspire to when they start here, including me. Without it, we are told, we’ve got no chance of major success.

So, when I came here for the first time just a few short months ago, all keen, cocky and fresh from the writing success I’d previously experienced elsewhere, I thought I’d conquer it in super quick time.

$1000 in my first month? Pffff. Easy.

Motivated as if just returning from a three day sales seminar consisting of loud music, chanting and inspirational speakers, I sat down, created my profile, moved all my existing stories from my Wordpress sites and wrote lots of new ones. Lots of new ones.

Within 45 days, I’d published 58 stories in my main areas of interest: Crypotocurrency, being a dad and warm-hearted observational life stories. I’d actually written more, but some didn’t qualify as I’d elected to keep them out of the Partner Programme for one reason or another.

The writing and inspiration was flowing. I spent ten hours a day at my computer, tapping away, forgetting to eat, drinking far too much coffee and, leaving bathroom breaks to the last possible second in fear of losing the flow, no pun intended. I was in the zone and, to be totally honest, I was enjoying myself.

Of course, I made sure that everything was ‘curation’ friendly right from the start, following the rules to the letter down to heading types and layout, checking and re-checking, asking other writers for input, fine-tuning tags, and, each time, finally publishing with an extra hard click of the mouse as if to say ‘THERE. Enjoy, world, you’re welcome.’

Success was assured. Oh, the confidence.

It was only when I took a moment to stop writing some weeks later that I took a bit of time out to look at what I had actually achieved. I was shocked.

NONE of my pieces had been curated. Not a single one. I’d earned a total of 45 cents.

Like, wow.

I wasn’t even sure if anyone had actually managed to achieve this before. A quick search for related stories seemed to reveal that this was, indeed, unusual, especially for the areas I was writing in. By all accounts, even a low-end estimate would mean around 10% of qualifying pieces would be curated and this meant I had, in fact, achieved the dubious honour of having one of the most unsuccessful writing starts on Medium ever.

How had I got it so incredibly wrong?

I started investigating, reading, researching. I contacted successful writers on the platform who were all kind enough to read my pieces and respond personally. They couldn’t find any obvious faults with them either, and seemed just as confused as me. They assured me that by writing to Medium directly and asking them to review the situation would solve the problem. So I did, politely inviting them to reconsider their decision, even using the exact wording provided by them that had been shown to work in other cases.

But, despite getting acknowledgements, it was weeks before I got a reply which asked for three pieces they would look at. Momentarily buoyed, I sent over three of my favourite pieces, only to never hear from them again. Any further communication has been met with silence and, three weeks later, even the original three hadn’t been looked at. It’s clear now they are never going to be.

So, despite all that help and my extensive experience of copywriting for large companies such as Microsoft and even publishing two books, I couldn’t get a look in at Medium. It was depressing.

I got all bent out of shape and wrote a tongue in cheek, anti ‘look-how-well-I’m-doing-on-Medium’ article to make my case, although in truth I think I wrote that piece more as a cathartic cleansing process for myself than anyone else.

Whilst wallowing in self-pity, frustration and despair, the total irony was that piece attracted some attention and some of the comments led me to work by other writers who had experienced similar issues and introduced me to a new term: ‘curation jail’. And I finally understood how I had ended up in it.

It turns out it was nothing to do with the layout, images, writing style, use of language or subject matter. In fact, it was actually nothing at all to do with me.

You see — and this is embarrassing for me to admit — it took me weeks to notice that my articles were being instantly rejected because of this message:

Our curators were not able to review this story for distribution in topics due to high volume. This story will be shared with followers.

But this only made it worse. It’s one thing to be rejected because you don’t meet the standards because you can learn to get better next time, but it’s another to know you’re not important enough even to be looked at.

It’s also not entirely true, because otherwise no-one would ever be curated for anything. My account had simply become ‘flagged’ somehow and the trail of linked articles that I read, digested and clapped for finally revealed that I’d set myself up for failure right at the start without even knowing it.

My mistake was my very first move on Medium. I’m an ‘all or nothing’ guy so I’d decided to commit to the platform and move all my previous pieces here and redirect the existing URLs. You know that handy little ‘import a story’ option? It’s a death knell if you’re not careful.

And it makes sense. Think about it from the curator’s point of view.

They have thousands of articles to get through — what are they going to do if they suddenly receive a slew of articles from one account that are all automatically uncuratable because of their age and the fact they appeared elsewhere originally? Simple. To reduce the workload, you flag the account accordingly. And once that happens, it’s next to impossible to turn it around. Whoops.

So, if you’re reading this and about to do it, DON’T. Sure, bring your stories over, but create new ones, copy and paste, edit, tidy, check the rules and publish as fresh story here, but don’t, for the love of God, import them. And especially one after the other over several days.

I went back to my writer friends for more advice. It seemed the only option left was to nuke the account and start again with a fresh one, simply spending a few days copying and pasting over the previous stories and forgoing any traction gained so far, something that had actually been proven to work for other people in the same situation. But I really didn’t want to do that. With my redirect URLs now all over Google, I knew it would takes weeks to sort it out, if ever.

Now without focus or direction, I allowed myself a few more ‘wallowing in self pity’ days and didn’t write for a while, but then an idea formed in my mind.

If I can’t be curated, why not turn this into something positive? After all, I love writing, I love the platform — despite falling at the first hurdle on a technicality — and I love the community. I can’t change my predicament, but I can certainly change my thinking.

What if I just took curation out of the loop completely and pretend it didn’t exist? What if I could actually create a precedent where it was possible to find success by actively avoiding curation?

A quick search of Medium revealed no articles specifically about it so, like a petulant child who wants something more because he’s been told he can’t have it, I decided to make it my mission. To be precise, I will find success without curation.

It was time to put my (in)famous stubbornness to the test.

But the next logical question was ‘how?’ This is uncharted territory, but we work on an ever evolving platform that allows writers to find their own formulas to success and in different ways.

Have you ever noticed, for example, how so many successful writers seem to contradict each other on technique and approach and yet they’ve all managed to achieve both following and income? To me, this all but proves there’s no right or wrong way, there’s only YOUR way. And that’s enough evidence for me.

But the reality is, if I can’t get curated, then I have to work harder, longer and smarter than anyone else. That’s fair enough. I know what I’m taking on, but what does that mean in real terms?

First, I had to accept that everything I’d learned about writing so far was no more than the tiniest foundation from which to grow and learn. Another cathartic piece ensued, but this time with a markedly different tone of humbleness:

Next, I had to create a new strategy and pages of copious notes later revealed some key points in this non-exhaustive list:

• My articles have to be consistently high quality, marketable and produced in higher volume than anyone else. (This should be interesting with the day job and all)
• I have to change my approach to writing to get my ideas out ‘on paper’ more quickly and more efficiently, embracing techniques I had previously struggled with
• My articles have to appear in larger publications which, ironically, is usually harder without curation
• I have to create my own publications and promote the hell out of them
• I have to read, comment, reach out and help other people more
• I have to use external forces to drive traffic
• I have to spend as much time promoting as I do writing and creating to get noticed, if not more
• In short, I have to work much, much harder than writers who get curated

I’m OK with all of this. I’ve always been a grafter, and I absolutely love a challenge, especially when I’m told something can’t be done a certain way. It’ll force me to learn more, take me out of my comfort zone and become a better community member, all things I know I should do anyway. In short, it’ll make me better.

And the other truth is, I love writing. I just can’t stay mad at Medium in the same way I can’t stay mad at my partner for long if we bicker about kids’ homework detail or who did what to the toothpaste. And it’s just as well, as it seems I’ll be doing a lot more of it.

Finally, of course, it’s not lost on me that I came here initially, like everyone else, to simply write about the things that I am personally passionate about and have ended up finding new things to write about passionately, such as the very act of writing. So perhaps, in the end, everyone will be a winner.

Or perhaps not. But at least we’ll have the answer, right?

Shortly after publishing this article, I began a renewed effort to get out of curation jail using some new ‘angles of attack’. Success! Here’s how: