Medium Isn’t the Only Place to Make It as a Writer

Is Medium the right platform for you, or is it an obsession?

Last week, I finally lost my last “Top Writer” badge on Medium. What a relief.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being recognized for my work. Becoming a top writer, claps, comments, more claps — that’s what pumps me up.

The problem is, it pumps me in all the wrong ways. It diverges my focus from where it should be — on uncovering the unique value only I can provide to readers — to all the shiny promises that come with writing on Medium.

Money, followers, influence. Following your passion. Ah, how much I get excited by those. But now that I’m seeing my stats falling flat on their face, I’m tapping into my internal motivation again.

I’m remembering that there’s a part of me that will always want to write, no matter the external measures of success. This part will be looking for a place to publish my thoughts.

But I’m starting to see that maybe this place doesn’t need to be Medium.

When Medium Becomes an Obsession

Medium is a very special place. For all I know, it’s the first successful experiment at enabling writers to earn money directly for their art.

No ads, no affiliate programs. Just write out your heart and we’ll pay you for it.

Compared to the options writers used to have, this is an incredible offering. When I stop to think about it, it almost sounds too good to be true. Because of that, it’s very easy to decide on the spur of a moment: I will make Medium into a solid income stream.

Because Medium offers such an incredible feat, it’s hard to resist it when you first hear about it. That’s what happened to me. As soon as I learned about the Medium Partner Program, I embraced it as the way to make it as a writer.

This was how I was going to thrive creatively. What could be better than getting paid to write whatever I want?

The thing is that ever since then, I stopped considering other options. Without giving it a second thought, I took Medium to be my best bet. I binged on articles about how to “be successful” — AKA to earn tons of money — on the platform. I thought: if everyone else could do it, why couldn’t I?

Well, there may be reasons. And they may go beyond me “not being motivated enough” to make it here.

What If Medium as a Full-Time Gig Isn’t For Everyone?

Making a decent income on Medium is hard. Even though most people who are successful here and give advice to others mention it explicitly — many of us just don’t want to hear that part of the message.

I know that for the longest time, I focused on the fantasy of “going big” on Medium and how I hoped it would make me feel — instead of on the actual work it took. And the truth is that unless you’re a really good writer already, turning Medium into a well-paid gig requires the kind (and amount) of work that not many people are willing to do.

To me, it seems that to grow on Medium, I should publish something close to every day. If I don’t do that, the algorithm forgets about me. So I tried to write and publish relentlessly, as often as I could.

But this made me dissatisfied with my work very quickly.

For the moment, I don’t seem to have it in me to show up here every day with something valuable to say. And yes, I feel bad for saying this. It does make me feel like less of a writer because I hear many voices on this platform saying: no pain, no gain.

In other words — if you can’t keep up, shame on you. You don’t have what it takes to become a real writer. Because truly successful writers grind their teeth and put something out every day. It’s the showing up that matters.

But is that true for all writers — or just those who want to have financial success on Medium?

There Are Other Ways to Earn Money as a Writer

I became so obsessed with proving to myself that I can make it on Medium that I forgot to look elsewhere. At some point, this platform was the sole way I saw for myself.

And, the way I saw it, I was failing miserably. I started questioning my pursuit of writing as a profession altogether.

Except that I wasn’t failing really. I got published in Better Humans several times. Better Humans is a top-notch Medium publication that commissions articles for a fixed fee. Getting featured in there should have been enough proof that I’m a decent writer.

But instead, I fixated at failing to make “enough” money through the Medium Partner Program. A voice in my head insisted I needed to prove something to myself. By showing up and being “antifragile” I was going to, at some point, have a breakthrough.

But recently, the glass bubble I’ve been living in started crumbling. I opened up to an obvious fact I failed to see for so long: there are other ways to earn money from writing than just the Medium Partner Program.

And they may be more suitable for me.

I’m a slow writer who likes to think before she writes. I like to indulge in research, hunting for fun facts, and less obvious angles on the topic. I like to write long-form articles with long sentences that aren’t necessarily suited for Medium.

Maybe I’m just making excuses to justify my lack of success here and protect my ego.

But another possibility is that I should venture outside of Medium. Or at the very least — stop treating “making it” on Medium as a badge of honor that I’d one day pin to my chest.

Best Writing Happens When You Have Nothing to Lose

My “top writer” status in Psychology, Creativity, Writing, Productivity, and Self-Improvement is now gone. My stats fell miserably over the past month. My confidence that I can ever make it on Medium has been shattered.

Could there be a better place to write from?

I’m not saying this sarcastically — I mean it. Redefining my writing and feeling like I’m starting from scratch is a crucial part of this journey for me. Once in a while, I need to feel like I have nothing to lose.

Not a top writer badge, not the money, not my reputation. Right now, I feel like I have none of these things. And it’s refreshing.

I feel like I’m always a beginner and while this is unsettling, it’s also hopeful. I feel like I know nothing and I realize that this is a perfectly valid place to be.

More and more, I’m looking at this writing thing as a really long game. I mean, not from the perspective of a few years. I’m trying to think about it from the bird’s eye view of my entire lifetime.

As long as I have my basic needs met, I can experiment with writing as long as it takes. And even if I arrive at the end of my life with what feels like nothing, then at least I’ll know what it looks like to try my best and fail.

That’s an experience no one ever talks about. Maybe we should?