Medium Just Changed Its Code Of Curation — But Hasn’t Announced It Yet
It’s a game-changer. They’ve never done this before.
For the past few years, advice on how to crack the code of curation on Medium has been booming.
Getting your article curated is the holy grail. For many writers on this platform, it’s their ultimate goal, to have articles curated by Medium’s editors.
Writers eagerly search after being curated because this means their article will be distributed additionally on Medium’s owned channels such as their homepage, via their emails, and apps.
Medium’s editorial team regularly reviews published stories. They hand-pick those that ‘meet (their) distribution standards and exhibit a high level of quality.’
Still, I’ve never seen Medium curate an article about #Medium. Nor have I seen one go viral.
Okay. But what does this mean exactly and what’s the exciting update?
Keep on reading. I will explain it to you.
99% of Medium-related articles won’t get curated
When I started writing about ‘writing on Medium’ in May 2021 I wondered why my articles didn’t get curated.
Most of my articles (about #parenting, #relationships, and #life) were chosen for further distribution (my curation rate was around 80–90%).
Why not Medium-related articles? I wondered.
Then I found J.J. Pryor.
J.J. owns a pub called ‘Feedium’ where you can find a wealth of information on all kinds of Medium-related stuff.
As an expert, J.J. explained that 99% of the articles about this platform won’t get curated — especially if you use the word ‘Medium’ in the headline or subheadline, as I did.
Here’s an example written in the publication ‘Freedium’:
As you can see from my article stats, this article wasn’t chosen for further distribution — still it has made around $55 and received around 1k views yet.
Here you can see how it looks like when an article was Chosen for further distribution.
No meta — no stories about Medium were eligible
After the above-mentioned discovery, I wanted to learn more about Medium’s distribution standards.
I took a look at Medium’s Help Center and found an article called ‘Medium’s Distribution Standards: What Writers and Publications Need to Know’.
In this article, Ev Williams and his team explain what Medium is looking for and what disqualifies your article from being curated.
There are specific story types that are 100% not allowed, for instance, short form posts (150 words or less) and…
No meta — no stories written about Medium
Here’s the list of disqualifying story types:
Exciting news for creators who write about #Medium
Yesterday, I’ve found this article by Joe Moody about #Medium and opening his own publication.
In the text, Joe made an update:
Update: This article was just curated which seems to validate the tips.
Given the above-mentioned fact that Medium doesn’t curate meta articles about #Medium, in the comments section, Kirsty Kendall understandably asked:
As Joe explains he was really surprised too 🥂✍️💯:
…when I checked the article’s stats, there it was: Chosen for further distribution.
Huh? I had to refresh a couple times (like pinching yourself in a dream)… It was real.
Joe’s answer to this update in curation:
…yeah apparently they’ve started curating articles about Medium, most likely if the advice is solid.
Medium is undergoing a lot of changes
Some things change…No, a lot of things change. I’ve been here just two years and I’ve already seen a lot of changes. Carol Burt
Things change on Medium. In the past few months, we’ve watched several big (The Ascent) as well as small publications (World Traveler’s Blog) closing their doors.
As Medium announced lately they want to support self-published authors more instead of (big) pubs.
Here’s my viral article about it:
Medium is a place where the self-published author can flourish without publications … this is the way Medium wants it. Cody James Howell PhD (Raiden), former chief-editor of ‘World Traveler’s Blog’
It’s sad but also exciting at the same time.
As writer Jameson Steward said:
It seems that Medium is trying to put tools in place to promote the individual writers. I’m starting to see more and more stories trending under a tag that aren’t in a publication.
Final Takeaways
Maybe the change in Medium’s code of curation is another hint for Medium’s future and also a tool to promote the individual writer.
- Joe didn’t publish the story that was chosen for further distribution in a (big) pub. He self-published it in his own pub called ‘Money Stream’.
- Maybe soon Medium will change its distribution standards which are from 2020. For instance, maybe they will officially allow meta-articles about Medium to be chosen for further distribution.
As I said in my viral article (2.2k views, 5k claps, and 61 comments) ‘Bad News for Publications and Good News for Self-Published Authors’, let’s wait and see what the future will bring.
Last year, Ev Williams and his team announced their new features, major updates, and overall future plans in August/September 2020.
I could imagine due to the Medium Writers Challenge they have postponed to officially announce further changes and features.
Still, Medium is experimenting in the back:
- For instance, there’s a new ‘related’ feature for the desktop version.
- Moreover, there’s a beta version of Medium’s new reading experience live — both for mobile and desktop.
Cheers to the future of Medium’s code of curation and to all writers who want to share their solid tips and tricks about #Medium and online writing — like me! 🥂✍️
What are your thoughts?
PS: If you’ve seen this happen before (maybe you were the 1% J.J. Pryor mentioned) or just recently (without knowing it), please let us know in the comments section and share the link to your story. Many thanks in advance!
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