Medium Writers: You’re Doing It All Wrong

Guess what? You aren’t going to find success based on how much you write, read, and clap.

I can’t take it anymore. I’ve seen enough.

I’ve read article after article promising that if you follow the yellow brick road of Medium by pumping out content, spending hours reading other writer’s stories, and then the rest of your day interacting with the community by clapping and thoughtfully commenting, you will please the man hiding behind the curtain, the infamous Dr. Algorithm.

Well Dorothy, I’m here to tell you it just isn’t true. It’s time to leave Oz and see Medium for what it really is.

Before you take too much offense to what I’m writing, and what I’m about to propose, hear me out. I’ll be the first to admit I bought into the magic formula myself. I wrote about it in my Medium infancy. Actually, I wrote about it like three times. Awkward.

Honestly, I bet nearly every writer has written about the formula of write, read, follow, clap, interact, repeat. There are a few different variations, but for the most part, it’s all the same. Just do a search, there’s probably thousands, perhaps millions, of these articles.

Why? We all believe it when we start.

That’s how we can make it on Medium! Screams the kindergarten level writers on Medium.

I’ve only been on here a few months, so I’m basically a rogue 1st grader that thinks he has it all figured out, but how gullible are we?!

If we all follow the same pattern, there isn’t enough money to go around!

That’s not how business works, folks. Also, it would be a really BORING platform if that were the case. If everyone does the same thing, essentially writes the same articles, and then claps and leaves positive comments, it would feel like we are all stuck in an eternal elementary school soccer game.

YAY! Everyone is amazing! Everyone is a winner! Give them all a trophy!

Hit the brakes my friend. Take a look around you. Take a look at the profiles of the heavily followed, clearly successful writers on Medium (we know about this because they remind us mere peasant writers FREQUENTLY with their earnings articles, such as “The Summer Slump Continues: Why I Only Earned $8,529 in July”).

You know the writers that I’m talking about! They are the ones that are so amazing they don’t have the time to follow others or leave comments on stories. They are too busy putting together magical stories to benefit society to worry about the rest of us that are padding their wallets.

They get a pass though, because, hey, they are special.

They are successful. They are the deity of Medium.

They earn hundreds, even thousands of dollars for their mindblowing articles that would even make Shakespeare himself leave 1,000 claps, if only he could.

So, why do you need to follow the grueling, “proven” pattern of write, read, follow, clap, interact, repeat when the deity of Medium get to spend all their time just writing? Seriously! Look at some of their profiles! They have like 450K followers, and they follow 23.

Do you think they are pounding the Medium pavement, knocking doors of potential followers and readers, happily collecting their $0.16 per article?

C’mon, we need to be smarter than that. They aren’t reading our stuff. They aren’t leaving thoughtful comments.

They’re spending nearly all their time writing REALLY well written, unique, and potentially useful articles with incredibly catchy titles that WE are all clicking, because WE can’t pass up those enticing headlines and feature images!

It’s like Taco Bell and McDonalds. We don’t think we want to eat it, most of us don’t want to admit we are their customers, but we just keep handing over all our money.

My friends, my fellow writers, I’ve seen too many incredible writers give up on Medium after getting burned out trying to “follow the process”. They are spending so much time trying to support other writers to build a community that they rarely have any energy left to piece together a coherent, interesting article worth reading.

The path to success on Medium is NOT making friends. It certainly isn’t “follow for follow”.

Don’t get me wrong, I have met some incredible people on this platform. I love reading what they write. I’ll continue to support them. But honestly, it’s like 50 people, not 5,000. We all just don’t have the time to legitimately keep up with much more. Those that try either have a lot of free time or really are here just to make friends — which is fine too. Those that attempt to keep up with more simply burn out and leave.

I guess that makes sense why those superhero writers only follow a few people. They do have a community, it’s just really small.

They’ve figured it out, and they’re reaping the rewards. So, keep interacting with your small group of TRUE friends that you’ve made on here, sprinkle in a few new incredible people along the way, but quit burning yourselves out for pennies!

Spend the bulk of your time writing from the heart, about interesting, uncommon, useful topics that provide benefits to your readers, and then blow them away with incredible headlines, feature images, and stories.

That’s it. That’s the formula. That’s the secret sauce.

That’s what Medium deity is doing.

Isn’t it time we join them?

Come join the Medium community!

If you haven’t signed up yet to become a Medium member, I highly recommend it! You’ll gain access to unlimited Medium articles, and you’ll be able to easily interact with a fantastic community of writers. I bet you’ll even choose to start writing as well!

I’d appreciate it if you would use my referral link when you sign up. I’ll receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) and consider you to be one of my heroes.