Writing and Reading on Medium
Monthly Updates from ILLUMINATION Editorial Team: July 2023
Essential information summarizing achievements and plans for writers and readers
Non-members can read this newsletter on our Substack site. Our publications are diverse and inclusive. New applications to join our publications are via the writer registration portal. Please add your Medium ID or a link to one of your stories. Details are on our master onboarding pack.
Dear Writers and Readers,
We trust this post finds you well. It is an absolute pleasure to connect with you again this month and provide your useful updates on our services. We are grateful for their participation, adding vitality to our writing and reading community.
July was an interesting month for us. Since the last bulletin, more than 500 new writers have joined Illumination Integrated Publications. We now support 22,000+ writers, from absolute beginners to the most accomplished ones, cross-pollinating them. We are grateful for the engaging stories of creative writers delighting our valued readers.
Another important event was the significant changes made by Medium, affecting writers and readers. These changes mandated to alter our publishing guidelines to ensure our writers achieve their goals of gaining desired levels of reading ties and building their audience.
As the editorial team, we spent over two weeks tweaking our processes and procedures, formulating them in a new publishing guideline authored and posted by one of our senior editors Suzanne E.
We touched on MPP requirements, such as the removal of 100 followers and the new requirement of being a paid member, in our new guidelines. We will do everything within our control and capacity to support our writers.
To ensure the timely publication of your content, we kindly request your patience and ask that you submit only high-quality content accompanied by copyright-free images. We cannot overemphasize quality anymore.
Quality is the most important criterion for Medium to distribute and boost stories. Otherwise, your stories will get hardly any views. We already witness ZERO in some stories. This is the reality that writers need to understand, take necessary actions and prevent disappointment. Our guidelines summarize them and provide valuable resources.
However, we are delighted that many stories from our publications were boosted by Medium bringing many readers to our writers.
You may check a comprehensive checklist to increase the chance of boosting provided by our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz.
Dr. Yildiz also posted an article to answer the most frequently asked question of increasing income from writing on Medium and other platforms.
There are low-hanging fruits such as:
- Use language tools like the free version of Grammarly to self-edit your stories. This will help to minimize the need for our editors to deal with language errors.
- Ask your writer friends and editors to review your stories. This is another way to get feedback on your writing and make sure it is ready to be published.
- Stick to topics that our readers are interested in. We don’t publish stories about Medium, and we’re also moving away from stories about how much writers earn on Medium.
- Use our Slack workspace to contact the editorial team and other writers. This is a great way to get feedback on your stories and get them published faster.
Here are some key points to keep in mind:
- We prioritize well-written articles with no language errors or image issues. If your story has errors, it may take longer to be published.
- We may ask you to move your story to a different publication if it doesn’t fit the Illumination theme. We want to make sure that our readers are getting the best possible content.
- Writers who do not follow our publication rules might need to wait longer until issues are resolved via private message. It may take several days due to timezone differences between writers and editors. Thus please use our complimentary Slack workspace to speed up publishing.
- Joining our Slack workspace is optional, but it’s a great way to get involved in the Illumination community. We have channels for sharing stories, getting feedback, and collaborating with other writers.
- To ensure fair opportunities for all writers, we accept only one story per writer within 24 hours. However, additional stories can be submitted to our smaller publications catering to different audiences.
You may contact our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz privately, and he will divert your inquiries to relevant editors. He does this job voluntarily, like all other editors. Our publications and other resources don’t earn a cent from writers.
We are grateful for our readers’ support of writers. Some volunteer editors compile curated collections to delight our readers and increase views and reading times for writers.
Using these collections, we aim to create visibility for writers’ profiles and stories, ultimately helping to build a larger audience.
We encourage collaboration by featuring stories from accomplished writers and beginners in our curated collections, providing readers with more options to explore.
Opportunities
If you are interested to earn some cash and increase your email marketing skills you may check an opportunity introduced by our editor Aiden (Illumination Gaming)in step by step in a recent article.
Aiden also created an informative and inspiring video that you may enjoy.
,Adding and Announcing New Writers
Adding writers, informing them, and responding to their inquiries takes time for our editors. To reduce the administrative workload, we created a short editorial bulletin in curated lists by our editorial accounts like ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curators, and ILLUMINATION Amplifiers to introduce new writers joining our publications.
So new writers are tagged to inform our acceptance via those collections when they join. We tag them for a few weeks to ensure they see our acceptance. Tagging them in these valuable collections also helps new writers gain more followers and meet the 100-follower requirement to be eligible for the Medium Partner Program (MPP).
If you are not informed by our curated collections for more than 48 hours after your application and cannot see the pubs in your list, that means that we couldn’t add you to publications, possibly due to missing Medium ID or other glitches, so you need to apply again using our writer registration portal. However if you provided your email you will most likely receive an auto invitation to Slack. When you join, you can ask our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz to give you access to our pubs.
We accept every ethical writer willing to adhere to Medium’s rules. We don’t reject writer applications unless they are removed due to plagiarism or writing harmful content against Medium’s policies.
New writers need to review the master copy of the onboarding pack before submitting their stories. The most critical point is the photo handling policy attached to the information pack.
We can no longer create individual packs weekly. Instead, we add your accounts to the pack and tag your profile. We respond to writer inquiries on the Slack workspace.
We remove publication-related articles and transfer them to the ILLUMINATION Blog pub. So you may check this blog pub when you need information related to our publications.
We created several featured pages for readers. Featured pages show stories to readers interested in specific topics. We continue improving our front page and featured pages to create more visibility for stories to readers. But we also use other tools for visibility.
Update on Stats
Here are our 90-day stats covering reading times, visitors, and views.
Reading times
Reading time performance for 90 days is over 5.3 million minutes. This is our gold standard for writers’ income, averaging around 60,000 minutes of daily reading time.
Views
We don’t pay much attention to views as they are less important than reading times. However, they indicate new traffic; hence it is still a useful metric.
Last three months, our stories received over 4.2 million views. Unfortunately, views declined by around 300K. We assume this is related to changes made by Medium, as we mentioned in the introduction and our submission guidelines.
The average of unique daily visitors
The average of unique visitors is 37,835 daily. Sometimes we get over 40K unique visitors daily depending on the viral stories. There is also a slight decline in visitors as we assume some problematic stories do not reach new readers. Therefore we must increase quality. It is beneficial for all of us.
Followers
We are pleased to see over 1000 new followers joined since last month. This is the best stats from last month.
We need more volunteer editors.
Our editorial team sometimes gets exhausted. Therefore, we need more volunteer editors as our publications keep growing. Some editors go on vacation, some need a break, or sometimes they get unwell.
If you have time and are interested in supporting our smaller publications as an editor, you may contact our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz on our Slack workspace. The eligibility criteria to serve as an editor for our publications are outlined in this article.
Our Slack group is open to all our contributors. We have 16,00 members on Slack. If you don’t have access to Slack or haven’t received the previous invitation, you can request it via this online web form.
Editors play a vital role in the success of our writers and the satisfaction of our readers. They review your content, publish it on time, and promote published stories to our readers using various methods.
These volunteer editors are also writers. Therefore, they understand the needs of writers. Currently, 131 volunteer editors support our 22K+ writers using the Slack workspace. This is a massive workload for them.
We thought that meeting our editors could be valuable for writers. Therefore, we started an initiative to introduce our editors’ backgrounds and writing styles. We add new editor profiles as our time allows. They usually use the same account on Slack so that you can contact them directly.
Writer Introductions, Featuring, and Interviews
We introduce writers by creating profiles or interviewing them to create visibility for their profiles and content.
Recently, Dr. Yildiz interviewed several writers. You can read these exciting interviews from the attached links.
We also started a new initiative titled “Make invisible stories visible “to increase our contributors’ views and read times. Here are some samples:
Meet Mark Sanford, Ph.D. Mark Sanford, Ph.D.
Meet Psychologist Cedric Johnson, Ph.D. on ILLUMINATION Cedric Johnson, PhD
Chosen Stories from Melinda Blau’s Unique Collection Melinda Blau
Chosen Stories from Sufyan Maan’s Collection Sufyan Maan, M.Eng
We feature our writers’ profiles via the Illumination YouTube channel and blog the transcripts. For example, our volunteer YouTube coordinator Aiden (Illumination Gaming), features writers on our channel. Contact him on our Slack workspace if you want to be featured.
You might find some sample YouTube videos featuring our top writers in this collection titled Meet Top Writers of Medium on YouTube.
Photo Handling Policy — Please Read This Carefully
Handling story images is a growing concern in our publications due to many joining new writers who don’t understand the severity of copyright infringements. We don’t want any of our writers to be fined due to breaching copyright rules.
We updated our image copyrights policy, clarifying the fair use issue. Our goal is to protect our writers from breaching copyright rules on Medium articles, which is a serious issue.
Please review our updated policy from this post titled: Why Image Copyrights Matter for Writers and Editors: Update to handling story photos policy for Illumination Integrated Publications on Medium.
We added extra steps to improve image handling as documented in the attached editor bulletin: Not Captioning and Using Copyright Photos Will Lead to Rejection of Stories: If writers, after rejection, continue breaking photo handing rules, we will remove them from our publications. It is their choice. Our editors do their duty of call.
Please check our photo handling policy before submitting your first story to our publication. This will be good for writers and editors.
Here’s How to Handle Story Photos on Medium.
Curating and Amplifying Stories for Visibility
We started a new hand-picked series for 2023. So far, we have posted 44 collections. Our goal is to generate more views and reading time for writers and delight our subscribers. Here is a summary of the latest collections.
Chosen by the content curators of ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium for avid readers
ILLUMINATION-Curators also started a new initiative called Reading Club. Here is the latest version.
ILLUMINATION Amplifiers started to feature book chapters submitted by our published author. Here is the latest version.
Our editor Aiden (Illumination Gaming) features stories from our new publications Illumination Gaming and Illumination Videos/Podcasts. Here are the latest versions.
Last year we posted 280 collections from the ILLUMINATION Amplifier account. The Illumination team published 138 collections, and ILLUMINATION-Curator posted around ten collections featuring outstanding stories from experienced writers.
The latest collection from ILLUMINATION:
We curated and distributed thousands of well-written pieces to our readers via blogs and social media. Our repository reached half a million published stories on Illumination and sister publications.
We are grateful for inspiring feedback from readers and writers on the value of featuring stories that create visibility for the content of our writers and provide curated content to our readers.
Although we value every story and don’t censor content, readers desire stories on specific topics written with reasonable standards. Therefore, the quality of stories, including formatting and clarity, matters a lot.
We compile featured stories in a master collection to make it easy for readers. Bookmark this Meta Collection of Featured Stories: Easy access to daily selected stories from engaging writers of ILLUMINATION: Volume 3–2022. We will update it and index 2023 collections for easy access.
Introduction to New Publications
We added two new publications to our integrated portfolio. They are ILLUMINATION Videos and Podcasts and ILLUMINATION Gaming. Our volunteer editor Aiden (Illumination Gaming), coordinates these recent publications. These publications accept both regular and short-form stories.
ILLUMINATION-Curated Publication
We added around ten more experienced writers to Illumination-Curated. It is for accomplished writers with proven track in our publications. You Can Directly Write For ILLUMINATION-Curated if your stories meet Medium’s distribution guidelines.
To create a better bridge among our publications, we assigned ILLUMINATION-Curated editors to select outstanding stories. This approach allows content published in our other publications to find a new audience. All experienced writers now directly submit their stories to ILLUMINATION-Curated.
We also created a reading club on our Slack workspace. Details are on this post. ILLUMINATION-Curator coordinates these activities.
Writer Biographies in a Collection
Our readers want to learn about writers’ backgrounds. We encouraged our writers to submit a bio to Illumination. The ILLUMINATION Amplifier team volunteered to maintain this collection titled Curated Writer Bios. Dr Mehmet Yildiz articulated why writers need bios in an article titled: Six Reasons Writers Need Bios.
Editor Biographies in a Collection
We introduce our new editors and collect those stories in a collection curated by ILLUMINATION-Curators.
This month we introduced a few new editors.
The first one is Joanie Adams.
The second one is Nurma Komala-Hadi
The third one is Surekha Chandrasekhar
The fourth one is Fahaz Hameed
We will introduce several more editors as we have new team members.
Update on the Progress of Writers
Hundreds of new writers gained over 100 followers and became eligible for Medium Partner Program (MPP). We congratulate their success. However, Medium now removed this requirement. So new writers can join MPP without 100 followers.
Some high achievers gained 1000+ followers after a month. We admire their outstanding achievement. The critical success factor is converting followers to fans with meaningful engagement with readers.
Our new editor Mike Broadly — Healthier Lifestyle wrote an inspiring story for aspiring writers based on his recent participation in the MPP.
Here’s how I gained 100 followers to qualify for Medium Partner Program in a few weeks
You may check these guiding articles if you are a new writer on Medium and want to increase your followers, subscribers, and fans meaningfully.
Subscribers Can Produce 50 Times Better Results Than Followers for Freelance Writers
Writing Challenges and Prompts
Several writers completed writing challenges. The 100-Day Writing Challenge is popular. A few writers attempted to 1000 short forms in 100 days too. You can submit one short form to each publication.
Participating in these writing challenges for new MPP contributors might be helpful for progress. You may consider sharing your story links, concerns, and aspirations in this unique challenge. And many readers enjoyed the Challenge called “The Proust Questionnaire.”
These challenges might bring new readers to your stories. We look forward to reading your stories about these challenges. We also feature those who complete challenges in our curated collections, such as hand-picked article series and curated collection posts.
Guidance on Writing Viral Stories
The best way to gain more readers and earn more income on Medium is to create viral stories. It has a significant luck factor, but you might increase the chance with a concerted effort by writing engaging and interesting stories.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz compiled a post with critical items for creating viral stories based on my experience, observations, and reviews of over 100 viral stories in 2021. He is currently analyzing around 100 viral stories in our publications.
We hope some of your stories go viral in 2023. Please keep posting high-quality, informative, and engaging stories on interesting topics. You might ask your friends or family members to review and provide your feedback before submitting your stories. Also, try to find mentors from top writers who can give you guidance and feedback.
Essential Resources for New Writers
We compiled essential guides for new writers in a post titled Starter Kit for Writers of ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications. This collection might be a one-stop shop for new writers to learn more about writing on this platform.
Please also review these guiding policies before submitting their stories. We are tolerant, but the following are non-negotiable rules and Medium’s content hosting and distribution policy.
Publishing and Conduct Guidelines for the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION
Access to archived onboarding packs for new writers
New writers want to connect with previous writers. We provide links to only recent onboarding packs to easily find registered writers, follow them, and explore their content to achieve this goal.
If you need to access old bulletins, you may search for ILLUMINATION, and ILLUMINATION Amplifier accounts for older versions of onboarding packs. Here are a few samples:
Introduction to New Writers, Welcome: New Writers Introduction, Onboarding Pack for New Writers, Welcome New Writers, Welcome New Writers, Onboarding New Writers, Welcome New Writers, Onboarding New Writers, Welcome New Writers, Onboarding New Writers.
Members can follow up to 150 accounts on Medium within 24 hours. New writer accounts are kept for a week in the master copy of the onboarding pack. So, you may check and follow news writers weekly through the onboarding pack.
Summary of Our Publications for New Writers and Readers
1 — ILLUMINATION
ILLUMINATION is followed by 70,000+ readers and visited by around 40,000 unique members daily. As a generic publication, we accept every ethical topic meeting Medium’s guidelines. Link to publication
2 — ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR
This pub is for prolific writers who need to submit multiple stories in a day. If you submit a story to ILLUMINATION, you can submit up to one story to ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR within 24 hours. Link to publication
3 — ILLUMINATION-Curated
This publication is for experienced and accomplished writers. Senior editors select the contributors for this publication using stringent criteria. If you are an experienced writer, we allow you to write for this publication upon your request directly. Link to publication
4 — Technology Hits
We designed this publication for writers and readers interested in technical topics and tech-related stories. You can also submit science fiction in this pub. More info about Technology Hits Value Propositions of Technology Hits. Introduction to Technology Hits. Inviting Storytellers From All Aspects of Technology. Here is a collection including some sample stories from this publication. Link to publication
5 — SYNERGY
This publication serves only freelance writers who want to share writing, blogging, and editing content. It connects writers, editors, and bloggers through their stories. We invite freelance writers from other platforms, such as Vocal Media. Here is the purpose of Synergy. Besides, you may find a sample collection to get an idea of the type of stories we publish on Synergy. Link to publication
6 — ILLUMINATION Book Chapters
This publication is for published and indie authors. We help new writers to get published and become authors. Details about this publication are in this story: ILLUMINATION Book Chapters. More info: How Can Published Authors Create Visibility? Here’s a sample editorial bulletin to promote ILLUMINATION Book Chapters to readers. And here is the Index of Published Book Chapters. You can find some sample book chapters in this collection. Link to publication.
7 — Reader’s Hope
This publication serves absolute beginners. You may submit raw content to this new pub. We don’t edit content submitted to Readers Hope. But, our editors provide valuable and helpful guidance via private notes or in our Slack workspace to members. Here is a story introducing the purpose of Readers Hope. Here is the Vision and Mission of “Readers Hope”. Link to publication
8 — ILLUMINATION Gaming
This new publication aims to bring gamers to one place, inspire them, and create collaboration among gamers. Invitation: Join ILLUMINATION Gaming Publication as a Writer: Your gaming stories have a new home on Medium now. Link to publication
9 — ILLUMINATION Videos and Podcasts
Our new publication is introduced in this article. We changed the name as previously it was only for YouTubers, but we now allow podcasts. You can submit your YouTube videos or podcasts in long or short-form stories. Link to publication
10 — Lampshade of Illumination
If you are looking to diversify your writing portfolio and explore the exciting world of AI-generated content and using AI tools to improve your writing, we have a solution.
Our editorial team has noticed a growing interest among writers in using AI tools to improve their writing and explore its endless possibilities.
However, readers of Illumination Integrated Publications only wanted to read human-generated content. We value and respect their preference for human-generated stories. We analyzed the situation and created a viable solution called the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION.
Please check our AI Policy and submission guidelines for the Lampshade.
AI-Generated Content Policy for ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium
Publishing and Conduct Guidelines for the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION
ILLUMINATION Blog and Euphoria
We keep all publications-related stories in separate publications called ILLUMINATION’s Blog. This publication can be helpful for new writers to find guiding articles. This publication is not for writers. It is for editorial purposes. Link to publication
Dr Mehmet Yildiz hosts his personal stories in his publication called Euphoria. If you enjoy health and fitness stories, you may check his publication. Link to publication.
Support of Publications by Writers
Dr. Yildiz helped several writers to create their publications and gain visibility. Publication owners made significant progress in getting loyal readers. Here is a guiding story: Compelling Benefits of Personal Publications on Medium.
ILLUMINATION collected the publications of our contributors in a post titled: Why Writers Need Personal Publications: Invitation to introduce your own publication to the audience of Illumination Integrated Publications.
Diversify Content on Vocal Media, Simily, or NewsBreak
Diversifying content might bring more readers and income to freelance writers. We introduce three options in this post. We keep our writers updated with new writing challenges introduced by Vocal Media. If you are not a writer with Vocal+ yet, you can join at the link in this article.
In addition, repurposing your Medium articles on Vocal may bring additional income to freelance writers. Aiden introduced Vocal recently in a story titled I Finally Joined Vocal+ and Reaped Immediate Benefits.
We also introduced another writing platform, Simily. What Is Simily and How Can Writers Benefit from This New Writing Platform?
Some of our new writers also contribute to NewsBreak. Our editors informed us that this platform has strict rules and doesn’t allow self-publishing like Medium. If you want to join NewsBreak, you can access the application form via this referral link.
All writers can create referral links on NewsBreak and Vocal, similar to Medium as affiliate links. You can add them to the end of your stories to bring new readers to these platforms with your referral links.
Topic Collections of Stories
We create collections selecting exciting stories from many writers who write on popular topics. Here are some examples compiled by our chief editor.
Featured Stories About “Writing” From The Top Writers of SYNERGY
NFT Story Collection on ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications
Technology, Business, Leadership, & Self-Improvement Stories
Sample Book Chapters: Discover 70+ published authors on ILLUMINATION Book Chapters
Invitation to Potential Writers and Members
To join our vibrant publications, please send a request via this link. We will help you gain visibility and succeed as a writer on Medium. Please mention the publication name with your Medium account ID in the request.
If you are new to Medium, you can join via this link. Readers can read thousands of stories, and writers can monetize self-published content.
You can subscribe to our editorial team to receive newsletters and curated lists. Here is the link https://medium.com/subscribe/@illumination
Thank you for your support and contributions. We look forward to reading, publishing, and promoting your stories.
Writers can directly contact Dr. Yildiz and other editors on the ILLUMINATION Slack workspace when they need help or if their stories get delayed for more than 48 hours.
Let’s Welcome New Writers Joining Us Recently
Thank you for joining our publications. Let’s explore the stories of these writers who joined our publications recently.
Invitation to New Writers
Our doors are open to all ethical writers. You can join or leave anytime with no obligation. Our goal is to give you a platform to showcase your stories.
To join our vibrant publications, please send a request via this link.
We will help you gain visibility and succeed as a writer on Medium. Please mention the publication name with your Medium account ID in the request. If you are new to Medium, you can join via this link. Readers can read thousands of stories, and writers can monetize self-published content.
ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications include:
ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters, Technology Hits, SYNERGY, Readers Hope, Illumination on YouTube, Illumination Gaming, the Lampshade of Illumination, ILLUMINATION’s Blog, and the personal publication of our chief editor EUPHORIA.
Thank you for sharing this newsletter with other writers interested in joining our publications and Slack workspace for collaboration. Our publications are diverse and inclusive.
Remember, supporting your peers as writers is important for mutual growth. Here’s some the guidance to beginners.
