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My First Month on Medium
What can you learn from my progress?
I took the plunge into Medium in mid-February. It’s been a month now since my first article was published on the 15th February. I want to give you some idea of how things are going, and hopefully share a few things that you can learn from.
You will certainly be able to see the areas where I’ve made rapid progress, as well as from what I have struggled with.
Action
First up: what have I actually done? I’ve been busy writing, that’s for sure, with 26 stories published so far, and a similar number of drafts:
Out of the published stories, 22 appeared in publications. This meant that I had to sign up as an author to several publications, which for the most part was a more straightforward process than I had expected. The main ones that I have written up to now for are:
Coffee Times, 3 stories, for example:
Illumination, 3 stories, for example:
Writer’s Blokke, 4 stories, for example:
Gamelit and LitRPG Fiction, Ahoy!, 6 stories, for example:
Sometimes, I just hit ‘publish’ without submitting a story. The biggest reason for this was that I’ve been trying to maintain a fairly regular publication schedule, and it can be hard to know how long a publication will take before they respond to your submission (to be fair, all of the ones above are super quick, and very helpful!).
Glancing through my published stories, they vary a lot in length. Two are nine-minute articles, four are two-minute ‘short reads’, and I have published stories of every length in between, too. I estimate that in total, including drafts, my output must be between 30–50,000 words for the month.
Learning points
I have learned a lot about Medium and the stories that do best. I’m no doubt still making loads of mistakes, but I think my style of writing has already adapted.
For one thing, in my fiction writing I always use software such as Scrivener, but here, I write directly into Medium. The platform is quick and responsive, and saves your work almost immediately. Formatting is easy, too.
I have tried to follow the advice of people like Mike Lewis in terms of how to write engaging headlines and articles that people will want to read to the end.
I’ve learned about a few technical things, too, such as:
- How to tag other Medium users
- How to add Alt text to images.
- How to create a ‘kicker’ above the main headline for an article
- Using sites like this one that format your headline into sentence case.
- How to create a list of articles, such as this one on LitRPG and gamelit.
I’m a beginner, but it does feel that I am starting to get to grips with the basics of the platform. And the feedback you get from the editors of publications is a big help.
Earnings
My earnings so far remain kind of pitiful, but then I didn’t really expect much in the first month!
All I was really hoping for was to recoup my monthly subscription cost.
It took me a while to get into the Medium Partner Programme, too, so part of my focus at the start was to get my followers up to the magic 100 threshold, in order to be eligible for this.
I did get a few cents at the end of February, and as of now, mid-way through March, my earnings for the month stand at $2.75. So I should be on track to recoup the subscription by the end of the month.
That’s not going to make me rich, but I’ll take it 😄
Audience
One thing I clearly still have a lot to learn about is how to share my articles with a wider audience.
Of course, I know that getting eyeballs on your work is an ever-present issue in all types of writing, so that was no surprise.
Clearly getting articles into publications helps, but is no guarantee. A few people have now signed up to get my articles by email, and that is great to see. I hope that by sticking to a single niche (articles that focus on creative writing), I will provide useful and interesting content for those readers.
I’m also aware, as I move forward, of finding new things to write. My first few articles were mainly reflections on my own creative process:
More recently, I’ve been trying to write posts that answer the kind of questions I frequently hear from new writers, drawing on my own experience as an author to do so. Things like:
- How do you write so fast?
- How should dialogue be formatted?
- Avoiding procrastination
- What is a pen portrait?
In general, I’d love it if my posts — at least some of them — were to evolve into a kind of creative writing 101 over time. The focus will be on fantasy writing (especially LitRPG), but so much of what I do is highly relevant to other authors, too.
Fellow authors
I am quickly learning that collaboration and community with fellow writers writers can be extremely valuable here (this is also true among book authors, actually). We’ll all do better if we help each other whenever we can, whether it’s claps, comments, follows, or sharing advice.
Talking of which, time for a quick shoutout to…
- Ilam Padmanabhan for great ideas about reader engagement.
- David Ferrers on writing an effective bio.
- Amethyst Qu for great articles on creative writing.
- Samuel Kenneth Kauffman for leading the way on Medium gamelit articles.
- Noelle R. B. for great articles on poetry as well as blogging advice.
I’d love to hear from others about what they learned from their first month on Medium.
Happy writing :)
p.s. you should get my posts direct to your inbox. Do that here! Also, if you’d like to experience Medium yourself, consider supporting me and thousands of other writers by signing up for a membership. It only costs $5 per month, it genuinely supports writers, and you have the chance to make serious money with your own writing as well! By signing up with this link, you’ll support me directly with a portion of your fee, it won’t cost you extra. If you do so, thank you so very much!
