My First Week on Medium: One Down Many More to Go

Five lessons I’ve learned so far and how much I made as a newbie in my first week on the platform.

Hello Medium. Nice to Meet You.

I finally took the plunge and started writing on Medium; something I had been meaning to do for a long time and just kept forgetting about it.

Well, this week (for reasons I may go into later) I finally took the plunge. Here’s a recap of my first week on Medium, the five lessons I learned, and what I plan on doing next.

1. Don’t import your articles

While I don’t believe this was always the case, importing articles means no one will look at them to be curated. It took me several articles and a couple of experiments later to realize that.

Eventually, however, I re-uploaded all the imported articles except for one (it had decent views and fans), and half of them were curated. Clearly, I missed the memo about importing articles.

Speaking of curation…

2. Curation is a black box, but a crackable one

It actually isn’t hard to get curated.

Of the ten articles I submitted only two that I thought should be curated weren’t, and one that I didn’t think would be curated was.

Of the two I think should have been curated, I feel pretty confident if I resubmitted them the would make the cut, but because they gained some traction on their own, I didn’t fee the need to.

Outside of following the curation guidelines, the best advice I can give you is look at the articles that are currently on the front page of whatever category or publication you’re trying to submit your work to.

Also, just because an article wasn’t curated the first time, doesn’t mean it can’t be curated at all. My first original piece for Medium wasn’t curated. I took it down, made some changes, uploaded it again, and it was ultimately curated in two categories.

I say that to say if an article isn’t performing as well as you’d like — delete it — make some changes and submit it again. You may get curated the second time around.

Curated articles in categories tend to have a feel; make sure your article has the same feel, and you’ll increase your chances of being curated.

I also think the time of day matters as well.

When you think of curation, you also have to think editors are trying to curate a diverse reading experience for members.

If three articles on similar topics on similar takes come in at the same time, someone’s article isn’t going to get distributed. I also beleive time of day plays a role in the likelihood of your article getting curated.

I submit most of my articles around 11 pm because I mostly write at night. Within two to three hours, I have an answer on whether my articles will be distributed, and most often they were.

I submitted three during the day and it took hours to get a response. Two were denied and the third that was accepted wasn’t accepted until almost nine hours later.

My take is that certain hours are busier than others with more submissions happening and it can be tough to get approved around those times.

Once again this is just a theory and is only based on a week’s worth of (very limited) data. But it is something you can test out for yourself.

3. Curation is not the boost it used to be

Curation is now the lay of the land on Medium. Gone are the days you could post, promote and land on a topic’s front page or in Medium’s Daily Digest.

If you’re not curated, no one is going to see your work (for the most part). The thing is, even though curation has become the lay of the land, it doesn’t provide the boost it used to.

Having spent quite a bit of time researching the ins and outs of Medium before starting to post, it seems curation, as recently as Jan 2019, provided a significant boost to your articles in views and engagement. Now it seems it just guarantees that some members in the Medium ecosystem will see it.

Prior to my deleting and uploading articles all of my imported articles had more views than one of the two original articles I wrote. And the one curated article with a lot of views received most of the views outside of Medium’s ecosystem.

The main difference was the two curated articles had fans and only one of the imported ones did. Curation means more Medium subscribers and members will see your post compared to those who are coming in via a Facebook or Twitter link. They understand how Medium works and are more likely to clap or comment than those outside the Medium ecosystem.

For example, on Facebook, I got plenty of positive feedback on my, at the time, imported articles. That didn’t translate to claps or more engagement on the posts, however.

Speaking of claps…

3. Fans are the only stat that matters

If you’re looking to make money through the Medium Partner Program, then fans are the only stat you need to worry about.

Yes, views and reads will make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, but if it is money in the bank you want then you’re going to need to focus on getting more fans. Fans are those who clapped on your article.

And the number of unique fans (those who are paid Medium members) is ultimately what’s going to determine your pay.

Case in point:

Article 1: Views 508 | Reads 175 | Fans 3 | Earnings $0.64

Article 2: Views 48 | Reads 36 | Fans 6 | Earnings $1.53

Article 3: Views 76 | Reads 63 | Fans 0 | Earnings $0.00

The article that made the most money had the fewest views and reads, but the most fans. Things like Read Ratio and (maybe) responses matter after your article has gained fans. Ultimately, however, no fans=no money.

And how do you get more fans on Medium?

4. Followers matter a great deal on Medium

Followers matter a great deal on medium now and from what I can gather that wasn’t always the case.

Your follower count was more a vanity metric because you didn’t need them to get the views and fans you needed to be successful on Medium.

Now, however, it seems like followers are the only way to guarantee you’ll at least get a few claps on any of your articles, especially if you’re not curated.

Medium sends a push notification to your phone when someone you follow posts a new article. Now I don’t know if they do it for everyone you follow, or they choose which members to send notifications about, but I do know they send them.

The more followers you have the more people who will be notified about your article when you post. And since there are likely to be many Medium paid members, if they clap for your work you get paid.

5. Publications or Not to Publications

Not to sound like a broken record, but publications don’t deliver the juice they have prior to this year and particularly since July when Medium seems to have gone all-in on prioritizing their publications above indie writers and publications. Now getting into a publication is no guarantee of a traffic boost or more fans, same as being curated.

The exception to this seems to be getting into one of Medium’s publications. According to some longtime Medium writers, you still don’t get the same sort of boost you may have in the past but it is exposure, your posts may — over the longterm — continue to get traffic and — similar to curation — are more likely to get fans from those who are paid members of the platforms.

I haven’t started down the publication path yet and don’t know if I will. I’ve started my own for the benefits it provides (more on that in another post), but since I’ve been mostly posting content that originally appeared on my blog, I’m not eligible for a lot of publications right now.

Also, since many of the big publications are no longer accepting submissions — you have to pitch them like you would a magazine — I’m just not that interested in going that route.

If I wanted to spend my time pitching publications to get published I wouldn’t be on Medium. Many Medium writers swear it’s still a good way to get those initial eyeballs when you’re starting from scratch. So, it could be apart of some people’s publishing strategy, though at the moment, not mine.

My First Week by the Numbers

And for all my hard work I earned a grand total of — drum roll please — $2.28.

Which, I must admit, is more than I thought I was going to make when looking at how few fans I was getting over the week.

I wrote three articles this week all of which were eligible for payment. There were more articles written, but as I mentioned above, they were imported — so I deleted them and added them back and they will show up in next week’s stats.

I’m pretty okay with my first-week earnings on Medium. While it would have been great to get in last year when building an audience was much easier, I am at the beginning of this new day on Medium and if I can crack this puzzle I feel like I can do well here.

My goal was $1000 in 90 days but I may have to downgrade that to $500 in 90 days because many of these changes make it more difficult to achieve the views and fans you need to earn a significant income.

I’m okay with that, while I’d like my Writer Basic Income from Medium to ultimately be $1,000 a month, an extra $500 would do quite nicely as well

Articles Written this Week

Here are the three articles I wrote this week. While I plan on primarily writing in the same few niches, I will branch out to other topics as a way to expand my portfolio into some of the areas I heavily ghostwrote for, but don’t have any bylined clips.

Wrapping It Up

As mentioned I’m pretty happy with the way things shaped up in this first week. I was initially very worried with my sad numbers, but the week finished strongly with some changes I made (will write more about that later) and I was very pleased with the end result.

So what’s next?

Well, here are my goals for Week 2:

1. Write/Edit at least seven articles
2. Follow 125 people a day (max you can follow each day on Medium)
3. Read, comment and clap on 20 to 30 articles a day
4. Engage more with Medium Facebook groups I’m currently in
5. Find new Medium Facebook groups to join
6. Start a Medium Facebook group of my own (will update this article with the info once done)

So there you have it. My week one in the bag and week two underway. I hope you enjoyed my update and if so check back every Friday (or Saturday) for a new one.

‘Till then, keep writing!

My first 30 Days Recap

Here is each recap of each week of my first five weeks on Medium. They include the articles I wrote, my earnings and the lessons I learned along the way.