My New Medium Strategy for the next 30 Days at Least
A new recipe to making in on Medium.
I’ve been giving Medium everything I’ve got for the past year-plus and working Medium for everything it has to offer — engaged readers, curators, and a user-friendly platform to share my ideas, thoughts, and words.
I’ve published nearly every day, I’m well acquainted with its writers, what kind of content resonates, how the platform works, and what formatting works best.
There are about 30,000 writers on Medium.
More than 90% of Medium writers earn less than $100 per month from their writing. Around 5.7% of writers make over $100 per month. I’m in the 5.7% of earners who write on Medium.
Plan for beginners
If you’ve been following my journey, you can read about it here,
one piece of advice I give is to concentrate on writing for one year and not concern yourself with stats in the beginning.
Suppose you have no followers on any social media platform — on Medium or otherwise. In that case, measly stats can impede your confidence, which may stop you from writing and publishing.
That would be a shame.
I’ve been there.
The beginning is not always fun.
Posting a story you’ve worked on for hours only to hear crickets can make the most persistent want to quit.
I posted my first story in 2016 and gave up because I had no idea what I was doing; there weren’t as many “How to Make it on Medium” articles back then. (I’m not sure why there are so many today, they don’t earn money). I like writing about Medium and helping people get started, I remember when I didn’t know how to get reads, and it was frustrating.
Giving up was a missed opportunity because shortly after that time, sometime in 2017, the Medium Partner Program was born, and writers started getting paid per claps.
If only I had kept going, I’d be so much further along now.
You have to keep charging ahead if you want to succeed, comparing your stats to other’s stats may prevent you from sticking it out when no one is reading.
The second time out in 2019, I would never have continued if I hadn’t put blinders on in the beginning and concentrated on my writing.
Growth happens when we compare ourselves to early versions of ourselves. Not to others.
Comparing yourself to others is the quickest way to unhappiness. Compare your growth to what you were doing a month ago, 6 months ago, or last year.
It doesn’t matter what others are doing, concentrate on your progress, and come up with a process of writing that works for you.
Be happy for other’s success, emulate them, but don’t compare your progress to theirs. Realize that every Medium writer is on their own path.
Write stories that make your readers laugh, push them further to live their best lives, and give them stories that make them feel less alone. That’s what resonates here.
Let go of perfection
Another point I often make is not to aim for perfection.
The perfect post doesn’t exist. Reaching for perfection often stops us from doing our best work because we never get started at all. You could reach for perfection in your writing, but you will probably end your life with no published work to your name.
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.” — Anne Lamott author of Bird by Bird
Writing for an entire year every day and not looking at stats is what I did to get here — on the other side of writing daily for one whole year. By writing for a year, I cemented a firmly established habit, one not easily shaken by unexpected life events, boredom, holidays, the belief that I’m a terrible writer and disappointments — all things writers deal with.
My new 30-day plan
Recently, I’ve started taking a deep dive into my stats, and they are eye-opening.
I have almost 5,000 followers.
I have two publications.
The Write Path with 436 followers.
The Write Path drills down on writing, productivity, and how to crush Medium.
And,
The Happy Spot which publishes articles on life, life lessons, self-improvement, and love with 820 followers.
Except for one or two posts, like this one,
the pieces that have done well in terms of earnings were not published in large publications, but in my own.
They were all curated.
Curation runs Medium
Curation is the most important thing on Medium.
If curation is the most important metric on Medium to strive for, what is the second? Quality writing. Quality gets curated. Thus, the third is quantity. The more quality stories you can produce that are curated, the more you will earn.
When a story is curated, it gets curated into topics.
Topics drive Medium’s algorithm.
Thus, placing that story in front of more readers who follow the topic in which it’s curated. The more topics a story is curated in, the more opportunity for readers to see your story. The chances of your story getting noticed by readers multiply by how many topics a story is curated in.
I’m a frequent contributor to Mind Café, The Startup, P.S. I Love You, Publishous, and a few others.
New Strategy
For the next 30 days, I’m going to only publish my stories my own pubs, The Partnered Pen and Illumination, and take a break from submitting to larger publications.
Just for 30 days.
I want to determine if doing so affects my earnings negatively or positively or not at all.
Illumination has no lag time — they publish my work right away.
Lately, except for P.S. I Love You, there are longer waiting periods to hear from publications whether or not a story is accepted. The competition is only growing.
When a piece of mine isn’t accepted, it usually does well in one of my publications. I want to see if my earnings drop during the 30 days when I’m no longer publishing in these larger publications.
Next 30 days
During the next 30 days, I’m going to also strive for more substantial writing. I’ve signed up for another writing class and will work on my writing chops, hone my voice and style. I know I can improve on both.
If you want to know what I’ve found, follow me here.
Summary
At the end of the day, quantity plus plenty of curation is a pretty solid strategy to earn well on Medium. But I’m not 100% sure if getting stories into the larger publications increases my earnings.
In the beginning, when I had no followers of my own, I thought it did, now I’m not so sure.
Large publications have a massive follower count, some have 100K plus, but topics drive Medium’s algorithm. I have a high curation rate, and lately, I’ve been getting curated in more than one topic, so that may be enough to gain reads.
Eyeballs on your work are what you strive for, I’m pretty sure curation counts the most.
I’ll let you know what I find. Good day readers.
Write on.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering perfectionist. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
