My Thoughts About Medium As A New Writer

I’ve only been on Medium for 6 weeks at the time of writing this.

Back in November/December 2021 I discovered I had a passion for writing. It was something I had never considered. I decided to start a couple of personal blogs and found out, talent or no talent, I love writing.

I soon realized that I was writing for an audience of one on my blogs so I decided to branch out and write on Medium. I published my first article on Jan 3rd and sat back wanting to see just how viral it was going to go. So far it has 10 views in total.

I wasn’t sure if I should write about my Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder story, (cptsd) my general pop psychology knowledge, my knowledge from being a dating coach, or the news in general. Then it dawned on me, I run a cybersecurity business and I need to use Medium to help raise awareness.

Since then I’ve been about 70% cybersecurity related articles, about 25% cptsd and the rest are random.

Get monetized with 100 followers and how to write better

It soon became clear to me that so many of the articles on here were regurgitated “how to write better” articles and “follow me and I’ll follow you” to get to your first 100 followers.

As a new writer, it’s great to have so many people offering to help, but enough already, there’s only so many ways you can rewrite the same message to sound different. There is still a need for these articles, but when they consume most of your article feed, it’s a little excessive.

Then the annoying, want to get to 100 followers fast, follow me and I’ll follow you. This didn’t sit right with me from the beginning and I wasn’t sure why.

It finally dawned on me. If I get most of my first 100 followers from a follow for follow scheme, there’s a high probability they won’t be reading my articles when I hit that 100, or and this is worse, I may not be a good writer or not have anything worth writing about.

To be clear, I am talking about me, Your mileage will vary as they say. Instead I decided to commit to writing better articles, writing them more often and adding a call to action at the bottom, asking people to follow me if they like my writing.

Perhaps I’m naïve, perhaps arrogant, but to me this seems like the right way to go. I’m only getting followers on the strength of my writing and I believe there’s a greater chance they’ll continue to read my content even after being monetized.

Going viral

What exactly does that mean anyway? In general terms, on the internet, it means getting 1000’s or 100,000’s in a day or an hour. But I’ve seen so many articles saying I went viral and got 1.5k views in a day or similar. Is that viral?

Or is it viral on Medium as the vast majority of the internet wants to be entertained and not actually read. I genuinely don’t know the answer to this.

Chosen for further distribution

I’ve seen this appear on some of my articles, along with RSS feed tags. Is getting curated different than being selected for further distribution? If so, what is the difference and who decides when an article gets picked or is it AI generated? What exactly are the ‘further distribution” channels?

Then there’s the RSS feeds, I didn’t know people still used RSS feeds. Perhaps this accounts for why such a large percentage of my articles are viewed external to Medium

Monetized

Speaking of being viewed external to Medium, I assume this means none of that read time counts toward your monetization numbers right?

Which begs the question, if an article goes viral, what value does that provide to the writer if it’s viral on the ‘free’ internet, or do I want it to be viral on Medium itself?

Courses to get monetized and coaching

Similar to above, I signed up for two of the more popular writers on Medium’s mailing list and instantly got put into their sales hopper to become a better writer and make more money, fast.

Well by the 2nd or 3rd email from both, I was both bored at the content, which wouldn’t inspire me to buy from them, and also they were saying the same thing. I can’t imagine there would be any value to their coaching either.

Write better, shorter sentences, add thoughtful headings, simpler words, add pictures and join a publication.

To me, other than joining a publication, the rest is common sense. Joining a publication made sense and I did and am thankful for it. I will also say when I’ve submitted articles to the publication, the editors give me advice, for free, on how to write a better article, which I imagine is essentially the condensed version of what these other bloggers are charging you for.

One last note on publications, get yourself into one as soon as you can. There’s 1000 different posts on how to find one so I won’t repeat it.

Pick a publication and roll with it

Here’s my top tip advice for a publication. Don’t attempt to get into the most popular publications unless you’re an established writer, and if you are, why are you reading this post?

Many of them have very high standards for you to pass to get into, and I understand that, but to me, it feels very elitist and I want NO part of that.

Instead, find a newer publication that’s both active and growing, those are the key parts, active and growing. The editors won’t be jaded. They’ll help steer you toward being a better writer and you can ultimately be part of that publication’s growth and success and that to me is really pretty cool.

Commit to writing a certain number of articles per week and stick to it, take any editor’s advice and keep moving forward. Very soon you’ll have earned your 100 followers based on the strength of your writing and the money will start to trickle in shortly after.

Closing note

As one of my oldest and most cynical friends likes to say, “My advice is free and you get what you pay for.”

If you enjoy writing, just keep doing it and take on what an editor tells you. It improves you and the publication. In time the rest will follow.

It takes a lot of time and research to put these articles together. If you like my content, hit the follow button and give me a clap. Thank you.