Rest Assured This Is Not A One-Off Bonus

Medium is on the brink of a change and hopefully in favor of writers.

Yesterday, Medium paid 1000 writers a $500 one-off bonus.

That made a lot of writers happy.

But many good and deserving writers missed out.

They were perhaps not at the right place at the right time.

Had Medium done it a month earlier, I wouldn’t have got it either. I only started publishing daily from 12 April.

Many writers are trying to figure out the motive behind Medium’s action.

Nia Simone McLeod wrote:

Medium has a super smart team. It knows us. I think that this $500 is a bet on us to market their platform for them.

So, instead of investing those marketing dollars in another way, they used the $50000 ($500 x 1000) to start word-of-mouth — which is the best form of marketing, anyway. And, people won’t just talk about this on Medium; they’ll take it throughout social media as a testament to why writers should choose this platform.

Who knows who’ll pick up this story and send more eyes Medium’s way?

This is genius. A lil’ evil genius — but still genius.

Vishnu*s Virtues asked Is Medium Trying to Bribe Us?

He envisioned a dummy conversation between Medium leaders discussing the effects of rising competition and how to fix their broken system of paying writers.

NewsBreak was coming on strong and doling out all kinds of financial benefits for writers which must have had Medium concerned. Every writer on Medium was talking about how good it was over at NewsBreak and why it was time to make a move.

NewsBreak was a direct competitor that was essentially using the same format that Medium was. Paying content creators for sharing their work. Medium was doing it through a subscription model while NewsBreak was doing it through an advertising model.

Medium was doing a pretty poor job of compensating their writers. Only a few content creators (6–10% they said) were earning $100.00 or more. People could immediately start making $1000 on NewsBreak when they signed up.

What was a company to do when their strongest competitor was dishing out lots of money to content creators?

— Vishnu*s Virtues

There are other factors in play too.

Medium’s payment system seemed broken for a long time. Of the eleven months I have been here, I have seen it moving from one form of payment to another in quick successions.

Writers who have been around for much longer than me have seen many incarnations. Tom Kuegler noted that back in 2018, they used to hand out $100 bonuses to lesser-known writers who wrote exceptional stories.

Ev Williams has been talking about shifting towards a “more relational” Medium for some time now. He has been wanting to shift from focusing on publications to individual writers. Recent changes such as disbanding the editorial team, bringing back the customer domains, deeper conversations through treaded responses, and hiring Mariam Naficy indicate that.

[Mariam Naficy] has learned building a creative marketplace at Minted (which has been hugely successful) that I realized a lot of her experience is directly applicable to Medium. — Ev Williams

Giving away half a million dollars in a day is big news.

But then Medium has a subscriber base of more than two hundred thousand people.

They could have used this money to make some changes to its platform, but it wouldn’t have made this kind of impact.

The statement it has made by rewarding the writers who have been working tirelessly without expecting much is:

We value you. We want to you stay and create. We will make this place worth your while.

I agree with Tom Kuegler when he says:

I definitely don’t think this is a one-time thing. I think this is going to be a semi-regular occurrence. It could be a monthly occurrence.

Hell, maybe it won’t ever happen again exactly like this for 1,000 writers at a time, but I do think Medium will start finding ways to reward creators for their hard work in the form of bonuses and what not moving forward.

…

These payments are the ushering in of a new era on Medium. I think — and maybe I’m looking at this with rosy colored glasses — that they’re going to start prioritizing their writers again.

…

I think this is the first of many. The first of a lot of cool new bonuses and incentives for writers to publish on Medium. Bring it on.

If that is the case, what can you do to take advantage of it?

I feel I am standing at the brink of something where the things are going to change for good pretty rapidly. It is like the blogging in 2002, and Facebook in 2012. I missed both these opportunities but I want to be ready for this one.

Seems like Medium’s pool of serious writers is not very big. I never thought I had a chance to be picked up from 40,000+ writers on Medium. Many other writers who got the bonus expressed the same sentiments. Which means given with proper strategy, I can make a name for myself.

Here is my seven-step plan. Feel free to follow it if you want to position yourself.

Take writing seriously.

The rising competition between platforms such as Medium, Newsbreak, Substack and Vocal, it is really possible to build a career in content writing. To me it sounds like blogging going through metamorphosis.

If writing was a mere hobby for you, it is time to take it to next level.

Study the craft of writing articles. You don’t have to take expensive courses; there are plenty of articles on Medium that can teach you all you need to know.

Write and publish regularly.

Publishing regularly is the key to make a place for yourself in the noisy world of the internet. I have discovered that by publishing an article a day. You start build a string of followers.

Start with small articles. Don’t go for read-time. Go for building a habit to publish one, two, three, or five articles a week. If you can manage just a 300 words article at this point, so be it. Make those 300 words meaningful. Cut all the fluff.

Engage with other writers.

On platforms like Medium (which I think is social media for writers) engagement is as important as consistency of publishing.

Leave intelligent comments on other writer’s work. Respond on all the comments on your articles. Share your experience. Encourage new writers. Learn from the established ones.

Create a healthy ecosystem at Medium.

If these changes work well, Medium is going to be around for a long time to come. It is up to us now to create a good welcoming environment.

We are not in competition with each other, or anyone else for that matter.

We are all creators. We take inspiration from each other and from the universe. We play with ideas as a child plays with a bouncy ball. Rather than feeling bitter with people stealing your ideas, be thankful that they are taking it to next level. There is no sovereignty on ideas.

Don’t write the same run of the mill articles

Explore new ideas. Pick a subject you want to learn about and go deep in it. Write from your point of view. What is your take on artificial intelligence? Where you think the world is going?

Pick one thing, whether cooking, self-development, psychology, or machine learning, and then go deep into it. Even when you are no expert you can learn and teach. One day you will become an expert on that subject. Then choose another one and repeat the process.

Don’t worry if you are not getting accepted in big publications initially.

Publish on your profile.

Get better first.

And get fast. Once you are able to write a 750 word article in under an hour, then start concentrating on getting better. By that time you will become so good at it that big publications won’t be able to ignore you. It is the exact strategy I am following.

Plan for long term.

Long term may not be as long as you think. But it is not as quick as a few months. Many writers who have been writing for less that a year have be recognised (including myself) in this current bonus announcement.

In nutshell.

Writers, if you have missed out on this round of bonue there will surely be more in future. If not in exact same way, then in different ways.

Be ready to take advantage of those.

Make a plan and work that plan.

I wish you all the luck.

I am sure you can take your writing career to whatever heights you want if you are willing to put your heart and sweat into it.

And thank you Medium, for igniting new hope in writers.

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