So You Want to Get a Top Writer Award? Here’s the Quickest Way to Do That

This is the space for a subtitle that I haven’t come up with

I got around to fixing an old but useful article that was sorely in need of an update today. It’s a tally of all the 74 Top Writer tags on Medium including how many stories have been written in each.

But you’re not here to see that list, are you? You’re here because you want to take a stroll down Easy Street and grab one of those mama jama’s for yourself — in as quick a way as possible.

Right?

Right.

So let’s begin.

Medium Has a New Feature

This article is only possible because Medium was a bit sneaky in recent months. They’ve been adding a few updates here and there without telling anyone.

Those rascals.

One of these updates is where they share way more information than before about tags. If you want to hear more about it, I go into a bit too much depth on the subject in this piece.

But TLDR, here’s a preview using the rare but powerful ‘Feedium’ tag:

You can sort, check out articles, and see more information on who has written in each tag.

More importantly for this article — and your waning patience — if you look at the top right you can see how many stories and writers there are for each one.

And for those of you that care, you can also see lil’ old me under the Top Writers section for Feedium. Thankfully I’m first, for once.

But note — these Top Writers are separate from the actual Top Writer ‘award’.

Get On With It Please

But enough of my self-deprecating yet absolutely positively hilarious jokes — you want the goods!

From the first article I updated on the 74 Top Writer tags, I extracted the lowest 15 categories.

By that, I mean the niches with the least amount of articles written using those exact tags — the same tags that can give the coveted Top Writer status for that niche.

Here’s that list with both the number of stories AND the number of writers:

1. Self-Driving Cars — 18,700 stories — 9,600 writers
2. Cooking — 24,000 stories — 12,000 writers
3. Internet of Things — 25,000 stories — 13,500 writers
4. Space — 25,000 stories — 12,200 writers
5. This Happened To Me — 26,000 stories — 7,200 writers
6. Women in Tech — 30,000 stories — 15,400 writers
7. Ideas — 32,000 stories — 15,800 writers
8. Diversity — 33,000 stories — 18,300 writers
9. Architecture — 33,000 stories — 16,200 writers
10. Energy — 35,000 stories — 17,000 writers
11. NBA — 35,000 stories — 10,400 writers
12. Virtual Reality — 40,000 stories — 18,400 writers
13. Privacy — 42,000 stories — 22,000 writers
14. Sustainability — 46,000 stories — 22,000 writers
15. Satire — 46,000 stories — 11,100 writers

Out of all the 74 known Top Writer tags, the above are by far the lowest number of articles written on each subject.

And when it comes to Top Writer — a status that can only have 50 people for each one — less is better.

For example, ‘Self-Driving Cars’ has only 18,700 stories written using that tag. Now compare that to one of the top categories like ‘Politics’ which has a whopping 400,000 stories (and one that I somehow have a Top Writer award for).

If you look at those numbers as the ‘competition’ in a way, you can quickly see how it’s much more achievable to get one of only 50 spots for ‘Self-Driving Cars’ versus every other tag.

Use the Wiggle

But now that Medium shows us how many writers have used each tag, the data gets even easier to use.

How?

The sexy concept colloquially known as ratios!

Just divide the number of articles by the number of writers and you now have a form of competition metric.

I’m going to go ahead and call it the Wiggle Ratio — how much writing do you have to wiggle your way through to get a Top Writer status?

This number tells you.

Let’s look at the same 15 tags again, but now ranked by WR:

1. Diversity — 1.80 Wiggle Ratio
2. Internet of Things — 1.85
3. Privacy — 1.91
4. Self-Driving Cars — 1.95
5. Women in Tech — 1.95
6. Cooking — 2.00
7. Ideas — 2.03
8. Architecture — 2.04
9. Space — 2.05
10. Energy — 2.06
11. Sustainability —2.09
12. Virtual Reality — 2.17
13. NBA — 3.37
14. This Happened To Me —3.61
15. Satire — 4.14

What does this list mean? Well, if we look at the #1 ‘Diversity’ Top Writer Tag, each writer on Medium using that tag only has 1.8 articles written per person on that topic. Compare that to ‘Satire’ and you’ll see its 4 articles, on average, for every writer using that tag.

Less average articles from the ‘competition’ means fewer articles you’ll need to write to achieve the Top Writer status for that tag.

Given that these 15 are also extremely low for the total number of stories — and these are almost a surefire bet for you to get the precious in your hands.

But I Don’t Want to Write About IoT

Sure, you may not want to write about the ‘NBA’ and compete with its 10,400 writers.

But what about ‘Cooking’? I’m sure I’d love to hear about your Great Great Grandma’s family recipe for peanut butter tuna sandwiches that’s been passed down through the ages.

Or perhaps you’re into ‘Space’ and only want to compete with 12,200 writers. It also has a low WR of 2.0 to help you blast off on your way.

If that subject isn’t your thing, maybe you’re more like my girlfriend and only exist in the realm of ‘Virtual Reality.’

Whatever floats your boat, I’m sure there's a tag there for you to go write about and get that status!

Even better, you can always check out the other 59 Top Writer tags to see what their Wiggle Ratios are — just remember, the lower the better.

Recap

Just to quickly reiterate, to quickly get a Top Writer status:

1. Go through the list of the 15 easiest Top Writer tags
2. Check out their Wiggle Ratios to see which ones are even easier
3. Pick a subject you like to write about
4. Go write 5–10 articles in the next month on that subject — and be sure to use the tag
5. Thank me 2 weeks later when you have a brand spanking new Top Writer status on the About page of your profile

Until next time, Mediumites, cheers!

J.J. Pryor

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