Weeks 1–8, 2024
The Best Writing Advice on Medium in 2024
Skyrocket your earnings by copying the strategies of successful writers.
Hello you beautiful people.
Welcome to the first installment of my Weekly Writing Advice series, where I gather the best advice on writing each week.
My goal is to promote other writers and create a communal sense of growth.
I created a Pub just for this purpose — every Sunday morning I will publish the stories that helped me grow as a writer this week.
Before launching the weekly series, I decided to gather the best writing advice from all stories published so far in 2024.
Without the advice of those writers, I would never have been able to make $130 in my first month as a writer — so without further ado, thank you all and let’s begin!
Mastering Medium in a Nutshell
Every kind of nut and their grandma can tell you the simple rules of succeeding on Medium:
- Find your niche.
- Write consistently.
- Engage with other writers.
- Find your audience.
- Master your headlines.
- Use publications and tags.
- Simplify your writing.
The fact that everyone talks about these tips does not make them wrong. Quite the opposite — they are replicated because of their merit.
In this article, we will dive deeper into each important aspect of writing on Medium, accompanied by the words of a wide array of writers.
Finding Your Niche
What should you write about on Medium?
Nonso Emetoh has put together a list based on real data of the 5 profitable topics that will make you money on Medium. Articles about writing and about earning on Medium rank highly of course, but check the list for more ideas.
Most writers advocate that you can write about whatever you feel passionate about — as long as you can provide value to your audience.
Artemis created a very powerful post about the most important questions in identifying your brand.
Medium is a social media platform — here writers act very much like influencers. We can learn a lot by studying how influencers produce content, as Theo Rose points out in his story.
When I first started writing, I challenged the notion of “Write what you know”, as Medium taught me that good writing can come from anywhere — Orestis.
About Writing Consistently
To truly make an impact on Medium, it’s crucial to consistently publish new stories. We’re not sure how the algorithm works; but we know it loves our unwavering presence.
Aleax beautifully gathered 10 tips on becoming a consistent author in her story here.
If you want further encouragement, check out one of the greatest — Carl Jeffers speaks about determination and expectations in his post about making 4,000 followers in 70 days.
Whether you write 2 articles a day, or 3 per week, you will need tons of new ideas for stories!
TIP: Whenever I have an idea, I whip out my phone and write it down as a draft on Medium. This way, my draft folder is full of ready-to-go ideas.
Reading other writers can be a great source of inspiration. I learned from Bin Jiang that you can borrow ideas in a way that benefits both you and the original author.
Don’t forget the comments section — the discussion can be richer than the initial story. You can post one of your comments as a short story or develop the idea into an full-blown article.
Engaging With The Community
A man and his three-legged dog taught me everything about engagement on Medium. Yes, I’m talking Ryan Canady.
Ryan is all over Medium — engaging with big and small writers. Learn more about his engagement strategy priorities, and how you can cannonball your views by engaging before publishing.
Be careful not to exceed 100 comments a day. Medium might flag your account as a spammer and “shadow-ban” you.
The Idealist has a great story about strategizing your engagement to discover valuable readers that can boost your stories.
Christina shares her attitude for engagement on her road to making $5k/month.
Finding Your Audience
The basic idea is to know who you audience are and make sure your writing provides something valuable to them.
Value can by anything. As Leonard Tillerman points out, readers want to feel something when they read your story. You can check his story for great advice on building your audience.
Practical tips are always valuable, especially for writing on Medium. You can also make yourself as your brand on Medium — or even build a cult of followers, as The Life Project humorously puts it in their story.
Finding your audience begins by finding who to follow on the platform — Nonso Emetoh has put together a simple process for making sure you follow the right people on Medium.
A great idea for beginners is join groups for writing challenges or to find a person who can act as your accountability partner.
Master Your Headlines
The headline is the first thing people notice about your article. If it’s not intriguing and generating curiosity, your article will not get many clicks.
Sílvia PM, PhD has created an Ultimate guide for choosing your headline.
The most important rule of thumb is to be precise with your title. It has to say exactly what the reader can expect when they click your story.
Nonso Emetoh yet again has crafted an extended guide as well.
Remember to use simple language. Strong words used sparingly can work miracles, but avoid being metaphorical and overwhelming.
Do you know how to insert a kicker in your post? A kicker is another line of text above your title. Emy Knazovic explains the process of inserting a kicker step-by-step.
Making The Most of Publications and Tags
No matter how captivating your title may be, the reader needs to come across your story in order to click on it. Publications and Topics are the two most important tools to widen your audience.
Publications.
I’ve put together this list of the best publications for new writers. Writing for small publications is an opportunity for your stories to shine in a smaller pond.
Try writting in all of 23 Pubs suggested!
Getting boosted.
The Boost Nomination Pilot is Medium’s way of finding stories to Boost. To do this, the program cooperates with independent publication editors, giving them the power to boost the best stories they come across.
Check out the list of 90 Publications with boost power.
Illumination, New Writer’s Welcome & Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs are three pubs that new writers can use with boost potential.
Tags & Topics
Tags or Topics are crucial for the algorithm to push your story to the right audience. There are numerous Topics to choose from.
If you want to discover topics with low competition, look no further — Charlie J has put together a Tag database that allows you to quickly find the ones with the highest value.
Simplify Your Writing
We are bombarded by short-form content in Instagram and TikTok. The treasure of the written word is threatened.
As our collective attention span is diminishing, writers have less and less time to grasp our attention and make us commit to reading their stories.
Cynthia Marinakos has put together a wonderful article, full of examples, on how to cut the fluff in your writing.
Check out this story by Janis Gross about increasing your read ratio by simplifying, then allow yourself to be entertained by Ryan Canady’s piece about using toddler logic to write intriguing stories.
Lastly, read the confessions of a habitual skimmer by Wesley Scott, to better understand how your readers are skimming through stories, and what you can do to avoid it!
What Not To Do on Medium
If you made it this far, I congratulate your resolve. You are commited to becoming a better writer and earning a bucketload of money on Medium.
Check out the 10 Deadly Sins That Will Make Medium Readers Unfollow You by Not Boring Blog.
I put together a checklist for the mistakes I did in my first month.
- Posting a story from your mobile app does NOT send an email to your subscribers. (Ty Lea Bardot)
- Don’t ignore the advanced SEO option for your stories — outside views can be valuable.
- If you are new to Medium, remember you can Clap up to 50 times! You can hold the click button and scroll down at the same time.
- Don’t compare your results on Medium with other people — especially older accounts. Medium traffic is pretty low this month, while the highest traffic occurs around Summer & Christmas.
As a reward for your persistence I will introduce you to the advice of the two funniest writers in 2024:
- 100 Steps to Become the World’s Most Successful Writer by Brandon Springer
- 9 Steps to Becoming Famous on Medium by Danny Wolf
Thank you all for reading this extended story!
Please make sure you click on the stories by the featured authors.
Follow this Publication for a weekly series of (shorter) stories on the best writing advice from Medium authors.
Your friendly digital neighbour,
Orestis.