The Real Tea on How to Build Your Writerly Platform on Medium

Yes, enterprising writerly minds want to know. So let's deep dive into it. (updated October 2022)

I'm not one to gossip, and the rumor mill has never sparked my interest or turned me on.

I like my tea green, and I want my tea sweetened with the truth. And let me make it clear, artificial sweeteners give me a headache.

Most writers are frustrated on this platform because many came to write and tell stories, not to become Content Creators. Sorry, but you are…

When you signed on to the Medium Partnership Program, you became a Creator. You're still a writer and a creator in partnership with reading, writing, and social media platform. A platform where you can publish your stories. Medium’s goal as of September 2022 is to become the leading choice for writers, bloggers, content creators, and thought leaders to publish insightful stories.

It doesn't matter how little money you may or may not earn. You made a transaction for your services — digital coins for your content.

But if you do it right, you can become a thought leader by contributing good content that adds to the conversations happening in your field or niche.

Speaking of Digital Coins — Money

Nevertheless, I want to begin this first sip with the first dose of truth to set the groundwork.

Truth #1: "In the Medium Partner Program, you do not get paid for views.

You do not get paid for reads. You get paid for members' reading time. You also get paid for membership referrals that result in a sign-up.

I don't care how many articles are published about How much Medium Paid Me for 1,000 views. I can tell you how much you get paid per 1000 views…

…Nothing!

And if you don't believe me, I will take it out of the horse's mouth and let you read it yourself…

“…we will calculate earnings based on three components:

1️⃣How long members spend reading your story. As Medium members spend more time reading your story (“member reading time”), you will earn more.

2️⃣How much of their monthly reading time members spend on your story. By calculating a share of member reading time, we support authors who write about unique topics and connect with loyal readers…

3️⃣How many Medium members you’ve referred. For every new reader that you convert to a paying Medium member, you’ll receive half of that new reader’s membership fee, net of standard payment processor fees. Referral earnings are recurring...” — Medium Help Center

Because of #2, we will never know precisely how much Medium pays us for members' reading time.

Yeah, we only know how much Medium pays us for referrals.

Okay, yes, you can calculate an average.

You would have to add up all the lifetime membership read time of all your stories. Then add up all the money you've earned from Medium outside of referrals. Then divide your earnings by hours of reading time.

For example: $940/569 hrs = $1.65 per hour of read time.

Hence, it is different with each Medium Creator in the partner program.

You have no control over this any more than a Youtuber has control over CPM paid by advertisers.

I know you're saying, "Really, Carmellita?"

That formula is as good as it gets, but you are wasting time calculating time.

Now here's where you have control…

What are you feeding Medium?

Well, what do I mean about "Feeding Medium?" You have to feed Medium a nutritious meal of:

• Engaging stories on topics in which you have knowledge, insight, expertise, or life experience.
• Consistent Good Content written with readers in mind.
• New Members by promoting your stories on other social media platforms. (Full disclosure: I haven't worked at this very much. I rarely do a CTA — call to action).

Then, Views must be a vanity metric!

No, views are not a vanity metric. People love to throw around the phrase vanity metric without having any idea what a vanity metric is.

A vanity metric is a metric that will always increase over time, and it does not provide helpful information until one gives context. When we provide context, a vanity metric becomes a meaningful metric, also known as an actionable metric.

For instance, the meaningful metric in context for views on Medium is your View/Read Ratio (referred to herein as VRR).

In your analytics, your VRR tells you the percentage of your viewers who read your content.

If one of your stories gets 200 views and 160 people read it, that's about 80% — excellent work. On the other hand, if you get 400 views and 60 reads, that's about 15% — not awesome at all.

Truth #2 As an actionable metric, VRR tells you a great deal about why your viewers don't convert to readers.

VRR reveals whether your titles, photo, or subtitle is engaging. In blogging, this is similar to the bounce rate. Something about the title, tags, or photo choice made 400 readers want to click on your story, but only 60 were interested in sticking around. You have to evaluate anything under 33% VRR.

Click to learn more about how to improve your Viewer-Read Ratio.

Clap Your Hand, Everybody. Everybody Clap Your hands👏.

If you have a high VRR on Medium, fans are clapping. Yes, claps matter.

I must drop this truth so the rest of this makes sense.

Truth #3: Fans (the readers who clap) let the algorithm know readers are engaging with your story, and it keeps your story in feeds.

When I discovered this, I was like, whoa — blew my mind.

You can learn more about the updates to Medium’s distribution system here.

Yes folks claps matter.

“Your Story about Whatever” has 10 fans.”

Have you ever seen this statement in your notifications? It does not matter if you wrote the story 3 months ago, 10 fans will trigger the algorithm to send your story to more feeds.

Yep, it means you are going out to more feeds.

In other words, more reach is how Medium feeds you.

Truth # 4 Medium is built for engagement and socializing because Medium does not want to become Myspace.

Remember Myspace?

Sorry to bother you with this, GenZ. 😒

Accordingly, you have to start from somewhere. Someone has to read, clap, and comment. Curation, also known a Further Distribution, helps with discovery. So we should always put our best work forward.

Still, engagement with your stories is vital.

As things stand here on the platform, you'll need support from the writing community on Medium. If you already have a large following (Over 5,000 followers) and a solid social media presence on another social media platform, then you already have your community.

You need to excite them with your stories.

A starting point is engaging with your followers and with other writers on the platform is (I.) writing inspiring stories, (II.) engaging (III.) supporting other writers.

Engaging with other writers gets the ball rolling, then forming a network and community that supports each other's work helps each writer build a platform on Medium's platform. Medium is literally telling us to do it!

Engagement is not just…

“But I comment on all my stories and I read other people’s stories and comment.”

That's only the tip of the iceberg.

"What?"

Oh, yeah, welcome to social media.

Even if you don't write daily (it's best to write daily if you can, and full disclosure, I don't), take some time on the days you aren't writing to read, highlight, clap on at minimum 10 of the people you love to read who also engage.

If you have sincerely engaged by reading, highlighting, clapping, and commenting, and nothing is happening, then you are having content issues.

But I'm a Good Writer

You may say, "Hold on, Carmellita, I write daily, and I'm a good writer." Then I must ask you to ask yourself a few questions before you click the publish button:

"I know I've written this well but is this good content?

"For whom is this content written?"

"Did anybody read my story the last time I wrote about this topic?"

Truth #5: Good writing isn't always good content, but good writing that's good content is gold.

Wow, say that three times.

When we choose the topics we write and the tags we write in, we must consider the audience we have or the audience we want.

I became one of the Top Writers in Social Media a month ago. I began writing on Audience Development, Engagement, and Content Creation out of concern.

I can't express enough how much I love writers, especially new writers. I love writers who discovered their passion at any age, from 7–107 years young.

I saw the complaints and people who wanted to leave but loved their work here so much. I reached out to many of them individually for a while, and some shrugged me off. "Hey, you're just getting started, you don't know."

Once I started to grow, I wrote for the new writers who were reading all this mess about how Medium was dead. So I wrote my first story about building an audience through engagement and reciprocity. I wrote a second, and so on. I filled a need. I addressed a pain point. I told the truth. Hopefully, I provided some value.

I have an audience of folks who followed me strictly to learn more ways to build an audience faster and reach more audiences. They don't care about my poem, personal essay, life lesson, writing tip, healing, or self-empowerment modality this week.

And that's okay. I do my very best to serve that segment of my audience as well.

So I study, research, and write about these topics regularly to provide that segment of my audience with the information I have learned and tested. I never tried to be a Top Writer on Social Media. I just wanted to provide some tips and support.

Please don't be offended.

If you have 100s of stories and thousands of followers and you're not growing or earning, your platform is not steady enough. Medium's platform is not your problem. It doesn't matter how much you've written or engaged. Something is off balance.

Here's Truth # 6. Followers can't follow you if you run all over different topics. You don't have to niche down, either. You have to choose topics you want to write on and tags you want to write under.

Write enough content on those topics and write enough under those tags and balance out your platform.

Get it steady. Build strong.

You may have drawn an audience in with your quirky travel tales, but you don't write about it regularly enough. You may have drawn in another segment of your audience with personal essays and life lessons but only write on this topic once a month.

Continue to write on various topics if you enjoy it, but balance it with enough consistent content for that segment of your audience to enjoy. Don't leave the readers you have hanging in a failed effort to chase down other readers.

If you found value in this deep dive, join me to discover how to put these truths to power so you can gear up to grow, build a strong platform, and reach larger audiences. In the Truth to Power Series, I will demonstrate:

• Ways to increase VRR (Available Now)
• Improve the quality of your engagement (Available Now)
• Ways to build a strong and balanced platform on Medium's Social Media Platform. (Available now)

I hope you enjoyed the tea. I'm brewing more…

Now, Fam, you know I'm curious. What are some of your biggest concerns about writing on Medium? Earning more? Reaching larger audiences? Has this story provided some insights you can use?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Hey, it's all about reciprocity at Reciprocal. So please check out these stories by some pretty awesome writers:

Tyra Jaide, Spins a story like a hip-hop record as she discusses the power of reading and engaging on Medium.

Janice M. Flanders, in the spirit of Oliver Twist, shares how she self-publishes her colorful stories on Medium…