The Three Most Important Issues to Address When Writing a Post for Medium
It’s a beautiful place to be.
Anyone can make money on Medium. You don’t need a degree; you don’t need an agent or a publisher. If you can write and write well, you can earn a living from writing. If you love to write, you’ll probably do even better.
Because of this, Medium is my favorite platform; they pay me when people read my words.
The latest on Medium
Medium has been cracking down on titles that read like clickbait, which means I have to change my mindset on what constitutes as clickbait and what doesn’t.
Here is the latest from Medium:
“Clickbait is content that’s designed to entice a reader to click. It often shows up in the form of deceptive or manipulative story packaging — a hyperbolic claim, a too-wide curiosity gap, a titillating image, etc. These stories do not follow through on their promise and often leave the reader unsatisfied.”
My highest viewed post, The One Book That Will Change Your Life, offers up a title that is now considered “clickbait,” as do several of my older titles that went on to do well and were curated.
They probably wouldn’t get curated if they were published today.
At the time The One Book That Will Change Your Life (published in 2019), was curated into two topics.
I don’t qualify this title as clickbait because I delivered on the promise the title suggests (although, I realize that’s a subjective statement). I believe it is the one book that could change your life, and the message in the post resonates with readers. The book did change my life (no hyperbole).
I’ve been getting rejected from publications with the same note, “the title is clickbait — it won’t get curated.”
Until recently, I didn’t fully know the extent of what Medium considers clickbait. I need to change my thinking on this if I want to get into the larger publications. One of my posts was rejected for a title that read, “Practice This Quality, and You Will Attract Others to You.” The “this” is considered clickbait. Because I’m not telling the reader what the quality is that will make you attractive to others.
If you want to get into Medium publications, you’ll have to play the game or publish in your own publication (another benefit to running your own publication). However, you most likely won’t get curated. Significant downside.
Curation is still the most important metric on Medium you want to aim for and not miss. Curation means Medium pushes your story across its platform. It’s topics that drive Medium’s algorithm, and the more topics a story is curated in, the better for your story and your bottom line.
More eyeballs equate to more of the green stuff. Giving your story a longer shelf life.
The story I referenced above didn’t take off for months after publication; curation helped push it across Medium’s homepage. Views mean nothing; it just means someone clicked. The metric you should pay attention to is the average reading time because it determines the payout. You want your stories to be curated if you want to make money.
The Three Most Important Issues to Focus on
1) Title
So, what kind of title is Medium looking for:
- Be specific as possible.
- One sentence that sums up the piece.
- Don’t “guide” the reader into wanting to click by being vague and mysterious.
Here are two examples of titles that get clicked on Medium and what does well on the platform:
- My Husband’s Mistress Can Keep My Husband, but I Want the Anthropologie Dress Back
- How My Lawyer and My Husband Taught Me The Gift of Non-reaction
Both articles received a lot of engagement — reads, comments, shares — right away.
Someone on Twitter with many more followers than me even suggested Anthropologie send me a dress (still waiting).
It’s a catchy title, it makes you want to click, but it isn’t clickbait. I’m telling you in the title what the article is about, no parsing. The story reflects the title.
What the titles have in common:
- Both are very specific.
- The title tells a story.
- The reader knows what they’re getting when they click on the story and read.
- The reader isn’t disappointed; the story in the title reflects the story in the post.
2) Quality
If the post is well written, the reader will stay. The goal is to write words other people want to read; quality always counts. And counts the most. To get to quality, you need to write a lot of words consistently. There is no magic bullet to making it as a writer. You have to just write. And then keep at it.
As Zinsser writes in On Writing Well, “If you went to work for a newspaper that required you to write two or three articles every day, you would be a better writer after six months.”
When I started writing on Medium, for three months consecutively, I published every day without fail — even Saturdays and Sundays. That strategy helped me earn money right away.
3) Market Your Work
I love Medium. It has given me an income. Keep in mind though, it is a social media platform, and like all social media platforms, it can and will change any aspect about its platform, anytime even if it continues to pay its writers. The Medium Partner Program was rolled out until 2017. To rely solely on it for an income would be short-sighted.
That said, I don’t Medium will stop paying writers, but if it does or changes some other feature that makes it harder to earn money, you need to have another plan for your writing that generates an income.
Market your work on other social media platforms. Choose the one you like best. It’s unrealistic to be effective on all of them, and there is only so much time in the day, which could be dedicated to your next viral post.
Share it in Medium-centric Facebook groups or on Twitter and LinkedIn. Until everyone knows your name, you’re going to have to promote your work.
You’ll meet a lot of great writers in these groups. Don’t be a lone wolf; one of the great benefits of being a writer is the other writers you meet on your journey.
Some groups that I like are:
Just remember that these are Medium writers in these groups who contribute and are a part of the larger Medium community. Take the same professionalism into these groups as you would a job.
The most important things to concentrate on when writing for Medium
- Be specific in the title — People are busy and oversaturated with online content. Your title needs to grab them in a split second. It is the most important part of any post because if it doesn’t do its job, the reader won’t click.
- Give your audience a crystal clear preview of what’s in it for them if they click through. What will they get out of your post? Does your title make your story sound interesting? What problem will you solve for the reader in their daily life?
- Ask yourself, what is in it for the reader? Write the benefit down. Make sure your benefit is clear to the reader in your headline and your article. Once you’ve delivered on the title, your job is not finished as a writer; it has just begun.
- Deliver in the body of the article. Ask yourself the same questions. What is in it for the reader? What benefit am I delivering? Did I make the benefit clear in the story? Does the story reflect the title?
- Pro tip — 95.5% of the time, I have the title of the story first, rarely do I make major changes to it by the time I publish. I may tweak it a bit, but the benefit that is in the initial title stays the same. While you’re writing your post, one trick is to copy and paste the title before each new paragraph you write (remove it before you publish). Having the title at the beginning of each paragraph reminds you of the purpose of the post and what you promised the reader. It keeps the post’s main message at the forefront of your mind, giving you a prompt to write a clear and concise story with the main message at its core.
- Write your post.
- Edit on a different day. This has made the biggest impact on my writing. When I edit on another day, I come to my post with fresh eyes, and the mistakes are glaring. They scream.
- Sit down with a red pen; if it feels strange to read aloud to no one, read to your dog. Read it aloud — the mistakes, and most importantly, where the story lags and stumbles will be obvious. Editing is a game of subtraction, finding, and keeping the right details to serve the story and deleting the rest or restructuring the piece to make it more effective for the reader.
- Take out your red pen and make it bleed. Aim to cut out ten percent of your post. Start with the qualifiers like actually, literally, sort of, indeed, basically. They can be cut right off the top. These words are unnecessary and take away your authority as a writer. They make your audience trust you less.
You want your audience to trust you, so they keep reading.
Write on.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
