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Abstract

at an unfavorable position.Having said that, we can go on to considering more specific features distinguishing successful writers from unsuccessful ones, trying to answer the question of what influences the overall reach of their articles.The following comments are the fruit of my own experience at Medium, as well as what I have read from other writers trying to figure this place out.The number of views is the first important metric that stands out. It represents the opening to the silo separating the world from your message. Everyone skipping that first click is a nail extra in the coffin of your writer self (you gotta be dramatic to get how serious this is).Expressive numbers of views are largely correlated with the quality of your welcoming Medium triplet: title, subtitle and featured image. I should reconsider the word quality, however. What really counts here is catchiness: your ability to puzzle, intrigue, defy, invite, and suggest.There are also themes that help if present. One of them is emotional tone. Affective and sensitive words invite for engagement and are charming: ‘secret’, ‘love’, ‘craze’, and ‘abandon’ are examples.Negativity is also effective. Words like ‘frustration’, ‘difficulty’, and ‘failure’ help us getting that emotional hook worth a click. And listicles remain as effective as ever. Expressions like “7 reasons”, “5 ways” and “3 stages” are attractive because they’re precise and the content they point to is supposedly faster and easier to grip.Questions are also a good bet when engaging readers: “Why I [put an unexpected thing you did here]” and “How to [something crazy here]” are widely used and effective templates to get readers to your content.Getting personal has also passed the test of time. If you want to succeed at Medium, you’ll have to reconsider impersonal syntax. Personal pronouns (we, your, our…) are on the winning side of the fight for the reader’s time. And so are imperatives.Imperatives may sound authoritative and bossy but they work. Combined with strong action verbs, using imperatives is a powerful way of leveling up an article’s capacity to move the reader.My observations of successful articl

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es have led me to some conclusions on length too. It is usually believed that the optimum length is between 800 and 1200 words. That looks, however, more a matter of convenience for the writer than of comfort for the reader. A five minutes article, for example, has space enough for the writer to develop her argument while being short enough to allow her to dispatch articles as often as is necessary if she wants to break into top writing domain.Medium shows, however, that content is what matters. There are successful examples all over the reading time range, from 1 minute to 15. A reader will care about reading time only when he’s not really interested in the article. When there’s interest, this metric is almost irrelevant. The tip goes of itself: let the content tell how many words it should have.These were some of the insights one would do well to keep in mind when trying their luck at Medium. The greatest one, however, still remains the Matthew effect.Medium is a competitive platform. It is misleading to think about it as a place to easily publish the content you want — which it is, in a way. If you’re taking Medium seriously, you will instantly see that this is not about hitting the publish button. This is about publishing what is relevant, and what’s relevant depends heavily on the overall offer of content available on the platform.If you want to check for yourself how hard this is, go to a major publication, find in its archives the list of contributing authors. Study how many of them are still active. You’ll see that, even for the ones who achieved a considerable amount of followers, the abandonment rate is disquieting.I don’t mean to imply that Medium is unfair to new writers. What I do mean is that Medium is no wonderland. The difficulties we find here are the same we find in other competitive businesses: the window of success is narrow, those who are not persistent and who don’t distinguish themselves in some way, will probably not make it.If you are struggling to make ends meet at Medium, consider again why you are writing at all. You should have an unbreakable reason to keep you going, something that is not predicated on your success at the platform, for the road might be longer than you expected.</article></body>

The Truth about Making it On Medium

Plus some insights to help you with that headstart

What makes an article successful on Medium? Which ones we read and which ones we toss aside? What articles are worth your claps?

Every Medium writer has been made hostage to such questions at one point or another. They nag us every now and then when our stats refuse to be compatible with the effort put into writing, when our hopeful expectations turn to delusion before the meager numbers of views, reads and claps.

The first thing that should be clear to any Medium writer who’s taking writing seriously is that success at Medium (and at the majority of other platforms) has to obey a pattern known as the Matthew effect, originally stated as:

For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away — Matthew 25:29

Put in economic fashion it becomes the saying: “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.

The effect is always present whenever free individuals endowed with different talents and in control of different proportions of resources are allowed to compete freely for a limited amount of other resources.

A Pareto distribution would show you graphically this unsettling reality, but here I’ll content myself with a figure: most Medium articles get fewer than 10 claps, and the top 1% receive more than 2000 claps.

This is no news, I know. I just wanted to make it clear that the competitive forces working against those who are not at the cusp of the Medium access hierarchy are a lot larger than they are for top writers.

We should all know that. It can work as extra fuel for those stuck at an unfavorable position.

Having said that, we can go on to considering more specific features distinguishing successful writers from unsuccessful ones, trying to answer the question of what influences the overall reach of their articles.

The following comments are the fruit of my own experience at Medium, as well as what I have read from other writers trying to figure this place out.

The number of views is the first important metric that stands out. It represents the opening to the silo separating the world from your message. Everyone skipping that first click is a nail extra in the coffin of your writer self (you gotta be dramatic to get how serious this is).

Expressive numbers of views are largely correlated with the quality of your welcoming Medium triplet: title, subtitle and featured image. I should reconsider the word quality, however. What really counts here is catchiness: your ability to puzzle, intrigue, defy, invite, and suggest.

There are also themes that help if present. One of them is emotional tone. Affective and sensitive words invite for engagement and are charming: ‘secret’, ‘love’, ‘craze’, and ‘abandon’ are examples.

Negativity is also effective. Words like ‘frustration’, ‘difficulty’, and ‘failure’ help us getting that emotional hook worth a click. And listicles remain as effective as ever. Expressions like “7 reasons”, “5 ways” and “3 stages” are attractive because they’re precise and the content they point to is supposedly faster and easier to grip.

Questions are also a good bet when engaging readers: “Why I [put an unexpected thing you did here]” and “How to [something crazy here]” are widely used and effective templates to get readers to your content.

Getting personal has also passed the test of time. If you want to succeed at Medium, you’ll have to reconsider impersonal syntax. Personal pronouns (we, your, our…) are on the winning side of the fight for the reader’s time. And so are imperatives.

Imperatives may sound authoritative and bossy but they work. Combined with strong action verbs, using imperatives is a powerful way of leveling up an article’s capacity to move the reader.

My observations of successful articles have led me to some conclusions on length too. It is usually believed that the optimum length is between 800 and 1200 words. That looks, however, more a matter of convenience for the writer than of comfort for the reader. A five minutes article, for example, has space enough for the writer to develop her argument while being short enough to allow her to dispatch articles as often as is necessary if she wants to break into top writing domain.

Medium shows, however, that content is what matters. There are successful examples all over the reading time range, from 1 minute to 15. A reader will care about reading time only when he’s not really interested in the article. When there’s interest, this metric is almost irrelevant. The tip goes of itself: let the content tell how many words it should have.

These were some of the insights one would do well to keep in mind when trying their luck at Medium. The greatest one, however, still remains the Matthew effect.

Medium is a competitive platform. It is misleading to think about it as a place to easily publish the content you want — which it is, in a way. If you’re taking Medium seriously, you will instantly see that this is not about hitting the publish button. This is about publishing what is relevant, and what’s relevant depends heavily on the overall offer of content available on the platform.

If you want to check for yourself how hard this is, go to a major publication, find in its archives the list of contributing authors. Study how many of them are still active. You’ll see that, even for the ones who achieved a considerable amount of followers, the abandonment rate is disquieting.

I don’t mean to imply that Medium is unfair to new writers. What I do mean is that Medium is no wonderland. The difficulties we find here are the same we find in other competitive businesses: the window of success is narrow, those who are not persistent and who don’t distinguish themselves in some way, will probably not make it.

If you are struggling to make ends meet at Medium, consider again why you are writing at all. You should have an unbreakable reason to keep you going, something that is not predicated on your success at the platform, for the road might be longer than you expected.