WRITING | SUCCESS | MEDIUM

This Is The “Success-On-Medium” Pack You Need.

If you know and follow these 25 things, your success on Medium is just around the corner.

It is finally here.

The success on Medium pack I’ve always been talking about.

My writing journey on Medium began in the last week of November 2023, but I stopped because I thought I could never do well on the platform.

I felt spending time here would just be a waste.

I did not know even up to 5 of these 25 things I’m going to talk about.

I tried to write a little more in December but before the holidays, I just threw in the towel concluding that this was not for me.

You may have felt the same way at some point in your journey, right?

So I didn’t write anything after the 13th of December.

It was much worse in January because I wrote only two stories.

But at the end of January, I acknowledged that I had failed myself for giving up only in the early stages.

The regret that came afterwards was so painful especially at the sight of the success of other writers who started with me in the same month but did not back down.

It was then that I made my resolve.

I wrote a story every day in the month of February, and I have learned so much about what what it takes to experience above average organic growth on Medium.

And you know what the fun part of it is?

I wrote down every single tip I can conclude from my experience, that it helped me immensely on this journey. You are in luck because I am going to share all 25 of them with you in this article.

Note that these are solely from my experience with writing on Medium consistently in the month of February.

We both know it’s going to be a long ride so get yourself a seat and a cup of coffee, and let’s get into it!

The 25 things I have learned(in no particular order):

1. Writing an article every day is definitely worth it when starting out.

If you are a new writer, writing every day will do you a lot of good. Keeping this kind of consistency is encouraged because when you are new to Medium, you don’t really have much to show.

This means writing one or two stories/articles (they mean the same thing) every day will build your library faster. Once all your stories are getting some traction, your stats and earnings will also grow.

2. In your stories, keep your writing spaced out. Your reader’s eyes will thank you.

I find big chunks and blocks of words repulsive. The majority of other readers and writers will agree with me.

You have to make sure your writing is cleanly formatted so that your readers can stay and appreciate your content. Nobody will strain their eyes to read your work no matter how valuable it is.

The reader comes first, and so do their eyes.

3. Respond to every comment on your stories.

It may sound like a lot of work but you have to do this. It is very important. There are millions of articles on Medium so if readers decide to read your work and drop a comment, it means a lot.

Respond to those comments showing your genuine appreciation or acknowledgement of their contributions.

Sometimes, some readers ask questions in the comments and you cannot miss them.

I have had to answer general questions asked by readers on other writers’ stories and in my opinion, it is not the best.

4. Join publications to maximize your reach.

Publishing your stories through publications is a great way to get your writing in front of a much bigger audience.

A publication is normally followed by many other writers and readers so anytime a story is published through the publication, all its followers will see the story.

Every publication has its own set of guidelines for joining so you’d have to read those rules to know what to do.

Torshie Torto put all the important info about joining publications in an article you can read via this link.

5. Sign up for a Medium Membership.

As a medium member you will get access to unlimited stories to read, the ability to earn money on your writing if you join the partner program, and many other benefits just for $5 in general.

There is a much more premium membership called the Friend of Medium(FOM) membership. With this membership you get all the benefits of the regular membership in addition to your read time supporting writers four times more.

Also, as an FoM, read time on your stories from non-members generates earnings for you, if these non-members accessed your story via friend links other FoMs created on your story.

This applies only if you are in the partner program.

6. Complete your profile.

If you want readers to visit your profile and take you seriously, it has to be adequate. Fill up your bio, about, and profile picture. Make sure you talk about yourself and what you love briefly in your about.

I encourage you to use your own face as your profile picture. A blank picture or an abstract image may do you more harm than good.

People want to connect with humans and one of the most basic things they will use to judge that online is your profile picture.

7. Beware of scam accounts.

Scammers are everywhere online nowadays and you have to protect yourself online no matter what.

Even as I believe Medium is working hard to remove all scam accounts, you have a role to play — to be vigilant.

Generally, if any account is asking you to go off the Medium platform to join a group of writers by first paying a membership fee through PayPal or any other means, that’s a huge red flag and you need to flee.

I wrote an article about how to make sure you don’t fall for their schemes.

You can read it via this link.

8. Read other writers every day & engage.

Medium is a community of many wonderful people and there is a ton of helpful information on virtually any niche there is, but you’ll only get to know these if you read the works of other writers.

My rule of thumb is to read a minimum of 15 stories a day. I split these into three parts: 5 in the morning, 5 in the afternoon and 5 in the evening.

While reading, you have to engage. Your growth is reliant on engagement. If you don’t engage, you will not get anywhere any time soon. That’s just the way the algorithm works.

There are three main tools for engagement on Medium. These are the clap, highlight and respond features.

Liz Koss used them excellently on one of my stories. She highlighted, clapped and responded to a portion of my story with a comment in that order.

This is the best way to engage. Doing this intentionally helps writers discover you and do the same on your stories. This is how you will grow followers, reads, and eventually earnings.

9. Write an about me story and pin it to your profile.

It’s a common habit of readers & writers to check your profile after reading a story or response of yours. I do it a lot especially if I found the story to be very helpful.

The big idea is to see if you have an ‘about me’ story so I get to know you better. There is a specific publication called About Me Stories that publishes such stories. I learned about this publication from Hudson Rennie in one of his YouTube videos.

Essentially, this publication headed by Quy Ma publishes stories where writers introduce themselves to the entire Medium community. It’s a great way to help other medium users get to know you better.

Notice how my about me story is the first pinned story on my profile.

You can find the pin story option by clicking the three horizontal dots towards the right bottom of the story card on your profile screen.

You will find the “pin story to profile” option in the menu that displays.

You can read my about me story here.

10. Slap a banner onto your profile.

Looks are important. That’s why an article without any images from Unsplash or Pexels is as unattractive as one with no spacing whatsoever.

Your profile has to appeal to your reader. A profile with a nice banner makes it more presentable to any visitor and increases your chances of getting a follow or a read on one of your stories.

On your profile page, click on the three horizontal dots to the right side of where your name is written with a large font. In the options that show, click on “Design your profile”.

From there you can customize the color of your banner or add a picture like I did.

11. Craft better titles when writing your stories.

Titles make all the difference for you. I can’t say I am a pro at writing the perfect title for my stories but I know I have come a long way.

I have a fair idea of what will produce a good read ratio and what will not.

The bottom line is, your title should be simple, straight to the point and very enticing to your reader. Always have the reader in mind.

Ask yourself questions like “what will whet my reader’s appetite to click on my story?” or “ what’s in it for my reader?” With these questions you are able to gauge what the reader will find interesting to read.

Say you gained 1000 followers in two weeks and you want to write on that.

A title like “I gained 1000 followers in 2 weeks. Here’s how you can do it in 1 week” will do much better than a title like “This is how I got 1000 followers in 2 weeks”.

It may not look so different but you’ll agree with me that the first title draws your reader in much more than the second because you are offering the reader the chance to do it faster than you did.

12. Avoid clickbait. It’ll hurt your stats a lot.

One thing no reader wants to do is to waste time on a story that does not deliver on its promise.

Never promise something in a title that you cannot deliver in the body. When you do this, you may have a high number of views but a very low read ratio.

That’s very bad for you.

Remember, it’s the reads that pay and not the views.

The algorithm will assume your content is spammy and that’ll be the end of the story.

13. Tag writers and publications when you need to. Don’t abuse it.

It’s normal to want to show appreciation to a writer in your story or reference them for something you like about them. The same goes for publications.

The ‘@’ feature helps you find and mention the writer.

Once you use it, Medium will let them know that you mentioned them in your story. It is a great way to get additional eyes on your stories too.

However, you only use this feature when you need to. If you abuse it by mentioning random writers who are completely unrelated to your story in any way, guess who’s coming for you with crimson eyes and a frown?

You’re right, our good old algorithm!

So make sure you use it carefully.

14. You can always self-publish before or without a publication.

You don’t always have to wait for most publications to publish your story if you want it to go out earlier.

Sometimes, publications may delay in publishing your stories for many reasons. The most common one in my opinion is when there are so many submissions from other writers.

It’s like a queue so you’d have to wait till it’s your turn.

But most publications know this can be frustrating so some even encourage you to self-publish before submitting to the publication.

Visit the guidelines of the publications you are a writer for so you know their takes on this.

The only demerit about self-publishing as an early writer is that your story may not be seen by many people unless you already have lots of followers.

15. You can remove your story from a publication but I’d rather you don’t.

I did this twice — the first one was intentional but the second one was not.

There seems to be a weird relationship between removing a story from a publication and losing some followers.

I know it sounds unreal but I kid you not because it happened to me, twice.

I did it the first time because the publication delayed so much and I did not know about the self-publish option back then. My rule of thumb is to remove my story if after 24 hours after submission, it has not been published by the publication.

So I removed the story and submitted it to a different publication that published it rather quickly.

The next morning I had lost 10 followers!

That’s right.

I remember it so well because I had about 390 followers the night before and I thought about how I needed only a few followers to get to 400.

My follower count dropped to about 380.

Initially, I thought it was probably because I was a little drowsy so I did not see it well. But the second occurrence confirmed it.

(I used the word “about” because it was a figure between 390 and 400 but I can’t recall the exact number.)

The second instance was a mistake on my part. I did not know my story was published right before the 24 hour timeline so I removed it.

This was only yesterday. I had 402 followers. A few minutes after the removal and resubmission to another publication, I lost 2 followers.

That’s how I know it’s not a coincidence.

Maybe it is still a coincidence, or that’s just another thing the algorithm hates. Let me know if you have seen this too in the comments because I really want to be sure.

16. There is always a best time for you to publish and you need to find yours.

Because of our different time zones the best time may vary for many people. For me it’s between the hours of 1pm GMT and 4pm GMT on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Why am I saying this?

Stories I published within this time frame really did a lot better than the others. I realized this because of how often I was publishing.

On the other days publishing at any time performed pretty much the same.

You need to find your sweet spot and take advantage of it. Study the time frame your stories get the most engagement. If it repeats itself, that’s the hint.

That’s when most of your readers are active so publishing at that time may help boost the engagement on your stories.

Now, you don’t have to wait for that particular time frame once you have discovered it.

Medium allows you to schedule stories to be published later, automatically. The option is displayed on the story preview page as shown above.

17. Check your stats frequently.

The truth is, you cannot achieve success on Medium without being a “staddict”(stat addict).

If you are not checking your stats at least three times a day, how will you know what works and what does not work?

The stats comprise of your story stats, audience stats, and partner program earnings if you are a part of the partner program.

You really need the stats info to grow well on Medium.

By checking my stats frequently( I check more than 10 times in a day), I am able to see which of my stories are doing well and why. I also get to see which of my stories are not performing and what I can do to correct that.

The statistics help you make informed decisions so if you are not frequently looking at them, don’t expect much.

18. Never hate on a writer.

It’s dangerous to do that here. If you do, you’ll easily draw the attention of the Medium police. If you want to critique, do that constructively otherwise just let it go.

Medium has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to these things so make sure you don’t become a scape goat.

Your account will be suspended sooner than you can imagine.

19. Don’t comment like a robot.

Responses like “Nice article”, “Good one”, and “Thanks for sharing” will make others think you are a bot.

Even if you still want to use these, let the owner of the story know what exactly in the story makes you want to say “Nice article”, “Good one”, and “Thanks for sharing”.

You’re human, so show that to the community.

20. Use tags and use them well.

I recently got to know from writers like Carl Jeffers and Bin Jiang in one of their stories that a lot of writers either do not use tags at all or they don’t know how to use them.

Tags play an important role in getting your stories out to a much bigger audience.

For example, if you use the ‘Food’ tag under your story, people who love and read stories under the food topic are more likely to see your story because it is put in that category.

This happens for every tag you use, and Medium allows you to add up to 5 tags to your stories so you can imagine how helpful that can be.

Also, some tags have a lot more followers than there are stories and others have a lot more stories than there are followers.

Using a tag like the former means your stories are more likely to get seen by a lot of people. On the other hand, using a tag like the latter may not push your stories to a lot of people.

You should however note that using topics/tags unrelated to your story in the name of getting it in front of a lot of people will backfire.

You cannot fool the algorithm.

Read Carl’s and Bin’s stories here and here respectively. They talk about how to use tags properly.

Charlie J 🕊️wrote comprehensively about a tag research she did and you can read that here. A very insightful piece I must say.

21. Always read your notifications. Don’t let them pile up.

I mentioned earlier that you should be intentional about responding to all your comments.

The only way you can do this is by checking your notifications frequently and addressing what calls for your attention.

It’s possible to miss a comment or a mention and I have seen that happen to writers.

If your notifications pile up so much so that you are unable to respond to comments and mentions, other writers may think of you as rude.

22. Include friend links in your articles to help non-members read them.

A friend link will allow non-members to bypass the paywall on your story and read it in its entirety.

But you need to be careful when using this because it can hurt your earnings.

Even though the views and reads will be counted for in your stats, you will not earn any money on them no matter how large the numbers are, unless you are a friend of Medium(FOM).

As a regular member, I’d advise that you use the friend link for what it is. Share with your friends or family who want to see your work but are not medium members.

23. Include links to your old stories in your new ones to revive them.

It goes without saying that after a few weeks or months after a story is published it does not get as many views as it used to.

Referencing old stories in your new ones is a great way to drive more traffic to them. Maybe you are writing about a topic that your reader will need some context to fully understand.

If that context is provided in an older story you can save yourself the repetition and embed the link into your new story.

In the image, I just pasted the link to an old story on a new line. After hitting Enter, the link was upgraded into a more graphically appealing nature by the Medium text editor.

You can also put the links into words within your story. All you need to do is highlight the word/words and from the tools that show and select the chain-like one.

A space will be provided to paste the link.

24. Appreciate constructive feedback from editors.

Learning how to write well is a journey and from time to time we may make some mistakes in our writing.

When you submit a story to a publication and an editor reverts with a correction, see it as a way to learn. No one is out to get you. We are all here to help so even as it may delay the time your story gets published, know that you have learned something new.

If you insist that there are not any mistakes in your writing, you can provide evidence, all in a polite way.

In the end, it’s the best the editors want for you.

25. It may take time but keep writing.

I always say that I regret giving up early on Medium after I joined in November 2023. If only I kept writing I would have gone very far by now.

Remember that good things take time but they are sustainable when they come to be.

Don’t throw in the towel when you are not getting the reads you expect. Maintain a good writing frequency and don’t give up.

The results will show sooner than you think.

You’ve got this!

Thank you so much for reading to the end.

If you found this helpful or can relate in any way do leave some claps or highlight and comment with your thoughts.

You can also buy me a coffee to show your appreciation and support: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/sompamensah

A massive shout out to Annie Trevaskis for being my first supporter.

I’m very grateful.