To Get Thousands of Readers?

You Have to Write for Thousands of Readers

It took me two years on Medium to figure something out. But I finally did. So I’m sharing it with you.

We’ve all heard about Write What you Know.

You also have to Write What Other People Want to Read.

LOTS of other people.

If you want to make money on a platform that pays you according to Read Time, it isn’t enough to write well. You have to write well about something that a whole lot of people care about.

I enjoy writing humor pieces about Medium.

They’re fun. Readers enjoy them. But they don’t make much money, because nobody gives a damn about writing on Medium, except for other Medium writers. And however brilliant my post may be, only they will read it.

In contrast, I have also written about the devastating way my last relationship imploded. Those essays have been good earners. This one has pulled in $938 so far, and is still bringing in a steady income stream:

Why?

Because everybody cares about relationships! Especially about relationships going spectacularly wrong. Who doesn’t want to read about that?

My other two most lucrative essay topics? Dogs and cats. There are very few readers who don’t care about one of them. Many care — deeply — about both.

I could post a spectacularly well-written post about wombats. But who’s gonna read it? Maybe a dozen Medium readers who are wild about short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials native to Australia.

Everyone else will be busy reading about dogs or cats.

(How to tell if a topic is popular? Check the tags. LOVE gets 344K. DOGS gets 31K. WOMBATS gets 51.)

The takeaway?

On Medium? It’s not how well you write. It’s what you write about.

Unless you are writing about a topic that is of universal interest (love) and not merely of interest to a tiny subsection of the population (wombats) you will not make much money here.

Does that mean that you should abandon all topics except universal ones?

It depends on what your Medium goals are.

If you’re here to make a living?

Stick to very popular topics.

If you’re here for other reasons? Self expression, or educating your readers about something that really matters to you, or just making people laugh?

Write what you want! Just don’t expect it to bring in the big bucks.

Sometimes what matters to you is something that also matters to millions of readers. In which case? Mazel tov! I congratulate you! You are one fortunate writer.

But for the rest of us? We have to be careful that we’re not writing wombat stories for readers who want love stories.

Writing Coach and editor-for-hire Roz Warren, who writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, can help you improve and publish your work. Drop her a line at [email protected]. (That’s Ros with an “s,” not a “z.”)