Top Medium Writers Use 7 Strategies to Get More Readers (You Can Too)

Methods to earn more money from your melon

Medium’s a tough landscape to crack if you have trouble getting readership. While there’s no shortage of helpful advice (I’m just as guilty as the next person), there are a handful of things you can do right now, to get more reads from your stories.

But you’re not alone.

Success leaves clues.

And those clues are in the open, available for any writer willing to put in the work. While every big writer obtains her status through a different route, there are some similar traits you can follow.

I’ve uncovered seven of them.

While there’s no guarantee any story will do well, you don’t live long as an astronaut without a space helmet. There’s no reason to step-on the oxygen hose for your stories either.

There will always be unicorn stories that go nuts without an obvious reason, but the writers who do this for the long-haul — the ones who earn month-after-month, publish often and work hard with consistency.

Keep reading and I’ll share the seven steps to sunshine.

7 Steps to Sunshine

I’ve uncovered a basket of strategies you can follow to get more readers to find you, keep them returning for more, and to read your stories longer.

1. Publish only on publications —The big writers publish in big places. If you publish ‘blank’ stories and you don’t carry many followers, you’ll have a rough time getting your stories discovered. It’s better to take your time and get those stories published by folks with a baked-in audience. If you don’t like that idea, start your own publication. It’s free and takes about ten minutes.
2. Tell the others — The big writers tell everyone. Re-publish your stories, or links to your stories as many places as you can. Tweet your content repeatedly. Post to Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll never know when a big influencer will give you a little traffic. Don’t just promote a story once. Do this repeatedly. Daily. There are automated services for this as well.
3. Obsess over your titles — The big writers craft a mean title. Wonder why all the top stories have such great titles? They became top stories because they have great titles. Spend just as much (or more) time on your title as you did writing the whole story.
4. Build your own publication — The big writers own at least one (some have many) publications. You’ll have the added benefit of sending email letters to your followers and the double-dip bonus of people finding your work from two places.
5. Keep them reading longer — The big writers craft their stories in a way that keeps readers engaged longer, improving the reader’s experience and increasing the read-rate per story. Thus, boosting the payout.
6. Own your niche — The big readers are scattered here. Some write over multiple topics — generalists. Which becomes their niche. Others own their niche with such a tight grip you can’t ignore their stories if you’re part of the group. I prefer the later. It’s easier to build a tribe of like-minded folks than it is to create a bag of generalists.
7. Build your own tribe — The big writers collect emails. They’ve got entire businesses away from Medium and know how important it is to have all their best readers in one place. On a list they own.

One tribe to rule them all

You need email.

There are those who say you don’t need email — that it’s old fashioned and a pain in the butt. I’m totally biased, because I love email. But you need email.

If you want to build a commercial writing business, you’ve got to own your own traffic. Traffic you don’t have to beg or pay for.

If you don’t own your traffic you don’t own your business.

Those big platforms can take your money away in the next hour if they wanted to. And you have no recourse.

Not so with email.

It’s hard to build a list. Takes awhile. Plenty of swearing and slamming involved. But once you get everything set-up and humming, you can sell your writing automatically. While you sleep.

I check my phone every morning and find mailbox money most days.

You can too.

I created a free, 7-day, email masterclass for you. It’s called the Tribe 1K. I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 (or your next 1,000) subscribers without spending a hot nickel on ads.

Tap the link.

Guarantee your seat.

We’re waiting for you.

Enroll in my Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.