READERS
Understanding the System and Getting More Views
How to use the Medium system with success
Medium lets us write about anything and everything. We can write and publish and earn a little money and read other writers’ stories for free. And this is a service, a publication channel and an information source unlike any other platform I can think of.
Medium is the most wonderful thing that has happened on the web so far, at least for a long while! This morning, for instance, I have read three very engaging stories, one about escaping a narcissist, one about the benefits of solitude and one about a young woman being bullied by her mother. Those three are stories absolutely worth reading and worth many times the claps they have received so far!
From time to time, I read that some people complain about the change in Medium’s algorithm, that according to some people the last months has made it more difficult to get views. I don’t know if that is true solely because I have not yet fully understood what Medium’s algorithm is.
I will not contest the assumption that Medium’s algorithm has made it more difficult during the last months to get views. But I wish to strongly express my gratitude and that I am very satisfied with what Medium offers me, although it is very difficult to get the number of views I’d like to get on my stories.
The main reason it is difficult to get many views is obviously that there are a huge number of stories published on Medium every day, every hour. And with one channel where everything goes through, one cannot expect to be seen by many people, even when the post is of excellent quality.
It is of course legitimate to question Medium’s featuring policy. The editors select the stories that Medium features , and we can observe that Medium to a large extent repeatedly feature the same authors, for instance in the Medium Daily Digest sent by mail to members.
It would be easy to construct a critique against the featuring policy that prioritizes some writers and never or almost never let the light shine on “smaller”, unknown writers. I totally accept that it is Medium’s right to select and feature stories, and I will never write them a complaint on this subject.
Instead I will focus on what we writers can do in order to promote and feature our stories. I want to focus on how I can connect and interact with other contributors. Is it possible for me to get in touch with more writers, to communicate with them and give and get support?
I observe that some (many?) writers already do this today, to a certain extent. There are for instance many groups on Facebook where writers with similar interests are members and share and support each other.
Given the huge number of writers contributing to the Medium channel it is a natural and productive solution to organize mutual support in smaller groups on other platforms. We need to be member of a tribe or a smaller community than Medium in order to be seen by others.
I guess every blogger’s and every Medium writer’s dream is to go viral, and it is probably a fact that some — maybe many — writers have done so. But the road to get there is long and often also winding. For this reason, it is a widely preached truth that if a writer wants to succeed, she or he must persevere and never, never give up, never stop delivering quality content and never ever stop believing in her or his chances to succeed.
This fact (I call it that: a fact) teaches us what we can read in many articles: smaller communities and alliances are good, together we become stronger. Other articles tell us that we must be strong and have the capacity to stand alone, and believe in our own capacities.
I believe in both.
On Medium there are two types of readers: Readers with a free membership, and readers who pay the monthly 5 $ fee.
The importance and the effects of the claps from these two types of clappers are not entirely the same. All readers can clap from 1 to 50 claps to show their support to a post. It is of course very encouraging when readers clap 25 or 40 or 50 claps. Seeing 50 claps for my posts is a great encouragement for me as a writer, so I clap accordingly for writers and posts that I want to support a lot.
Paying members can also earn money on their published stories on Medium. The money comes from the 5 $ monthly fee paid by other paying members. If I have understood this right, my monthly 5 $ are entirely redistributed to writers I clap for. When I clap for only one story, the author will probably earn 5 $ from my claps that month. I may be wrong here, but this is what I believe based on how I “read” the Medium system.
I believe consequently that when I clap 10 claps for 50 stories written by 50 different writers, each of them will get 0,10 $ from “my” monthly fee. If I clap 50 claps for 50 stories written by 50 different writers, the outcome will be the same, I believe.
Am I right? I may be wrong. If anyone knows, please respond below.
Anyways — my conclusion about Claps is as follows: If I like a story very much, I hit the button 50 times. I do that a lot. Sometimes my claps are more nuanced, but I always clap when I like. I hope my readers do the same for me.