THE SECRETS OF WRITING ON MEDIUM, PART 4

4 Ways of the Wordsmith: How to Be Happy and Successful Now

If you read no other article about writing, I implore you to know your futhork* or it shall certainly be the cause of your rune.

CW¹: Satire; Rejection by Medium; Profanity; Dad Jokes; Working Harder; Self-Assessment; Grief; More Dad Jokes; Acceptance (but not of Dad Jokes)

Are you mystified by the unknowable power of Medium?

Are you frustrated with the assortment of tech bros, life hackers, and shovel salesmen who write “I made $11,369 this month from writing, and you can, too” who clog up your feed?

Are you terrified by the necromancy of writing headlines that will drive readers to your virtual doorstep?

Well if you are, you should have read the first three parts of this writing series (notice the “Part 4” above the headline?).

But since you’re here anyway, you might as well keep reading because I have uncovered some more crazy stuff that no one but an advanced metrics addict like myself would ever waste time to analyze.

In this report, I will dive into four more secrets that will transform the mysterious and impenetrable monolith writing platform pictured above into a piñata filled with money.

Now, at least, when we wildly bang away at Medium with our keyboards — instead of a mastodon bone — we’ll get something back for our efforts.

#1: Increase your readership by writing articles that appear on Medium’s front page feed.

That sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

The first thing I did was look at the “Featured Stories” selected by Medium’s curation team between August 1st and August 18th.

These articles are described by Medium as “Today’s best stories, picked by our editors.”

Methodology: I looked at every article and added it to one or more topics, depending on the headline, tags and a quick skim through.

There were a few featured articles that were originally published prior to August, but they appeared in the list during August, so I counted them.

Self-help, health, mental health, and life hacking all kind of overlapped so I included them as one category. In retrospect, I should have divided them between useful, science-based articles, and content marketing.

Here are the topics listed by frequency of appearance:

• Self/Health/Mental Health (59)
• Tech (28)
• Culture/Social Media (28)
• Feminism/equality/Sexism (25)
• Social Justice issues (21)
• Trump/racism/alt-right/immigration/bullshit (17)
• Guns/Politics (12)
• Dating/Relationships (7)
• Science/End of the World (7) — is there something wrong with these guys?
• Parenting (6)
• Work (6)
• Addiction/Abuse/Dysfunction (5)
• Food/Diet (5)
• Foreign Culture/Travel (5)
• Personal Finance/Economics (4)
• News Stories (4)
• History/Economics (3)
• Science/Bettering Mankind (3)
• Toni Morrison (3)
• Sex (4) — not the juicy variety
• Religion (2)
• Journalism/Mainstream Media (2)
• Death (2)
• Family/Love/Loss (2)
• Orgasmic Birth(1) — this is a serious article
• Creativity (1)
• Sports (1)
• Fiction (1)
• Music (1)
• Humor (1)
• TV/Movies (1)
• Art (0)

(NOTE: Music and humor appeared in the same article.)

“Today’s best stories, picked by our editors” included 201 articles on serious subjects, and 4 articles on subjects most of us would view as fun.

And you wonder why your feed is garbage.

Is the only way to be curated by Medium to have been “cured?”

I’m not referring to the definition, “relieved of the symptoms of a disease” (although many perceive writing as a form of illness).

I’m using the other definition: “preserved (meat, fish, tobacco, or an animal skin) by various methods such as salting, drying, or smoking.”

Should we decide to write about the very stuff we are trying to escape during our leisure time?

Does success require writing about subjects that feel dead, missing most of their taste, and drained of the juiciness of a steak grilled to perfection (or from biting into a cold crisp apple, if you’re a vegetarian)?

There are approximately 973,000 followers of Life, Life Lessons, Health, Love, and Self Improvement.

There are approximately 953,000 followers of the related subjects of Startups, Entrepreneurship, Business, Design and Technology.

There are 149,000 followers of writing, and 118,000 follower of sports.

Humor is not even in the top 20 tags on Medium.

Do the math, then let your heart guide you.

You’ve been warned.

#2: Write the “best” story ever, and you will see it at the top of your feed as a “featured” story!

Let’s assume you’ve decided to write on a popular subject like Life Lessons, as opposed to the more satisfying dreck that people really like. (Most. subtle. plug. ever.)

You’ve got a shot, right?

It’s just a question of figuring out the characteristics of a “best story.”

As I analyzed the articles, I noticed a pattern — everything on the list seemed to come from ZORA, or OneZero, or Forge, or any other publication created by Medium.

Could it be that the “best stories” of Medium are simply those stories being pimped by Medium’s own publications?

(Of course not. Not even I’m cynical enough to think that Medium would shut out all the writers who aren’t published on their…)

Of the 205 featured articles in this sample size, here’s the list of stories that were NOT published by a Medium-owned publication:

Looking…

…

…

…

…

…

Still looking…

…

…

…

…

…

Seriously?…

…

…

…

…

…Ah, there it is…

#87: How Much Does Your Name Matter? by Stephen J. Dubner/ Freakonomics Radio (Aug. 9)

Apparently next to nothing, in my case…

…

…

#97: U.S. Prisons Need a Board of Visitors by Michelle Jones (Aug. 8)

…

…

…

Am I going to have to take hostages to get a chance at being a featured…

#125: The Uncomfortable Truth About Guns by John DeVore (Aug. 6)

As my hopes are circling down the…

#127: Toilet Culture: The Bizarre Rise of Japan’s High Tech Toilets by Thomas Ambrosini (Jul. 31)

…

…

…

I might as well give up writing altogether to just chill and Netflix…

#143: Why Teens Are Watching Stranger Things (When They Don’t Watch TV) by Tricia Aurand (Jul 31)

…

…

…

…

…

I need to go shopping anyway…

#189: How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War by Stephen J. Dubner/ Freakonomics Radio (Aug. 2)

Only 6 of Medium’s 205 “best stories” came from the 230,000 writers who did NOT write for a Medium-owned publication.

Of those 6 stories, 2 came from Freakonomics Radio, a major media show with a huge following, and 3 more stories came from a small publication featruing a group of writers.

That left one story being written by a single and relatively “unknown” author.

Since I skimmed through the articles, I won’t comment on the tone or quality of writing, but I do have a few observations.

1. I found five articles that I put in a special category, “Interesting AF” and bookmarked them. They tended to be diverse subject with an expanded the scope and historical perspective that applied to almost everyone in the present.
2. Only two articles carried the tag “humor,” but one of them was on the science of laughter and not funny at all. (What is wrong with these people? They couldn’t squeeze in one joke to let people gather their own empirical data?)
3. Not one article had a picture of a sexy or scantily clothed woman (sorry Gutbloom). 37 articles had some form of illustration. And not one article had some form of digital art that carried a humorous, or subversive message (I can’t believe how much time I’ve wasted creating unique art).

Conclusion: if you want to be featured as a best story on Medium, start crafting your writing so it will appeal to the editors of one of Medium’s sponsored publications.

(NOTE: Apparently the curators have very special qualifications, so be prepared. Always keep some raw hamburger in your pocket.)

#3: I got nothing. All is lost… oh, wait, here’s one… Read only your own stuff.

Medium has a tag “BASED ON YOUR READING HISTORY,” so it fills your feed with stuff you look at, even if it is only for research.

My feed may never recover from the research I’ve been doing².

Is Medium set up to inspire the masses, gain readers, and then ignore them?

Here are your chances to be published as a “best story” on Medium:

• Write about a subject that is creative, funny or sexy: 1.95%
• Write an article NOT published and pimped by Medium: 2.92%
• Write an article published by a minor, group-run publication: 1.95%
• Write an article just by yourself: 0.48%

The point is, there’s a very clear and specific way to become a more popular writer on Medium: sell your blogging soul, submit everything you write to a Medium-owned publication and follow Medium’s curation guidelines.

Step #4: Improve your writing by following Medium’s curation guidelines.

I’m one of those subversives always ready to throw a satirical break through the stained glasses windows of “The Man,” or any other self-styled important people like con artists, scammers, and (shout out to Mike) data-driven dry heavers who dominate this database.

But as I struggle with my own lack of external gratification from Medium, I have to ask some tough questions.

“Why have only a few of my stories been curated?”

“When those stories have been curated, why haven’t I got much of a bump (except to show up on larger social media feeds so I could get trolled by some psychos)?”

It’s tough on the ego to consider the idea that my writing isn’t good enough to be curated by Medium on a frequent basis, considering my past “success”.³

And when you’re the #1 writer in your field on Quora with 103K views this month…

(Holy crap, I was at 220K views just a week ago! I better get back where I’m wanted… be back later.)

…there’s a cognitive disconnect between the reader response of the two different writing platforms⁴.

Is Medium curation just another carrot put in front of us to keep us writing for basically nothing, or do I still lack certain writing skills that prevent me from having my articles curated by Medium?

Here are two of the key sentences from their guideline:

The guidelines above can be considered a bare minimum — curators are looking for stories that surpass this minimum.

Reasons for this include curators’ individual quality judgment and a writer’s past curation acceptance.

If your writing doesn’t violate their rules, then the question revolves around which subjects you choose (usually putting me at a big disadvantage).

The second point is more diabolical. Not only are we judged subjectively by Medium’s curators, but your past curation acceptance is a factor.

Since some writers have their articles curated all the time, is there is a built-in bias where the curators won’t curate articles by writers who don’t have a consistent record of being selected for curation?

Or is the curation process — like Medium’s much maligned but all-powerful algorithm — all about the gamification of writing to increase readership and making more money?

Since we will never know the inner workings of the curation system, it leaves only one choice — figure out how to write better.

For the last two weeks, I’ve made a sincere effort to read articles on how to become a better writer.

While most of the posts were filled with generalities, hollow inspirational talk, a few quotes from famous writers — and the ever present whisper to subscribe here, or enroll in this class here, or join an online seminar here — I did find something of substance.

Here’s a real-world experiment which is so cool I’m going to interrupt my smart phone-friendly writing style. This is the first week of that series, written by an established professional writer who opens a secret account and starts out like as an unknown, new writer on Medium:

As I followed the weekly progress, I was shocked by the matter-of-fact tone of the list of things she did, that included the bullet point, “I wrote seven posts (four of them were curated).”

In the third week, she wrote, “I wrote seven posts. (Six of them were curated!).”

At least she seemed excited about this impossibly high percentage rate of curated articles.

I had to make a comment with some skepticism. She was gracious enough to respond, so we had a brief conversation where she told me that her normal curation rate is 70–80%.

OMG, Jesus walked on water, and he only got curated 41.6% of the time! FYI, it was Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul (with Ringo supplying an awesome syncopated back beat).

Here’s why I found her one of the few voices in the Medium’s online coaching world that I don’t dismiss as being just another shyster content marketer:

1. She takes the perspective of diving into process to break down why things work, instead of simply quoting someone famous and then babbling on in generalities. I just clicked randomly on one day in her 30-day writing challenge and found this explanation of reading like a writer to figure out why things work. It’s something I’ve done for years, but I haven’t seen any other writing expert talk about this perspective. Do a search for “reading intensely” and you’ll see. Just don’t go down to the bottom of the search page.
2. She has creates her own publications and doesn’t try to glom onto those Medium publications to build her readership. Because of that, she doesn’t have one of those “best story picked by our editors.” She’s getting her stories curated the old fashioned way: “she earns it.”
3. She doesn’t give away all the secret sauce for free, but she provides a closer look at the real process of becoming successful on Medium than anyone else I’ve found. Check out her experiment: “I blogged every day for a month. Here’s what happened.” It contained some real gems, including a link to the #1 Free Headline Analyzer. This is absolutely crazy. It’s not a perfect tool, but it is thought provoking and proved to be a lot of fun.

Since she is not getting her stories accepted by Medium publications each week, she has to be doing something right.

I will need to study more, but there is one really obvious hole in my skills.

Check out her list of things to do each week. Here’s the breakdown of the 9 things on her list during week 3:

• Writing (1)
• Interacting with other writers on medium (1)
• Posting on a publication she doesn’t run (1)
• Pitching a story idea to a Medium-own publication (1)
• Social Media/Marketing related activities (5)

Ask yourself how many of these things you do.

I’ve done three of them, and have just gotten to the point of realizing I should be trying to get published on a Medium-owned publication, even if it requires a less sarcastic tone. (I have actually done that in the past, thank you very much.)

But I haven’t done anything on the social media space other than follow Medium’s instructions to post on twitter and facebook, so my three followers will know that I published something.

I still don’t know enough about how to get curated on Medium except to lay out the one rule you must follow, if you wish to be successful on Medium.

This is so important, I’m going to present it as a big grey quote, so it looks like it has been handed down from the Gods of Medium and etched into that big monolith you saw at the beginning of this article.

Thou shalt beg, borrow, or steal to get someone with social media marketing experience to help increase your followers to reach critical mass.⁵ If you are doing an exchange of services, the Gods of Medium will grant you special dispensation if you “edit” their college papers — as long as they help you catch fire.

It would be disingenuous and naive to ignore how much the people who are geniuses in social media marketing kick our asses, regardless of the quality of their writing.

In addition, the monetizing principles behind Medium are often at odds with the goals of real writers in our community.

But if a professional writer pretending to be a new and unknown can get her stories curated at a high percentage, then I still have a lot to learn about the craft of writing.

And everything I do learn I will share within my small community of misfits, cynics, subversives, and other assorted deviants.

Consider yourself a part of The Few… The Proud… The Unknown. Semper Incognita!

In the next part of this series, I will focus on Medium’s top writers, and analyze their individual writing from a unique perspective.

[UPDATE: For some inexplicable reason, one of my writing rants was selected by Medium curators in the writing category at 1:03 AM PDT. I have no idea why this happened, let alone who would be up at 4:03 AM in New York curating articles. My only guess is talking about walking my dogs must have scored points with those Corgis hard at work. Thanks, Roz!]

Here’s a screen shot to prove it happened, just in case they realize their error and remove the story.

Thanks for reading, sharing and commenting.

If you’re a real glutton for punishment, check out the rest of the series:

Part 1: I’ve solved Medium’s algorithms — get ready to become rich.

Part 2: Is Your Social Media Feed Garbage?

Part 3: Know How to Write Powerful Headlines Immediately?

Part 5: How I Made $14.73 on One Article and Other Lessons Learned in August.

Part 6: Is the Medium Algorithm Now Controlled by the Russians? Maybe that Would be a Relief.

Here’s to better writing.

Footnotes:

*I promised I would use the headline I developed in my last writing article.

[1] I have been advised by counsel to include a content warning. Some people are totally unprepared for any form of satire.

[2] I’ll have to do another experiment by creating a fake account and then only reading articles with the tag “humor” for the next month. We’ll see if the Medium algorithm will start feeding me articles I actually enjoy.

[3] I have been asked to write for a large number of publications, and I was accepted as a writer for the prestigious Coffeelicious before it got cast aside by the marketing and financial might of Medium’s sponsored publications.

[4] I will go into the different mechanisms used by Medium and Quora to determine a writer’s popularity in a future separate article.

[5] If you’ve really good at social media and develop a following of 4,000 loyal people, you can just write absolute crap and 5% of those people are still going to give you 10 claps. That’s all it takes to produce a consistent stream of top 1% articles.

Special Bonus:

Superscript numbers! Just copy and paste.

⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁺⁻⁼⁽¹⁾