What Is Curation Jail and Can You Bust out of It
Curation still drives reads.
A few writers on Medium have written about being banned from curation or put into ‘curation jail.’ I’ve never experienced it myself, but I’ve read a lot about it.
First, let’s talk about the importance of curation and why it matters on Medium.
Medium is a publishing platform for writers.
Medium curators scour Medium for good writing and formatting that stands up to Medium’s high standards. Curators are not only looking for quality writing, but they want a polished magazine-style look to the platform — except with no ads.
When a story is curated, it means it is curated into topics. The Medium algorithm is driven by topics. If your story is well written and appropriately formatted, a Medium curator reads your work and curates it into the appropriate topic. Topics are how people get recommended to your stories — all driven by curation.
For example, when a story is curated into both productivity and entrepreneurship, the people following productivity and entrepreneurship have a better chance of seeing your story.
Tah-dah! And that is how you get readership — curation.
It is a lot easier to be successful on Medium with curation. A curated story has longevity, it has a much longer life and could continue to earn you money in the future — passive income.
Your curated stories are worth more than your non-curated stories.
Stories that don’t get curated
- Stories like this one, stories about Medium tend not to get curated.
- Stories that contain aggressive calls to action.
- If you place an ad in your story.
- Stories that are not properly formatted. You need to properly format your story with titles and subtitles and a lot of white space for readability.
- Stories that don’t have the image properly cited or cited at all.
Benefits of curation
- Stories will have a longer shelf life.
- Stories continue to pay overtime — long after you write them.
- Stories are found a lot easier than non-curated stories.
- Stories are found under the topic in which it was curated.
- If you are curated often in one topic, you will receive a top writer status badge located under your profile (this is exciting!). See below.
So, curation is what you seek if you want to make money and find an audience.
How to avoid being put in curation jail
Writer August Birch has written extensively about getting banned from curation. I first heard of curation jail from reading about his Medium journey.
When he first started on Medium, his stories were curated until he added a more aggressive call to action at the end of his articles, this was intentional on his part. His primary goal is to build a healthy email list.
What lands you in curation jail?
There are several things. Know them and learn them if you want to stay out of jail. The best advice is it not get banned from curation in the first place, so you don’t have to dig your way out.
Below are some things to avoid so you don’t get stuck there — unable to pass go.
For beginners, it’s best to get curated off the bat, by your third published story.
If you are unable to get curated, it could be that your writing isn’t up to par for an extended period.
Maybe you go through a streak of not writing well, you aren’t editing for spelling and grammatical errors, or you don’t read your work for flow.
Medium values quality writing.
If you haven’t been curated in a while, or ever, look at your content and make adjustments.
Have a friend read your work, or better yet, join a Medium Facebook Group and find another writer who is curated frequently and ask for help editing one of your non-curated stories.
With practice, you will learn which stories Medium curates.
Medium curators have so much content to read through, submit your highest quality work so they can’t ignore it. If you write something not that great, three or four times in a row, you may be banned and put on the no curation list.
If you are stuck in limbo and receiving messages that read, “Hold tight, we are processing” or “Not selected in topics,” or “Due to high volume, we were not able to review this piece,” rethink your writing strategy, your headline, and your image.
Something is off if you’re getting these messages again and again.
What can you do to get out of jail?
Good writers, as well as experienced writers on Medium, get caught in this trap; it isn’t only beginners that get banned from curation.
But when starting on Medium, try to get one of your first three stories curated. When you’ve published three stories, in a row, that have not been selected for curation, there is a higher bar to cross, making it critical to get curated within the first couple of stories. So then you’re on the radar of Medium curators for a good reason — good writing.
I didn’t know much about curation when I started to write on Medium nearly a year ago. Luckily one of my first three stories got curated in productivity.
Here is my first curated story,
Other mistakes that may land you in jail
#1. Using the ‘Import a story’ tool to bulk import old stories from your blog.
Medium has an import tool located immediately next to the ‘Write a story’ button.
Use it sparingly.
I’ve published older stories from a blog of mine on Medium. However, I never use the import tool. It just didn’t make sense because Medium’s format is different from my blog’s format.
Totally different.
So I cut and paste instead, and format the story from my blog to fit Medium’s criterion.
I would avoid the import tool and use the cut and paste method. If stories are too old or you’re bulk importing stories from a blog, it disqualifies them immediately from curation. It at least puts a red flag up to curators, and your curation rates will drop.
Bulk importing of old stories from a blog could land you in jail.
#2. Not formatting stories to Medium’s standards.
Medium is particular about the way they want their stories to look. They want stories to look pretty and formatted in a certain way. I have written a lot about formatting in the past. See below.
You want your headers to be headers, you want your subtitles to be subtitles. You want a lot of white space, and you must give proper credit to your images.
If you don’t, it will automatically disqualify you from curation.
#3. Using clickbaity sounding titles.
Medium is going for something different, their emphasis is on good writing, so they don’t care for clickbaity titles. This is refreshing to me.
Yes, your titles have to be interesting, use emotional power words in them, but you don’t want to trick your reader into reading your story with a clickbaity title. Your title, with the help of your subtitle, should describe what your story is about and make your reader want to click on it.
Write descriptive titles for your story. Curators won’t read your story if the title sounds spammy or clickbaity.
#4. The addition of ads or aggressive calls to action in your stories.
Ads or aggressive calls to action will, for sure, land you in curation jail.
You can add one simple line at the bottom of your story to build your email list but keep it simple and the same each time. Something like, “click here to join my email list.”
I have used the same simple call to action from the first story I published, and I get curated.
Get extra acquainted with stories that are curated
The curation system is what matters on Medium if you are looking for a loyal audience and income.
See what stories were curated in a specific topics by going to the topic you would like to write in. I write a lot about relationships and writing, so those are the topics I follow and read. To check out all of the topics you can write in for Medium see below.
So now, you have a guideline — you know what a successfully curated story reads and looks like.
What to do if you land in jail
You only have a few options if you haven’t been curated in a while, and you don’t see curation on the horizon — you are most likely in jail.
- Delete all the stories you’ve written that have not been curated. This works for some people. I couldn’t do this. I would go to the second option.
- Start a new profile with a new name. The downside to this is you will lose all of your followers, which may not be a big deal if you just started on Medium and don’t have a ton of followers yet.
- For both #1 & #2 experiment with different topics that you haven’t written in before, use different tags when you are posting your stories. Try something else; if you aren’t getting curated in certain topics, try others.
Just keep trying. The important thing is not to give up.
“The genius thing that we did was we didn’t give up.” — Jay Z
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
