What I’ve Learned Writing on Medium Every Day for 90 Days

Lessons from writing 150 pieces on this platform

As the year is coming to an end, so are my first three months of writing on Medium.

So far, I’ve been writing monthly about what I’ve learned, and I want to continue this tradition. It allows me to reflect, recap, and distill valuable lessons to those of you who are thinking about embarking on a similar journey.

I started to write on Medium on October 2, 2019. I told myself that it’s an experiment — I don’t know what will happen, but I’m ready to try it for six months.

It’s a part of the “six-month rule:” trying something new for six months, while not thinking about the results and not changing course. So many people give up way too quickly for the results to show up. This rule is an antidote to that.

So far, I’m 50% through.

I had no idea what Medium was about when I started writing. I read it occasionally, but I doubt that I was even a paying member until I started writing regularly.

Three months and about 150 pieces later, I can’t say that I am an expert on Medium blogging, but I have some initial understanding of what it’s all about (and what it’s not).

I’m confident that if I knew some of the things I know now (three months ago), I would have saved time, energy, and worry about the things that don’t matter.

And as I was writing down thoughts to myself about the things that have worked, and the things that didn’t over the past quarter, I was inspired to share these thoughts with you. Enjoy.

Medium Is a Patience Game

Those who stay longest in the game win.

You show up daily with something valuable to say, and you say it

It doesn’t matter if you write for one hour or for four hours per day, the key is (as always) consistency. You’ve got to stick to it. For a long time.

If you want to start writing on Medium, prepare yourself for the long haul. Be prepared for the fact that you won’t be making a full-time income in the next year, and you won’t see a real follower growth in the next six months.

There’s a dip at the beginning of any serious project. Those writers who succeed on Medium have the tenacity (and craziness) to persevere for those first six months when they don’t see any results.

It’s hard doing something and not seeing feedback. It’s hard writing into the void. I know.

But it’s hard because it’s hard. It’s also the key reason why 90% of aspiring bloggers don’t succeed.

It’s a marathon. No matter how slow, just keep moving. Keep writing.

You’ll Never Know What Will Work

If I could give myself advice when I was starting out three months ago, it would be this: don’t spend time “figuring it out.” Just write.

There’s no secret. There’s no tactic. There’s no way that you’ll know how curators pick certain stories, and there’s no way you can hack Medium.

For starters, Medium changes all the time. When I started writing in October, it used to pay its authors by claps. Two weeks in and I get an email:

Medium started paying by reading time.

Boom! Everything changed.

Next, the algorithm and the way the Medium staff works is just too difficult to understand. Know this: Ev Williams and his team are looking for high-quality stories that resonate with readers and make them better humans. That’s all you need to know.

If you spend time figuring out what works and what doesn’t, you’ll only waste time. I wrote this article and thought it would be a blast. It was personal. It was vulnerable. It was featured in a publication. But it didn’t fulfill my expectations.

But then I self-published this long piece on running, and it became the top-three piece I’ve written over the past two months. Why? I don’t know.

Don’t look for tactics. Instead, spend your time on coming up with great ideas that will be valuable to others.

Your Job Is to Serve Your Readers

If you want Medium to become your full-time income, it has to become a full-time job. You have to approach it the way you’d approach a full-time job.

If you want to get paid, you’ll have to take responsibility (and, you know, work).

When you’re a writer, your job is no different from that of a waiter. You serve people.

But instead of serving dishes and drinks at a restaurant, you serve your readers with something valuable they might enjoy — or what can make them smarter. Remember, it’s all about the reader.

Serve your readers the way you’d like to be served. Write something you’d like to read in the morning.

And since that’s different for each of us, you’ll write something unique to you.

Don’t Read Others

I know, I know. I can almost feel that rotten tomato smack my face and spill juice all over my white shirt. But I’m serious here.

People tell you to read other writers, but in my experience, it doesn’t get you anywhere. When you read others, one of two things happens:

1. You start to envy their success (almost everybody will have more followers than you).
2. You start to copy their writing style (even if subconsciously).

Both of these things will make you create shit.

There are upsides to reading other people — you see what others are doing, you learn, etc. But I strongly believe that you learn to write by writing (not reading), as much as a kid learns to walk by actually trying and falling down, not by watching others walk.

Do yourself a favor: don’t read others. Write. Focus on writing as much as you can for as long as you can. Focus on developing that voice of yours — and make it distinctive.

Make it yours.

Don’t Read Comments Either

Pro tip: Don’t read responses to your stories either.

There’ll be the good guys, and it’ll boost your morale. But there’ll be a lot of criticism — and these guys can really make you lose your confidence as a writer.

In my experience, when people criticize me, they haven’t paid decent attention to what I was saying. Rarely do people criticize me and really understand what I wrote. Most of the time, they just didn’t get me.

Whatever the case, it’s a waste of time. At the beginning of your writing career, you need to find your voice. To do that, turn off the noise.

Focus on what’s important: writing the next great piece.

P.S. Seth Godin doesn’t have comments on his site exactly for this reason.

People Don’t Read You Because You’re Smart

No, they’ve got books for that.

A realization came to me recently. People read me not for the ideas, thoughts, insights or information that I am trying to transmit — per se.

It’s easy to fall in the trap and think of yourself as smart and important when you’ve got more than 100 people reading you.

But then I realized that people read me for energy. I don’t need to say anything new or even insightful. All I need is to be passionate enough about what I’m talking about. It’ll be felt through the words, no doubt.

The trick here is to always write about things you’re deeply interested in. That’s also the reason why you shouldn’t chase tactics and decode “the secret to success on Medium” (there’s none) — you’ll write about things you aren’t interested in.

Readers will feel that.

Put your energy into it. Put your voice into it. Put your soul into it. We’ll notice.

Everything Matters…

Use everything you’ve got. Because everything matters.

The first sentence. The text. The words. The length. The style. The two types of headings. The image. The two types of quotes. The UX of the piece (which should be treated like a UX on a website). The last sentence. The tags. The publication.

Everything matters.

…But Don’t Dwell On It.

With that being said, don’t let it make you turn your art into a craft.

Remember that everything matters, but don’t let it stop you from experimenting and creating crazy shit.

Experiment with everything you’ve got:

• Length: Write short and extremely long pieces, see what works for you.
• Headings: Use headings as sentences or use them as a section heading or use them to highlight certain parts of the text. Experiment!
• Image and headline: These two things are 90% of the success of your piece. Don’t listen to idealists — everybody chooses a book by its cover and a Medium piece by the image and headline (I know I do).

The various Medium instruments are there for a reason. You’re a writer, and it’s your job to write.

But it’s also your job to use all of those other features to make your art stand out.

Don’t Make Money From Your Writing

At least, try to prolong it for as long as possible. Once you start making money from your writing, there’s no going back.

However, by prolonging this moment, you’re doing yourself a huge favor. You’re building leverage. You’re building an audience. And you’re building engagement.

In time, you’ll be able to capitalize on that leverage big time. But that time is not now. Now, you’ve got to build your platform.

You build leverage by showing up daily with something extremely valuable to share. You don’t hold anything back — you give all of your precious ideas away. And you give them away for free. In different formats: eBooks, Medium posts, email newsletters, etc.

Write for free for as long as you can. You’ll thank yourself later.

Write the Next Great Piece

When I started writing on Medium and realized that it’s a patience game and you’ve got to write as much as possible, I started doing just that. And then I noticed something.

I was creating shit.

I was writing for the sake of writing. I didn’t pay attention to details. I didn’t re-read my pieces. I didn’t pay attention to the image. I just wrote and then wrote more — and deep inside I thought that quantity might just trump quality…

I was wrong. Quality always trumps quantity, and it’s better to write one home-run post per week than 10 clichéd pieces.

There are a lot of clichéd pieces out there on Medium. There’s a lot of stuff that writers write just to make money. Don’t be them. Quality will always win in the end.

Obsessing over stats, claps, fans, and followers is one of the reasons why most writers fail. It kills them. It plays with their head. It makes them think that they’re worthless because Joe has 10K followers but they have only 230.

Let go of all those things. Make 2020 the year you’ll create great work.

Approach each and every piece as a masterpiece. Focus on one thing only: Writing the next great piece. Write today, edit tomorrow. Re-read it twice, out loud. Pick a great featuring image. Work on the headline.

Make it perfect. Make it stand out.

What’s your next great piece going to be about?

We can’t wait for it.

All of these things are things I tell myself. Thanks for reading!