You Should Tread Lightly Chasing the Big Kid On the Block
You may be in for a big surprise as a writer
I was planning to write an article, but before I did, I researched some publications to host my article.
Curiosity got the best of me and I did more research than I initially planned. Hopefully, you get something out of this and it may help you in the future if you decide to publish here. Don’t use my information as the only reason to publish on The Startup.
As a writer, these are some tips to keep in mind before you publish your article. Sometimes a publication can make or break your article.
Is a big publisher always worth it?
Before I started to write my next article, I wanted to see who to publish the article with. My first thought was why not the biggest kid on the block, The Startup?
I was thinking about publishing the article with this publisher since so many people talk about the website and how it could help your numbers as a writer. The Start-Up has over 700,000 followers so that makes sense to get your publication listed with them, right?
Granted I have never published with this company before, but wanted to make sure my article fit before submitting the article. I did a quick look on the cover page to see what articles were highlighted.
In my research, there were a few issues limiting a full explanation of what I uncovered. First, I was hampered in my research since I did not know the writers I covered very well. Second, the read time from the articles was unknown to me. These could make my analysis flawed from the start without this critical information. Third, these articles could take off a few months from now and change my initial analysis. Keep an open mind as you read through my results.
The research begins
When I checked out the featured stories, the articles were published in the past 30 days. Then I checked to see how many claps were on the story and was very surprised.
The first article had 106 claps but then the article was just published. So I’ll let the low number of claps slide.
Then I looked at the oldest featured story which was published September 8, which was nine days ago. This article only had 160 claps.
This started to bother me.
If this featured article only had 160 claps, why such low numbers for a featured article on the biggest publication?
What criteria does the publication use to make an article a featured story?
Could it be the publication selection criteria?
Could the editor be biased over one article over another?
Initial thoughts on the publication
Based on the selection of the featured articles, my next conclusion was the writer’s selected had to be new writers. I looked at all of the featured writers. Three writers were relatively new and one has written for a while, but had not published many articles.
Research showed me that the writers didn’t have a big following so that could limit the number of claps for their articles. The more followers a writer has, it’s likely they should have more claps. At least one would think so.
Yet, I still wasn’t satisfied so continued to do more research on The Start-Up. Is it really worth it to publish with this giant?
On August 17, The Startup made an announcement they were changing the articles they published.
In the announcement by the Startup, they cover what articles they wanted. Their criteria for articles were high so if your writing meets what they want, you’ll get published. If not, you’re better off publishing somewhere else.
The tagline of The Startup, “Build Something Awesome,” gets to the heart of our mission: to help readers get smarter at building their things; and to offer writers a platform to share their stories — of work, inspiration, and creativity.
My review on the Trending articles
Let me move on to the next section on The Startup, trending articles. This has to be the site where the articles are seeing a lot of traction from writers.
After checking out the first three articles, they showed signs of life. The first article had 1300 claps, the second had 2,200 claps and the last article had 1,100 claps. These weren’t outrageous numbers but still very respectable for articles that were about a month old.
Then the next writer I know very well and had read this very article before by Tim Denning. Tim’s article was also written about a month ago. When I clicked on his article, it only had 433 claps. Ouch!
Something had to be wrong. Did Tim’s article flop on The Startup?
I don’t know the true time people spent reading his article. The article didn’t draw the thousands of claps I expected during my analysis.
Don’t get me wrong. Tim has published thousands of articles on Medium. Who knows, his article may take off one day.
My review on the Latest articles
The latest articles was another section on The Startup. I’m not sure what categorizes a story as the Latest as compared to the Featured stories section. The only thing I could see was the Latest articles were published about three weeks ago. These could be articles that were recent, but not recent enough to fit in the Featured stories categories.
The three writers who had their article published in the Latest articles were new writers with less than 100 followers. Of the three articles, they had 351, 258, and 368 claps after three weeks.
These numbers didn’t look good to me but again, these writers were still very new.
This got me thinking — is The Startup trying to promote only new writers on their site with the exception of Tim and a few others?
Topics on The Startup
Now I had to do some more critical thinking. That’s the buzzword today, isn’t it? Next, I looked at the topics on the Startup that made their cover page. The featured stories covered Tik Tok, thriving, going green, marketing Artificial Intelligence (AI), Elon Musk, entrepreneurial scams, and work promotions for women.
The trending section was a little similar. The articles featured were coding, Python, programming, AI, a startup failing, and an entrepreneur’s lonely journey. Overall, the information was on startups and programming languages.
How did other big writers perform?
There were more articles on The Startup but I randomly picked writers who had larger followings. My criteria was the writer had to have at least 1000 or more followers. Based off of that I could get a better idea if the writers didn’t do well on this publication.
Fab Giovanetti has 2300 followers. She wrote an article in August and received 410 claps.
Toni Koraza has 3600 followers and his story in August received 969 claps.
Mike Maher has 2500 followers and his August story received 121 claps.
Marko Saric has 2800 followers and his August story received 357 claps.
Francine Mends has 2100 followers and her August story received 331 claps.
Kristen Wilson has 4900 followers and her August story received 700 claps.
Very surprising low numbers for these writers who have some credibility on this platform.
Either The Startup has a tough crowd or these featured stories weren’t getting a lot of attention from readers. Since I’m not one of these writers, I won’t know for sure.
My analysis on The Startup
After a quick overview of this publication, it doesn’t leave me with a good feeling. A lot of new writers were getting published as well as experienced writers. What concerns me is there wasn’t a lot of interaction in the way of claps from the readers.
Though this platform is based on reading time, do the claps really matter anymore? My quick analysis could be off since I am not one of these writers and have never published on The Startup.
Sorry, this leaves you with more questions than answers. I hoped to get a better idea, but it actually left me with a bad taste and no desire to write for this publication. I have done better on other platforms I have published with, but then you don’t know how the writers do in terms of marketing their own work.
Some articles do perform better over time. One of these articles could go viral in a few months when a lot of people start searching for answers and then the article blows up.
If you have written for The Startup, let me know how did it go?
Tom Handy is a top Finance, Investment, and Bitcoin writer on Medium, and the father of two kids. He retired from the Army and sits on several non-profit boards. You can find him on Twitter @tomhandy1.