You Won’t Succeed on Medium (and Life) If You Keep Doing These 3 Things

These won’t get you any closer to your goals.

When I started writing on Medium two years ago, I made lots of mistakes.

And I mostly made them because I didn’t have a mentor, someone who’d tell me what to do and what to avoid. Instead, I chose the path of trial and error.

Even though I was stuck in a full-time internship and finishing my studies, I thought that I could make enough time to figure it all out on my own. And I did. But it took me so much time.

When I decided to go all-in on Medium in January 2020, I had already published more than 150 articles. And here’s how much I earned through them:

Not particularly rewarding for publishing more than 150 articles, right?

Even though I managed to break out of that circle and make five figures per month through my writing, I know that the majority of Medium writers are stuck where I was a year ago.

And I also know why they’re stuck there because I escaped that situation only a few months ago.

I wasn’t one of the lucky early adopters who’ve been on Medium in the early days and gained thousands of followers per post.

I was the 20-year-old who worked her ass off beside a full-time job and her studies.

Even though I never dreamed of a writing career, I suddenly found myself writing at 5 AM before going to my internship or at 11 PM after studying for my final exams.

But it paid off and here I am: Running a 6-figure online business with my better half and living the life of my dreams.

And what’s different about my journey is that my success on Medium was no coincidence.

I spent 1.5 years on the platform until I finally “succeeded”. I failed a lot and documented everything I did over the past years. That’s why I can share the strategies that worked for me with everyone who aims to create similar results.

However, sometimes, success is not only about doing the right things but about avoiding the wrong things first.

If you’re doing the following three things, you’re spending your time on the wrong activities and will never “make it big” here.

You spend the majority of your time “supporting other writers”

This one also translates to: You spend more time on Medium-related Facebook groups than on Medium.

Don’t get me wrong: Facebook groups can be great. I even run my own group to support writers.

But what most people do is spending more time sharing their links in random clap-for-clap groups than doing the actual work, aka writing.

Supporting other writers is cool, connecting with others is cool, but none of these will do the work for you. You can only make money writing if you write.

And if you spend the majority of your time sharing your links, you’ll have less time to do what’s most important: Create content.

I love my Facebook group because we have the most uplifting, positive, and knowledgable community.

But I avoid every group that encourages members to share their links every single day. These groups essentially hold you back from succeeding because they empower you to spend your time on something that has zero return.

If you genuinely want to support your fellow writers, give them honest feedback through a private message rather than clapping for their posts without even reading.

You think that “you know how it works”

The moment you think you know it all is the moment you lose the game — on Medium, in business, but also in life.

Online writing and online business, in general, are fast-moving. You need to be adaptable and open to learn and grow every single day.

One of the major mistakes I see in people who fail on Medium is that they think they already know it all.

People who’ve been writing for years or even decades think that their writing is good and don’t want to change it.

And those who are new to writing think that they’ve already figured out how it works and keep making the same mistakes.

In my coaching program, I teach everything you need to know about Medium. I recorded more than nine hours of video content, where I share all the details that will make or break your success.

And I obviously start at the basics because they matter.

Yet, I get messages of writers every week who ask me if they could just purchase certain modules because they already know the basics.

The thing is that basics matter. And if you fail on Medium, you probably fail because you didn’t understand the basics yet.

If you keep thinking that you already know how it works, you’ll keep producing the same results.

You’re only copying others

I always preach to learn from those who are ahead of you. But unfortunately, most people confuse learning with copying.

Even though Medium is a huge platform, the circle of writers isn’t as big as you might think.

Whenever someone copies one of my posts or headlines, the odds are pretty high that I see it. And I see a lot of them.

You wanna know what’s wrong with only copying those who are ahead of you? You’ll always stay a copy.

You might be lucky with one or two posts, but you can’t build a tribe of raving fans or a solid business if all you do is copy big writers.

If you’re just a copy, people will always choose the original first.

Yes, you need to learn from those ahead of you, but you also need to figure out what’s unique about you and why people should follow you instead of me.

I’m excited about supporting anyone who’s doing the work, analyzing big writers, and learning from them, but I don’t support those who merely copy — even if they went through my coaching program.

Final thoughts

If you want to succeed on Medium, you need to stop doing these three things as soon as possible.

• Supporting other people is nice, but it should never take more time than writing. Connect with like-minded people but focus on high-quality conversations instead of just exchanging claps.
• The moment you think you know it all is the moment you fall behind. If you don’t get the basics right, you’ll lose the game.
• There’s a huge difference between learning from others and copying them. And you can be sure that it’s pretty obvious if you copy someone’s headlines, structures, or writing style.

Join my free 5-Day Medium Writing Course to learn more.