Your Ultimate Success on Medium Depends on Your Leverage Off the Site

If you want to play the long-game as a writer/creator you need to build a tribe

We work so hard to grow our following on Medium. Every writer started from zero. And, like anything worth doing, those who work their faces off get rewarded well on the platform.

Medium can be all-encompassing.

It’s hard enough to write multiple posts a day. How can we possibly grow something else, away from this amazing place? Well, you should. Even if it hurts. Because as cool as Medium is, it’s not here for you to make money. The money is just the carrot for the site to build an endless stream of new content off the backs of 30,000 active writers.

At first blush, I sound like a total Negative Ned to write that. I know. But it’s important to look at the core intent of the place where you collect all your eggs. These are your eggs, don’t forget. Watch both the eggs and the basket.

Don’t worry. The ultra-focus happens to everyone.

I’m currently working on my flagship course for writers and creators. The beast should’ve been done last Christmas. It’ll be a damn miracle if it’s done by this Christmas. I get elbow-deep in the Medium-mire just like everyone else.

It’s easy to watch the stats.

It’s addicting to create more content and see what happens. We’re all a mouse-click away from the daily hamster content wheel. Around and around she goes.

I got a little dopamine squirt just thinking about it… that sounded dirty.

Anyway, if you’re an indie writer or creator and you want more than just a hamster wheel of content, you need to build yourself a serious platform away from the place that owns your current traffic.

Yep, we’re talking about email. That old, trusty stand-bye that’s outlasted every other marketing solution over the past 20–25 years.

The only thing consistent about content creation, is change

Not only is it important to build a repository of your writing somewhere away from Medium (so you have an archive of all your hard work) — which I haven’t done either, so don’t worry too much. It makes my stomach turn to even think about copy/pasting 700 stories. We also need to think about building a consistent backbone for our publishing business.

This means you need a tribe you control.

Not in a creepy, mind-control way, but a place you control the access to those you serve.

We’re at the beginning of a new payment plan on Medium. Thus far, I’m excited with the results. I should do better than I did with the claps. But that could change tomorrow.

Instead of worrying whether or not I’ll lose my Medium income, I assume I will lose it. In the process of that assumption, I built an insurance policy that will earn money for me, automatically, whether I earn money on Medium or not.

I can switch content platforms tomorrow and continue, business as usual. I hope you’ll build the same for yourself. It’s the right thing to do

I believe in the power of email.

Email is the biggest, most-lucrative app on your phone. There are something like 2 billion Facespace accounts — super-impressive and not to be ignored… but there are 6 billion email accounts. That’s 300% more action with email.

Email is ubiquitous.

Social media platforms will come and go, but when was the last time you ditched your email address. I’ve added more (many more), but I’ve kept my core email address longer than half the Medium writers have been alive.

Think about it.

Our email addresses have become one of our most-stable and well-held possessions.

When you lose your cell phone what do you do? You start emailing your contacts and tell them you new number. We don’t advertise our personal digits on social (at least, I hope you don’t).

Yep, opponents call email old and dusty. But these are the same folks who must pay to get their tribe’s attention. Every time they want to deliver a message. Email is a direct, artery-shot to your customer. You can’t buy your way to the top of someone’s in-box, save for those terrible email ads that Google is trying to push.

[Tangent] I have never clicked on one of those in-box ads. I love email. But those fake emails violate the whole purpose of the spam laws.

If you have permission to contact a member of your tribe, you’ve got the best automatic sales channel you’ll ever have. Email isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

In fact, due to the high-cost and high-gamble of ads, email is making a resurgence, bigger than ever.

But what about the younger generation. They say they hate email… Well, once they get jobs they’ll use it. Once they have the buying power to become your customer they’ll use it. Once TikTok is tocked-out, WhatsApp is what-ever, and Instagram is Insta-dust, they’ll all return to email in time.

Plus, you should be on these other platforms too, but everything leads back to your email platform. Social owns your content everywhere else.

Email is as consistent as your morning coffee (or vodka).

Let’s build your tiny empire

I’m all-in on Medium right now. I don’t want you to get this twisted. There are people who believe in the be-everywhere, do-everything strategy. I’m not one of them. I’ve got a large Instagram following for my fiction, and I’ve got social elsewhere, but I put IG on hold for now. The only thing I use my other social accounts for is re-posting Medium stories.

I don’t want to waste much time growing my social accounts. I should spend more time there. For now I’m all-in on Medium.

This is where my tribe hangs-out. And I want to bring my most-valuable readers into my email tribe.

I’d like to invite you to the reason I’m all-in on Medium. I made an intensive, seven-day, Tribe 1K, free email masterclass and I’d love for you to enroll. If that’s your thing. If you’re a writer or creator who wants more than writing a frantic story a couple times a day.

When you build your own tribe you hold the rope to the lifeboat… for when it all goes down.

Will you be on the Titanic, or will you start creating your own island — one scoop of sand at a time — ready when you need it. This is where you tribe lives. They live on your email list.

If you’re ready to get your first 1,000 subscribers (or your next 1,000) without paying a hot nickel in advertising, tap the thingy below to enroll. You’ll have your first lesson today.

We’re waiting for you.

Enroll in my Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.