No, I won't quit Medium
My Medium strategy is different than most, but it works for me.
Big writers are giving up on Medium.
Of course, they compare their results to the results they were getting 4–5 years ago: $10K+ per month, book deals, hundreds of thousands of followers and e-mail subscribers.
Then, Medium changed the way they distributed stories. Oh, and they decided to get profitable as a company.
Many of the big guys weren’t happy with the changes. Some of them won’t stop repeating it: quit Medium, quit Medium, quit Medium.
No, I won’t. I say, this is our time to shine.
I’ve been writing on Medium, on and off, for 4.5 years.
My all-time stats are as follows:
394 published stories
±250K views
$10,300 total earned
10K followers
105 Medium e-mail subscribers
140 Substack subscribers that have come from Medium (I suspect it’s more, but some of the Substack traffic stats are a bit confusing)
Over the past few months, I’ve been making $300-$900 per month on the platform, despite having only one boosted story back in February.
So, if anything, that’s a “how to make great use of Medium even though you never get boosted” guide.
That’s a “how to do things your way and make them work anyway” guide.
Because there’s more than one way to catch a fish. And in One-Person Business Success, I’m all about sharing my way and helping you find your way.
But let’s start from the beginning.
How to make money by writing on Medium?
Medium distributes a share of their revenue to all the writers in the Medium’s Partner Program (MPP).
Medium’s revenue comes from paid subscriptions ($5 per month) that they distribute among the writers their paid subscribers read. The revenue is a bit unpredictable as it’s based both on their algorithms and on the decision of Boost nominators and editors — but there are things you can do to ensure you make money on the platform.
To join the Partner Program, you will need to meet the following eligibility requirements:
Be a Medium member.
Have published a story within the last 6 months.
Be located, and file taxes, in an eligible country.
Be at least 18 years old.
If you’re completely new to Medium, you can learn more about the MPP and how to join here.
What about getting Boosted?
“Boost” is Medium’s top distribution feature.
On Medium, there are 3 ways your story gets distributed:
Boost — according to Medium, it’s “a way for the platform to highlight and promote high-quality stories to a wider audience.”
General distribution — which means your story is shown to people interested in the relevant topics.
Network distribution — which means only people who follow you can see your story.
The Boost feature works like this: a Boost nominator likes your story and sends it to Medium’s editors for consideration. Medium’s team then decide whether it gets boosted or not. Boost nominators get paid based on what percentage of the stories they nominate get boosted — so they won’t nominate just anything.
You’ll see a lot of the previous Medium superstars complain about the Boost feature. I don’t mind it. I’m fine with humans curating stories for me, and I believe Medium’s editorial team can recognize good writing and interesting stories. That’s my opinion as a reader.
As a writer, I’ve accepted that it’s a bit like winning the lottery.
Yes, there are things you can do to increase your chances. You can refer to
to learn more about that, he’s a Boost nominator.But I don’t read the “How to get boosted” articles anymore because:
It’s not in my control. I know my writing is good enough, I know I format well and write good headlines. I submit to relevant publications. Then it’s out of my hands. Why worry about it?
It’s not the only way to reach people and make money. I have a few stories that have earned $100+ without getting boosted.
I don’t write to please editors. I write to please my followers. If their opinions match, fine. If not, that’s okay, too.
How long are my Medium stories?
The common advice you’ll hear is that Medium favours long-ish stories. I’ve heard many times that 7 minutes is the ideal length (around 1700 words).
For me, shorter stories work better. I recently looked at my top-performing stories — the average length was 3–5 minutes.
I have written long stories, they just haven’t performed as well. My conclusion is that it depends on your personal style.
Write like you. Don’t try to fill the page with words to make a boost nominator happy.
In fact, here’s my only boosted story, and it’s 3 min long.
Yes, 3 minutes — and it made almost $1200 already.
Coming up:
How many stories do I publish?
How much time do I spend writing?
Strategies that helped me grow faster.
Let’s talk engagement.
The key to the castle: your audience.
The #1 mistake Medium writers make (don’t do this or you’ll get very disappointed!)
How many stories do I publish?
I aim for 3 stories per week, but I’m behind.
In the last few months, I’ve published 7–8 stories per month and I’m still earning well and growing in followers.
My explanation is you need to accumulate a library of stories. At the end of each of your stories, Medium recommends more of your stories.
The more you’ve published, the more people have to read.
I currently get 12K-15K views per month and, as I said, I don’t write that much.
I do want to write more, though! I’ve just been swamped with freelance writing work lately.
How much time do I spend writing?
My personal discovery was this: my best-performing articles were the easiest and fastest for me to write.
All of my top earners have taken me 30 minutes to draft, and another 30 minutes to edit.
I think that happens when:
I write in the morning. It doesn’t mean I wake up at 5 am to write. I just make sure that my first 30 minutes to an hour are devoted to writing.
I find the topic interesting. The more you do & talk to people, the more interesting things you’ll have to share, and they’ll just come naturally.
I have an opinion to share. I don’t think about ideas so much, I think about opinions. You can read generic advice anywhere, but your take on it — that’s what adds value.
It’s also worth mentioning that I reuse a lot of my Substack content on Medium. I usually wait a few weeks. Sometimes I cut out the paid parts. I reshape it a little and post it on Medium.
Strategies that helped me grow faster.
As I said, it’s taken me years of work to get here. It was on and off work, which is why I’m not making 4 figures yet, but I’ll get there.
Other than writing a lot on the platform, which always helps, these are the things that helped me see faster growth:
Better headlines. I know you’ve heard this a million times, but do you devote time on headlines? My two strategies for writing better headlines are: (1) I use Monster Insights headline analyzer, which I find much better than Co-Schedule headline analyzer, and I always try to get a score of 90+. (2) I write 10–20 headlines for everything before I post it. Then I step away for an hour, and then I choose.
Publications. To be successful on Medium, you need to write for popular publications in your topic. I’m a writer for 25 publications, including Better Humans, The Writing Cooperative, Curious and Start It Up (The Startup). But! Currently, I’m only submitting posts to The Startup.
Here’s why (and how you can also create your publication strategy):
I noticed a lot of the top writers focus heavily on one publication at a time. Tim Denning and Eve Arnold in particular had long stretches of posts only submitted to The Startup. Now, I see Tim has switched to ILLUMINATION-Curated — I’ll have to check that out. That’s how you choose the right publications for you: you find people successful in your topic and you look at the pubs they use. Those are the places where you need to be, too.
I tested a lot of publications, and I noticed my best results come from The Startup. I’m a marketer at heart, so I follow the data.
I’m familiar with the process and know when they’ll accept an article, when they’ll publish it, etc. It feels good to know what to expect.
Let’s talk engagement.
I don’t engage on Medium other than when I want to. I know engagement is somewhat helpful, as it is on all platforms, but I’m not going out of my way to do it.
I’m not saying it’s bad to engage with others. I do read a lot on Medium, I clap often, but commenting feels like something you do when you have something meaningful to add to the conversation.
I feel the same way about live conversations.
However, I do go out of my way to keep in touch with writers I admire. I usually connect with them on multiple platforms, I share their work, I support them, and I’m not doing it to get anything in return (though I have gotten a lot in return).
The key to the castle: your audience.
I do well on Medium because I know who my audience is. I also know what they read, what they want, and I know for a fact that there are a lot of them on Medium.
If I wanted to talk to corporation CEOs, I wouldn’t be on Medium. If I wanted to talk to teenagers, I wouldn’t be on Medium.
Medium has a big, various audience. It’s good for almost everything — but not everything.
To know what your audience wants, you should also try a lot of topics. Sometimes a certain topic, know-how, attitude just resonates with people in a way you couldn’t anticipate.
I’ve written about relationships, personal development, novel writing, entrepreneurship — you name it.
Figuring this out requires writing — you won’t think your way to success.
So write. Just write more, and have fun with it.
The #1 mistake Medium writers make.
You can’t count only on Medium to build a sustainable business online.
Even if you’re currently successful, you never know what will happen tomorrow — maybe they change their algorithm or their rules for distribution.
I want you to think like a business owner. No smart business owner would count only on one client, right?
My biggest mistake on Medium is that I didn’t start an e-mail list sooner (and it’s a mistake I see a lot of writers make).
I’ve had 250,000 views of my stories through the years and I only started an e-mail list last year.
Ideally, you want to take your Medium audience and lead them to a place where you can offer them something more. This way, you’re not just counting on Medium’s Partner Program.
Like, A LOT. And not just anyone, but I try to “read up”
Also, I follow and read a lot of other people