The Ultimate Guide to Medium in 2020
I’ve been writing for Medium since 2018, and it’s been an interesting experience. Part of that journey has lead me to founding and leaving a Medium Group on Facebook that now has 3 thousand members. It has also led me to being interviewed by major news organizations, and has earned me approximately 70 bucks. Exciting stuff.
Throughout the years, Medium has changed a lot. But the basics haven’t changed. In this guide, I’m going to teach you everything you need to know about Medium, what it is, and how using it can help you grow your audience, and even make it easier for people to find you online.
What is Medium?
For starters, Medium is a social media platform for Writers. Hold up. Don’t go thinking that it is the equivalent of Facebook or something like that. It isn’t. Medium prides itself on being ad free, content marketing free, and free of distractions. It’s very minimalistic in fact, and no matter where you go, it maintains a somewhat consistent look and feel across the platform.
Another great thing about Medium – it lets writers make money. How much money? Well, as is the case with most money making opportunities on line for content creators, it all has to do with volume. The number of Medium members that engage with your content correlates to the amount of money you will receive each month. For some people, that’s thousands of dollars. Others, that’s more like 5.
Who Are Medium Members?
Medium has a subscription model business. You get a few free articles a month that you can read on there. Then, after that, you have to pay a set fee for unlimited access to all the articles on Medium. It’s a pretty helpful model actually because it makes it possible for writers to make money from their writing without bothering people with annoying ads.
Those are the basics of the basics. But there’s still a lot more to Medium, and before you get carried away on there, a few things you should get familiar with are curation and publications.
Medium Curations
Like anything on the worldwide web, publishing to Medium can feel like sending something off into a dark hole never to be seen again. However, the website does have a few handy features that help your writing get noticed. The holy grail of getting noticed on Medium would have to be something called “curation”. It’s also a great cause of stress for many Medium writers. Essentially, curation happens when the Medium algorithm and a Medium Editor (an actual person, I think) sees something they like in what you’ve published, and decide to feature that article on the home page of a given topic.
You can help yourself to get curated by A) writing awesome content and B) choosing the appropriate categories.
For example, if you write an article about writing tips and choose to tag that article with the category “Writing”, you might get featured on that category’s home page. It will also show up in the feed of people who are interested in that topic.
For example, click the “more” link at the top of your Medium homepage, and then select the “Writing” category.
Once you’ve clicked the “Writing” category, you will see a list of recently curated articles in that category. I’ve had many articles featured in this category myself, not to brag.
Getting curated on Medium is not the end-all-be-all. But it does help. On average, articles of mine that have been curated have received more views than those that haven’t been, but it’s not a silver bullet by any means. You still have to share your content via social media the way you would anything else.
One thing getting curated does help with, undoubtedly, however, is getting added to a publication.
Publications Help Get Your Work Noticed
Another way people are getting their work noticed and building a following on Medium is by adding their work to publications. Now, publications are a bit funny to understand but I’ll do my best to explain them. Basically, a publication acts as a separate profile almost, with its own unique branding. And it can add content from other writers, not just you. I have a Medium publication, for example, that’s sadly underdeveloped, but it does have some great writers on there.
When you submit your article to a publication, that publication doesn’t actually own your article, and you still earn money from it. You can also remove your articles from a publication whenever you want. So, why should you add your content to a publication?
Adding a story to a publication will give you that publications branding.
There are a few reasons you might want to consider doing so.
For starters, it gives your work just a tad bit more credibility. After all, anybody can publish to Medium. But getting a piece of work selected to be published on any given publication shows that your article has been reviewed by your peers, and found valuable. If for nothing else, this should make you feel a sense of accomplishment.
Another reason you might want to consider adding your work to a publication is that doing so broadens your audience. I’ve had loads of people retweet my content that was published to publications, that probably wouldn’t have found me any other way. Publishing to publications increases your exposure by tapping into another audience besides your own.
So how do you get your work added to publications? The first step is to write something incredible. Then, you’ll want to add yourself as a writer to a publication. Once approved, submit the work you want to be considered, and then wait. Sometimes, editors from publications will even reach out to you if they like something you’ve written!
Growing Your Audience with Medium
Lastly, writing for Medium can be a great way to build your audience. Not only does it give you direct access to Medium users, it lets you build a following the same way you would on any other social media platform. Furthermore, Medium can help make your content very findable via search engines. Take, for example, this article that I wrote back in 2018 on how to become a content creator. Since publishing that article, it’s been viewed thousands of times, and currently ranks number 2 or 3 on several different Google searches. I wrote this way back before I even had a website, and yet, Medium allowed my content to be ranked right up there with the best of them. Thank you, Medium.
“Considering Becoming a Content Creator in 2020? Statistics Say You Should” is my most read article on Medium and it wasn’t even curated or added to a publication!
A Few Tips and Tricks Before You Go
Before you go, I want to give you a few last tips and tricks that will hopefully make your life easier when writing on Medium. First of all, I want to say that as tempting as it can be to get caught up on getting work curated and added to publications, don’t. Your best bet is to just write the best you can using SEO best practices and Medium best practices. And let fate decide the rest. Don’t stop writing just because your content hasn’t been picked up recently. The more you write, the better you write, the bigger the chance of your content having an impact.
Secondly, if you have a website that you has a blog, you can double down on content and publish the same thing to both your blog and your Medium profile. If you do this, however, make sure to IMPORT your story. Don’t just publish it the same way you would a new story (by the way, articles and blog posts on Medium are called “stories”). Importing will let Google and other search engines know that the priority article is the one on your website, and will hopefully not interfere with how that article ranks in search results.
Some people will swear that importing stories hurts your chances of getting curated or selected for publications. This could be true, but I’ve had articles curated and added to publications that were originally published on my blog, so I’m not sure if it really matters that much. Also some people worry that doing this might hurt your SEO, but as you can see, the blog post I’m talking about ranks pretty darn high in search results, so I doubt that’s the case.
And that’s it for now! Writing for Medium is a great way to build a community around your work, and also can help get your work noticed. Have questions about how to to be a Medium writer rockstar? Reach out to me. I answer all of your emails!
