Went on a date with Medium
A short recap of how it panned out for me

After spending a whole week reading and writing on Medium, I wanted to recount my first-hand experience of it.
- Quality:
Every single article in Medium is of great quality. Be it the language, narrative, simplicity, profoundness of the message conveyed, style, diction — every aspect is top-notch. They seem like the sort that are often published in newspapers and magazines.
The design of both the Desktop and mobile version of Medium is so classy and appealing. I spend 20–30 minutes every day reading articles published in Medium.
2. Usefulness:
Even though I used the app for just a week, I gained so much knowledge about a plethora of things from Writing advice to the latest trends in the field of Artificial Intelligence. It’s amazing how one could learn so much in a short span of time. Even a 2-minute article has something interesting to offer.
I’ve bookmarked a lot of articles and even shared some of them with my friends and family.
I hope Medium remains advertisement-free forever.
3. Publications:
I found out that there are 2 paths to publish your article. Either by yourself or through a publication. The former is pretty much simple and straightforward. But when you want to publish via any one of the publications in Medium, you’ve to submit your draft article to them and then hope that they’d approve and distribute it. So far I’ve submitted just one and it was rejected by a representative who said that my article didn’t meet the standards required by the publication. I was a bit butt-hurt at first but then rejections are a part of life and I took it in a positive manner. I decided to keep writing and prove her wrong someday.
My favorite publications are Forge, Startup, Writers Cooperative, and Elemental (in no particular order).
4. Earnings:
I earned just half a dollar during the first week, $0.43 of which comes from a single article that was selected by the curators (much to my surprise). I earned $0.02 from the remaining 12 articles. 24 hours after publishing an article, the views and claps come to a halt. I observed a similar pattern in the case of 11 other articles. So unless your article is selected by the curators, you won’t be making any money. It’s as simple as that. I’m not here for the money, In fact, I don’t think I can even earn back the monthly membership amount that I have to pay. But I just want to keep using Medium as a tool to learn and share my opinions.
5. Overall Experience:
Rather than viewing Medium as an opportunity to earn ‘Money’, I’m looking at it as a source of knowledge and information. It’s really hard to get yourself noticed by the people and publications out there. I’m not really concerned whether my articles are read by the audience. Even if no one reads them, I will continue to write and post content until I get a fine grip over the art.
