How I Went From 0 to 10,000+ Monthly Views on Medium in 72 Days
I also became a top writer in 3 categories (business, startups, entrepreneurship)
I started writing on Medium on January 2nd, 2018. A day late on the New Years Resolution, but I wrote 2 posts to make up for it. My first post got 16 views. The second post got 34 views that month. Definitely not great.
I kept writing though, and made a lot of stuff that no one read. I kept trying out different niches trying to see what I could write easily about, and where I could find some traction.
By the end of March, I was averaging 500+ daily views, and was a top writer in 3 different categories. Here’s how I did it.
#1. Find Your Niche/Categories/Tags
This might take a while if you don’t know it already. It took me about a month until I really narrowed down what I wanted to write about. While on some platforms, you’ve got to be super specific on Medium a one-word tag will do.
Mine are normally the following:
- Business
- Startups
- Marketing
- Advertising
- Entrepreneurship
Notice how they all kind of go together? I can write one post that hits all these areas, and often do? I also make sure to tag my posts with these (or, other relevant tags if needed) and always use all 5 tags.
Note: Not all tags have top writers. Find ones that do. They usually get more traffic. Marketing and advertising don’t for me, but they’re super relevant to my work so I still use them.
#2. Write Consistently
Writing consistently is probably the most important factor to your success on Medium. While some people do well with a post a week, if you want quick growth put something out every single day. You’ll rapidly improve your writing, and build it into a daily habit.
I have the 2018 Best Self Calendar hanging in my office, and I don’t check off a day until I’ve written a post. The ugliness of having an empty day in the middle of my calendar keeps me from skipping.
#3. Promotion
Once you’ve hit publish on your post, your battle isn’t over. In fact, it’s only begun.
Promoting the content you’re publishing is like 80% of the work. I use both Missinglettr, Crowdfire, and QuuuPromote to spread the word.
Missinglettr dissects your posts, and makes awesome graphics and pulls cool quotes for you to easily share. It makes a years worth of social posts for every single one of your blog posts.
Crowdfire doesn’t do as good of a job, but it does get your post out there on your feed 5 times over the first 30 days it’s published. You can probably skip this one.
The last tool I use is Quuu Promote. I pay to add my posts here, and they’re suggested to people using tools to find curated content similar to Buffer.
I add my name to what’s being posted, so I’m automatically tagged when someone shares my post. Then, I like that post and interact with the person. It helps with growing my Twitter as well, so it’s a double win.
I also post my articles to relevant Slack Channels designated for self-promotion, and can usually get a couple shares and a dozen or so views from there. It’s definitely something to try if you’re in the right niche.
#4. Publications
Publications are some of the biggest drivers of traffic to your content. Write for them, engage with them, and love every bit of them.
Here’s how a recent post I wrote for The Startup (my favorite publication to write for) did.
Publications frequently share your posts on their own social media followings, and have much larger audiences than any single profile.
Once you’ve got some writing up on your profile that you think is reflective of your work, go and hop on a site like Smedian to request to join relevant publications. Not every publication is listed, but quite a few are.
Alternatively, find the about page for the publication you want to write for (bottom of the page on their profile), and see if they have a section on how to contribute. You can also search for keywords like “Submissions”, or “Contribute” to see if there’s anything there.
If all that fails, shoot a tweet at one of the editors with a sample article. It can’t hurt to ask.
To sum it all up, find your niche, write about it everyday (using your tags!), push it to a publication, and promote the shit out of it. That’s all there really is to it.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 312,822+ people.
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