30 Things I Learned About Blogging On Medium In My First 30 Days
August 2018 has now been my first complete month here on Medium. In my short time here I have published 31 articles, became a Top Writer in Education and learned quite a lot.
I recently packed all my learnings into a 10- hour online course and decided to additionally share my insights through this article.
But before starting with my learning I want to give a quick overview of my intention and the reasons why I am active on Medium.
I first heard about Medium in July 2018 and instantly liked the idea of the platform. On the one side I was preparing to start my blog anyways and on the other side, I liked the idea of being able to earn an additional income in such a fast way. As I never felt like being talented in writing I had a hard time to start blogging but when I discovered Medium I created a challenge for myself and my boyfriend. I wanted us to try to write one article per day. At the same time, we set ourselves a time limitation for those articles as we did not want to ‘’loose’’ to much time in details and ignore our other projects. At the beginning, I wanted to spend 15 minutes per article but too soon I realized that it is almost impossible to write a post that is somehow acceptable in such a short time. Therefore, I decided to spend 30 minutes per day to post an article. In the first days, I really stuck to this rule and produced a lot of content, even though I was convinced that I am not the best writer.
After some time I couldn’t continue to post every day but still, I posted around four times per week.
My aims on Medium are to create content and get deeper knowledge through every article I write, to improve my writing, to build an audience and to make some additional money.
Now let me share my 30 Learnings in 30 Day on Medium
Profile Growth
#1 Your Profile
Your profile should look credible and friendly. I realized that people on Medium are quite attentive and highly interested. Therefore, they also take care of whom they follow and which persons stories they want to read.
#2 Following
You can follow up to 125 profiles per day. I do that — I simply click on that follow button 125 times, every day. On average, about 10% of them will follow you back. That’s a solid strategy to gain more followers which see your stories and might turn into readers and fans.
#3 Promoting in Facebook Groups
Recently I discovered several different Blog supporting Groups on Facebook. I tried to promote my Medium posts in those groups and realized that they actually get more clicks and views. This is for sure one way to get more people to click on your stories.
#4 Stats are great but not enough
Even though I highly appreciate and love the stats section on Medium, I guess it is not absolutely detailed and doesn’t provide all the necessary information an author would need to optimize his work. I would love to get an overview of how certain tags, publications, headlines etc. work out and perform. Therefore, I have created a spreadsheet for myself where I track all this additional information to be able to optimize my work. If you reach out to me I can, of course, share the sheet.
#5 Grammarly
Spell and grammar checking is absolutely crucial. In my opinion, having a spellcheck on your articles is also one form of respect towards readers. When I first published stories I didn’t check them at all and they contained a whole lot of mistakes. Later on, I discovered Grammarly and got used to checking all my stories before publishing and also checked all of my previous stories.
Stories
#6 Being aware of Content Guidelines
It sounds so obvious yet it is super crucial — following Mediums Content Guidelines! Medium has a very well developed help section where you can find all the details about content guidelines that you have to follow. In my first stories, I added a call to action to clap for my stories and soon got an email by Medium that I am offending the guidelines and will be unable to earn money through my stories if I don’t adjust my content.
#7 Use the Help Center
It might happen that you have some questions where you don’t find answers in the FAQ’s — in this case you should message the Medium team. When it comes to advertising products, promoting something etc. you really have to be in alignment with the rules. If you are insecure, simply drop them some lines and you will get a clear answer very soon! I once had a request and got my answer within 24 hours!
#8 Headlines are super, super important
During my first weeks, I did a lot of research on how to succeed through blogging in general and I realized that great headlines are one of the secrets to success. There are many tips on which headlines perform best, but in fact, the key is to take your time and think about your headline wisely. It is one of the main reasons according to which your readers decide whether they click on your article or not.
#9 Take care of your structure
Even if sounds too simple, having a clear structure of your story and making it visibly attractive will lead to more readers. First, people scan through a text very quickly before deciding if they start reading or not. Several subtitles and paragraphs will help to get a quick overview.
#10 Make use of Photos
Stock photos are great. On Medium you have instant access to Unsplash and can find a perfect photo for your stories within a couple of seconds. Statistics say that articles which contain pictures are clicked much more, so you should make sure to add some visuals to every story.
#11 Design Pictures for your Posts
Even though the selection of stock photos are great I would advise to create own pictures whenever it makes sense. Canva is my most favorite design tool for that kind of things — it will take you not more than a couple of minutes and you will have a unique design which will make your story special and more impressive.
#12 Reposting
In some cases, if your story doesn’t get views and clicks, it might make sense to simply delete and republish it. You have nothing to lose and might gain readers.
#13 Arrangement of Pictures
When adding pictures to your stories you should be careful with the first picture, which will be shown in the preview of the story.
←- This one, for example, is not ideal. You should choose a long format of the picture so that the picture in the preview is oblong and not in a square format.
#14 Unsplash
It took me about 10 articles until I found out that I can access the photo databank of Unsplash directly on Medium. By clicking on the little loupe when writing and editing an article you can instantly access all free Unsplash stock photos. You can instantly type in a searching term and place it in your posting.
Publications
#15 Smedian
Smedian.com is your greatest help when you want to publish your stories in publications. You get a great overview of the best performing publications and can instantly apply to become a writer for them and submit your stories. In my opinion, using Smedian is the easiest way to access several publications and engage with them.
#16 Confirmation of Story Submission
When submitting a story to a publication you have to be careful about the confirmation. Normally you should get a notification mail once your story gets confirmed and published in the publication. As I have deactivated to get email notifications I never got the confirmation, thus, I didn’t even know if my stories were confirmed or not. Therefore, if you want to be sure, you have to check if your stories got confirmed. If not, you can, of course, try to submit the same story in an other publication.
Series
#17 Notification
In the last 30 days, I tried several variations of Series on Medium. What I’ve learned is that every time you start a new series from scratch all your followers get a notification. This is super special because when writing normal stories your followers don’t get notified. So, for example, every time you write a new, longer posting you could create a short series with the key elements and link to the actual story. That way your followers will be much more likely to see your story. Additionally, people can decide to get updates of your series, this way they will get a notification every time you update this specific series.
Advantages of Blogging on Medium
#18 Established Audience
It sounds so obvious but yet it is super powerful — when writing on Medium you present your work to an already established audience of tons of people. Even if not millions of people will see and read your work on Medium — it’s much easier to get readers at the beginning than it is with your own website. You can link to your articles and drive traffic by engaging with others, it’s a great starting point.
#19 Quick Money
I don’t want to say that it is super easy and effortless to earn money on Medium, but in my experience, you can earn your first dollars quite quickly if you make some effort. August being my first month I earned almost 80$ and I guess that this is completely fair for my writing skills and the amount of work that I have put into my profile. When building an own blog you have to put much more work and time into it before you can even think of monetizing it at all.
#20 Maintaining Control of your Content
One more fact that I love about publishing on Medium ist that you can maintain the whole control. You can import existing blog posts if you already have an own blog and even if you submit your story to publications you keep all the rights. That way I am super comfortable with publishing here.
#21 No Niche needed
While you would need a clear niche when establishing an own blog, on Medium you can write about anything. Choosing different topics and categories will not affect your success as it is not irritating at all. This is a great way to try different things out and figure out what makes the most fun and profit.
#22 Super quick Payment Process
Blogging on Medium was my first ever income generated on the internet. Therefore, I was quite skeptical about the payment procedure and how well it actually works out. To my surprise, it went super smoothly. Opening the Stripe account and connecting with my actual bank account was super easy and quick and I received my first payment super quickly.
#23 People write great stuff
I generally educate myself through various channels and platforms but when I first registered on Medium I was not really interested in reading others articles. But once I started to scan through various posts I realised that people create awesome stories. By now it became a habit that I consume at least five Medium stories per day and I can for sure say that I have highly benefited from it so far. It helps me to get a quick overview on topics that I am not engaged with and to get some deep insights on other topics and I really appreciate the great work of Medium authors.
#24 People are really interested in what you write
This might sound simple but in my opinion it is super important. When I started blogging, I was not sure about whether there would be any people reading the content at all. Throughout my first month I received so many thoughtful comments and messages to my stories which prove that people are highly engaged and thoughtful about what they read.
Blogging Tools
#25 Hubspot Blog Idea Generator
The Hubspot Blog Idea Generator can be your best friend if you struggle with coming up with new blog post topic ideas. You simply type in three nouns which interest you or about which you want to write and the generator suggests you several different headlines and topics. You can either choose one of them or simply take it as an inspiration. It’s a great way to come up with an idea for an article in just a couple of minutes.
#26 Copy Clip
Copy Clip is a smart Clipboard history manager which can make your blogging life a whole lot easier. It enables you to make use of sections which you have copied previously. This means that you can copy various quotes, links etc. and make use of them once you are working on your article. This can save a lot of time as you don’t have to switch between tabs anymore.
#27 Play.ht
Play.ht is a free software which enables you to create audio versions of your written stories. In general, people are in a hurry and more likely to listen to content than reading, therefore, creating an audio version is an opportunity to gain an additional audience which engages which your stories.
#28 Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a website that enables you to research the most popular articles and postings according to your searching terms. In the free version you get access to the first ten most searched, clicked and shared articles. This way you can research what people are most interested in and which kind of articles get the most engagement.
#29 Flaticon
Flaticon is my most favorite website when I create images for my blog posts. It is a website where you can find and download thousands of icons to use in your images. You can adjust the colors and the format of the icon and use it in several ways.
#30 Daily Engagement
I have set myself the goal to grow a big audience and benefit quite a lot through Medium. Therefore, I have put in several hours per week in the first couple of days and weeks. By now I have realized that you have to be active and engage on a daily basis. Following people, commenting and highlighting on other articles and simply being present through a bunch of own articles should be on your daily to do list if you want to grow your Medium profile seriously.
Summary
To sum up, 30 days on Medium have been packed with way more than 30 learnings. I am super happy with the platform so far as it was a motivational push for me to start blogging at all. My aim is to stay active on Medium as long as I feel like my benefits and audience is growing.
If you have any questions regarding my journey on Medium or any specific questions where I might help you out, don’t hesitate to reach out to me!
Do you want to learn more?
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