NONFICTION | ADVICE
How Not To Achieve Success On Medium
All that work and what did it get me?
No, I haven’t been here from the start, but with two and a half years of writing on Medium, I have some experience that I’m willing to share. I wish it could be the sort of experience that divulges to you all the secrets of making it big here or a fast way to earn a living with Medium writing, but I don’t have anything like that. All I have are difficult lessons learned that will not necessarily bring you the success that you desire.
1. Posting consistently
I’ve been told that this is the backbone of Medium success. Post often, have a schedule, make sure your readers aren’t left hanging, especially if you’re writing a series. I have been consistent for over a year now, averaging about 5 stories a week.
There have been periods of time, such as last August, when I was off from work, when I was able to post short microfiction daily. But it didn’t yield the sort of results that some successful writers claim. My earnings were a bit higher that month than usual, but I also lost subscribers for the first time ever — apparently, people don’t like having their inboxes filled with multiple emails daily about all the work you are cranking out.
2. Diversify Content and Publications
This was personal advice given to me by a successful writer, raking in hundreds of dollars monthly based on work he’d published in previous months, without producing anything new. He suggested that I become a writer in a number of various publications, in different genres, to gain new followers and a varied audience.
I did. And there was some liminal success with that. It was enough that I would still encourage new writers to do this — it does help in growing your audience. However, after some initial improvement, it didn’t elevate my earnings to the sorts of levels that the advising writer experienced. I write for over thirty publications, am an editor in three, but it hadn’t served to make me an instant success on Medium.
3. Write What You Love
Don’t worry about what’s popular, they say. Don’t worry about what gets the boosts or what seems to trend. Just write what you love! If you love what you’re writing, it will find an audience. Ok, I’ve tried this too. To begin with, I only wrote what I loved. I had so many things in my head that it was hard not to. Sometimes, I don’t feel passionate about a story and those frequently get abandoned. But for the most part, I write precisely what I love.
And sure, some of what I love writing finds an audience, but even though there are a handful of dedicated readers who love my work and keep coming back for it, it’s not reaching the sort of numbers that people claim with writing what they love. I don’t get hundreds of reads on every story I write. In two and I half years, I hardly have any stories with over 1K claps. Following this advice is personally satisfying and rewarding, but doesn’t seem to lead to success on Medium. At least not for me.
4. Not Just A Writer, But A Reader Too
I’m completely against the entire read-for-read culture. I don’t want to read your “10 Best Tech Gadgets For Automation of Scooblydoo” article. I am not interested in most non-fiction, which is rampant on Medium, and I don’t want to play games or pretend.
But I do try to read what I’m actually interested in, what I actually enjoy. I’m not sure that it helps though, but I do read about 75–125 stories a month. I’ve heard of other Medium writers turning to reading as a way of pumping up their view/read ratio, but I haven’t seen that help. Reading definitely hasn’t caused my earnings to spike.
5. Keep It Around 1K
This is supposedly the magic number. Keep your story around a thousand words and you will get more reads and more read throughs and your ratios will be golden. Supposedly. I started out writing much longer stories and tried to whittle them down or break them up into parts so that they complied. Did my reads improve? Maybe. Am I suddenly earning hundreds by complying with this? Not at all.
I have no “Instant Medium Success” advice. I have been posting my work for two and a half years and I haven’t achieved the sort of earnings that other writers here accomplished. To be fair, I do make more than a few pennies on Medium, largely due to my extensive back catalog of over 400 stories. But it ranges between $70 and $120 a month. Yes, it pays for the Friends of Medium and for the Canva Premium subscription that I use to find images for my stories. And it’s just enough profit to make me want to continue with this because it’s more money than I make anywhere else with my writing. My Amazon earnings are a fraction of this.
I don’t count this as success though. I work really hard for these earnings. I spend hours writing, editing, formatting and if you wage the time I put in versus the amount I am earning, it’s negligible. But it’s the best I can do right now.
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