Medium 101: A Guide For New Writers
By: Ash Jurberg
Tags: Writing, Advice, Productivity, Self Improvement, Writing Tips

Where Do I Submit A Story?

There are thousands of publications on Medium. From the biggest — The Startup — closing in on 700,000 followers, to many small ones with just a handful of followers.

It can be tempting to start at the top — but when you’re a novice writer, a far better strategy is to target the smaller publications. They generally respond quickly and are more open to giving opportunities to new and emerging writers.

It can be a significant confidence boost to get a story accepted and watch your stats increase. It will help you build your writing portfolio. You can grow with a small publication. Build an engaging relationship with the audience. And by association, create your own following.

Below are a few to try:

How Do I Submit? — Part 1

You’ve applied to be a writer to one of the above publications. That’s the first step completed.

Once accepted, you will see they’ll be added to your profile. If you click on your Publications on your profile — you will see the list you are now a writer for. It’s worth checking this daily as some publications don’t notify you when they have added you as a writer — it just magically appears.

Now you can begin writing!

When the story is finished:

Check there are no spelling or grammatical errors. Most writers use Grammarly or ProWritingAid. These are free tools and are invaluable.

Come up with an enticing headline. There are thousands of writers competing for your attention — make sure yours stands out.

Include an appealing royalty-free image. Unsplash is the website I would recommend for this.

Read through the submission guidelines once more for the publication you are writing for. Does it match their style guide? Content rules?

Next step is to edit!

How Do I Edit?

Once you have written a piece, it’s tempting to start sending it to publications.

WAIT!

Leave it for a few hours. Then come back and read it with fresh eyes. Edit accordingly.

This is important. No one writes the perfect first draft.

Some great editing tips are below:

Once you are 100% happy with the article and it meets the guidelines you can submit it.

How Do I Submit? — Part 2

Okay, now it’s ready and you can finally submit to a publication.

Click the three dots in the top right-hand corner.

Select “Add to publication” and choose the appropriate publication.

Select “Submit”, add tags, and the draft will be sent to their editors for review.

Can I Submit To Two Places At Once?

You can. But you shouldn’t! I know it’s exciting to finish a piece, and you want to share it with the world — however, it’s important to only submit to one publication at a time.

While it may be good for your ego, if two publications both say yes, at the end of the day you are going to piss one of the editors off. And that’s not good for your brand.

Submit. And Wait.

And wait.

How Long Should I Wait?

Generally in the publication style guide — which I know you have read twice — they will advise how long they take to reply to submissions.

The smaller publications are generally one to two days. The bigger ones can be up to two weeks.

Patience is the key here. Wait the allotted time and if you hear nothing, then try somewhere else.

Use this waiting time to write your next article. Forget about the submitted article until it is published — then you will need to work on marketing the story.

What is Curation?

This is the goal of many writers. Facebook groups are flooded with questions on curation.

To quote Medium —

“Thousands of stories are published every day on Medium. Our goal is to share the best of these stories with Medium readers. We do this with the help of our curation team, who reviews recently published stories and selects those that meet a high editorial standard for curation.

What does it mean to be curated? When a story is curated, it becomes eligible to be distributed to readers across Medium surfaces — on the homepage, on-topic pages, in our app, in our Daily Digest newsletter, and in other emails — and shared via Medium’s recommendation system.”

Being curated can help get eyeballs onto your article. It means it can be featured in search results and newsletters, greatly expanding the reach and initial distribution.

Medium is relatively strict on curation and what an article needs to look like to be curated. The guidelines can be found here:

Can I Publish A Story Myself?

Of course! Be your own writer, editor, and publisher. The benefit of self-publishing is no editor can reject you!

The downside is unless you have a lot of followers, the number of eyeballs that see your story will be far less. The advantage of a publication is a built-in audience.

Can I Submit A Story That Has Already Been Published?

Most publications only accept drafts of unpublished work. A few will republish existing material but it’s quite rare.

It will state in their style guide if they accept previously published work. (You’ve read that guide three times now — right?)

How Long Does It Take To Be Curated?

Some prominent publications have the right to curate themselves. This will mean stories published with them will be immediately curated.

Writers with good reputations may be seen by curators soon after publication and have stories curated quickly.

For many, however, you will see the dreaded message:

This means exactly what it says — hang tight! It can take anywhere from one day to one month to get a curation decision. Some people talk of curation jail — writers who seemingly never get curation. Whether this is a fable or true, you should follow the guidelines to give yourself the best chance of being curated. It can be hard, but patience is the key. Are you sensing a pattern here? Writers need a lot of patience.

If your article isn’t curated, you will see a message Not Distributed In Topics.

Don’t fret — while curation helps, it doesn’t mean non-curation kills an article. Sometimes the pieces that perform the best aren’t curated. It makes it harder, but not impossible.

What Should I Write About?

There are two ways to approach writing — one is to write on the topics that make money. The other is to focus on creativity.

The articles that generally do the best are:

Personal Essays

These are stories where it’s mostly about the author but there is a small takeaway at the end. It is tempting to write about yourself.

Your journeys, experiences, what you ate for lunch. This may be interesting to people who know you. Medium readers don’t know you. Put simply — no one cares about you.

It’s important to give something to the readers. If you have gone through an amazing experience — use that to tell a story and then explain how this can help the reader.

Self Help Articles

These are very common and are variations of “How-to”, “ Five Ways to” etc. It can be challenging to cover something that hasn’t been done before, so do some research. Popular topics include Writing, Mental Health, Freelancing, Startup.

One hint — use the word “you” more than the word “I.” Make the story about the reader, not about the author.

Creative Non-fiction

The author muses over a topic and the reader feels like they are hearing their inner thoughts. This is a good way to combine creativity with the potential to earn money.

Creativity

If your focus isn't to make money but more to enjoy your writing and be creative then you can write short fiction and poetry. They have far smaller audiences, so you won't get rich but you might gather some appreciative followers or find a tribe of like-minded writers.

How Do I Write?

Every writer goes through a phase when they can’t write. They are unable to think of topics to write about, or the words just don’t flow.

Don’t panic and don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Unless you have a book deal with a pressing deadline — in which case you probably don’t need to read this — you don’t have to write every day. Sometimes it’s good to have a day off.

There are some tips to get the creative juices flowing:

Here is an unusual process that can assist with unblocking the brain.

Can I share my draft with someone without publishing?

Yes.

Before you hit publish go to the ellipsis in the right-hand corner (…)

Click on “Share draft link.” Copy the link and paste it into an email, message, text etc to share it with the people you want to share it with.

This is a great idea for your first couple of articles. It’s important to get feedback before submitting.

What are Tags?

Each story is allowed to have five tags.

These should be relevant to the story and are a way to help drive traffic. A very detailed analysis of tags can be found here.

Can I Post a Story I Have Written On Another Website?

Yes, you can! There is even an option to import stories from a blog.

Click on your profile picture in the top-right corner of the page and click Stories. Click Import a story. Paste the URL of the story you’d like to import into the field and click Import. Click See your story. Edit your post and click Publish to publish it on your profile.

You may want to post at the bottom of the story it was originally published elsewhere but that isn't mandatory.

One thing to note — using the method above, Medium will take the date the story was originally posted. So if a story is two years old, Medium will reflect that date. If you don't want that, you will have to cut and paste the article into Medium.

How Do I Get Paid?

So you want to make some money? Quit your job and live off passive Medium income?

Sorry — this is unlikely to happen. But if you follow a lot of these steps listed, you’ll have the best chance of success. And yes — get some money.

Whether that’s enough to buy one cup of coffee or a new car depends on you.

You will need to enroll in the Medium Partner Program. It’s a reasonably straightforward process, and monthly earnings are paid out in the first week of each month for the preceding month.

You will need to put your writing behind the Medium paywall for the stories to be eligible for payment. Some publications don’t allow this, but the majority do.

You need to check this box to make the story eligible for payment.

Some nationalities have difficulty in setting the Stripe account needed to receive payments. There is a workaround here.

A Medium writer from Pakistan lists the way to still earn from Medium from any country.

How Do I Get People to Read My Article?

The million-dollar question. Or more likely the $1 question — because if no one reads the article you won’t be earning money.

Being a writer is 50% writing and 50% marketing. Hopefully, you’ve chosen a topic that people are interested in reading. And it’s been selected by a publication.

Now the real work begins — you need to promote the article. Post it on all your social channels. Send the link to friends. Find other websites that you can promote to.

Many stories is one that I use that can drive traffic. Reddit and Quora are two places to use for promotion.

There are lots of Medium Facebook groups you can join and promote your stories to. This is a great way to get tips, meet fellow writers and engage with them. One tip though — you must participate. Don’t be tempted to just spam your story links across Facebook — this can backfire

Linked In can be a great way — especially if the topics are business-related. It’s also a useful channel to try and attract freelance gigs and earn money outside Medium.

Another essential part of marketing is the SEO — search engine optimisation.

If you click on the three dots at the top of the screen and then select More Settings, you can then improve the SEO of the article.

You can change the SEO title and also enter a description to SEO. Make sure you work on these. These should be done before you publish, but can always be adjusted after.

With proper SEO, Google will pick up your article, and after a few months, you will see increased traffic to that article.

How Do I Get Followers?

Two key ways:

Write engaging content.

2. Engage with fellow writers.

Market your stories as described above. But more importantly engage with other Medium writers. Comment on stories. Highlight passages that resonate with you.

This will get your name out there but also show you are interested in your writing community. Others will then check out your work.

It takes time to build a following. It doesn’t take much time to lose an audience. Once you have them — keep them!

Why Am I Not Getting Rich?

If Medium were a quick path to financial wealth, everyone would be writing here. The fact is only around 6% of writers on Medium earn more than $100 a month.

It can be both promising and disheartening to read the articles saying “How I Made $8000 this month on Medium,” because it sets unrealistic expectations. Very, very few earn big dollars. And those that do often take years to get to that stage.

Think about why you want to write and what you want to get out of it — aside from money

Why Does My Article Not Get Any Views?

Ah, the lament of a new writer dreaming of fame, and being shot down. Unfortunately, you need to prepare for failure. For rejection. And for articles that you spent days working on to be seen by few.

If you have followed guidelines and done as much marketing as you could — then it’s best to move onto the next piece. Some articles end up in the Medium wasteland for no reason.

It can be tempting to hit the refresh button on the stats page every few minutes to see if there was any new views. Don’t torment yourself. Move On.

Why Did My Article Get Rejected?

There could be a long list of reasons.

Number one would be quality. It just wasn’t good enough.

Maybe it didn’t meet the style guidelines of the publication (I told you to read it).

Maybe, the editor was just having a bad day and passed on it.

As a writer, you will face a lot of rejection. Get over it quickly, or you won’t succeed.

What next?

Repeat the above steps. Practice your writing. Work on your marketing connect with other writers. If you can, find yourself a Medium mentor — a writer with experience who is happy to help get you started.