My 5 Questions for the Medium 1%
By: Sarene B. Arias
Tags: Strategy, Tips, Ｍedium, Blogging, Writing

|Medium|Blogging Tips|Marketing|

Success on Medium is determined by which ecosystem you write in. Here’s are my questions for those who make over $1,000/month on the platform

Photo by Analia Baggiano on Unsplash

The genius of Medium is that it offers elegant publishing tools to everyone, free of charge, irrespective of mother tongue, geography, experience or skill. Still, writers on Medium have vastly different experiences and vastly different reach, based on the Medium ecosystem in which they find themselves. To succeed on the platform, you have to calibrate your strategy with the ecosystem in which you find yourself, rethinking each time you hit your benchmarks for success.

Subscribe to the Suggestion Box newsletter below to receive your free eBook on how to maximize your success on Medium today.

What’s Behind the Questions

Having hit my own benchmarks ahead of schedule, here’s what I need to know to get crystal clear about my next set of goals:

Can you cross $1K without any viral stories in the month?

The joy of earning on Medium is that good, distributed stories pay out small amounts long after they’re published. Still, in each of my most successful months, I’ve had at least one viral story, which represented about half of that month’s earnings. Do Medium all-stars, with more than 5K personal followers hit big earning numbers even without a viral story in a given month?

How many impressions do your top-earning stories get?

Each writer on Medium defines success differently, and when you’re just building your following, a story receiving 100 impressions is an important milestone. On the other hand, I have to imagine that umair haque, with his 188k follower count, receives 100 impressions within 10 minutes of publication. How many impressions can you count on, when you write a good piece within your area of expertise?

Does the publication matter?

Medium all-stars often have more than 5K followers on their personal publications. With hefty personal followings, does publication with wide-distribution labels matter, or are the 1% -ers beyond all of that? Asked differently, I want to know if the major Medium writers ever hold an article because they know that its a perfect fit for a major Medium publication.

What is the ideal length for a profitable story?

Let’s be honest. Some of my most beloved Medium writers can ramble on from time to time. Many come from the world of mainstream media, and as such, I have to imagine that they’ve worked with editors who could easily slash their 3,000 words in half. On the other hand, as Medium pays based on read time, these all-stars know that word count, when compelling, equals increased revenue. How do top writers balance the incentive for quality and the incentive for high word counts?

When is the right time to return to a viral story and share its main ideas again in a new post?

It is incredibly satisfying to watch a story you love go viral, read and respond to comments, etc. While distributed pieces do have long shelf lives, once a story has run its initial publishing course, its reads drop substantially. Medium plagiarism rules do not allow writers to delete and republish stories, but successful writers on the platform return again and again to the topics that resonated with their readers, sharing them in new ways. So, I’m wondering: When is it too soon to return to a hit and how many stories can you get out of an idea that clearly interests readers?

Medium is disrupting the world of publishing. Never before has it been easier for writers to make a living doing what we love. But, success on the platform takes strategy. Building your successful strategy starts by knowing your Medium Ecosystem.