What I Learned From My Little Experiment With Short-Form Posts
By: August Birch
Tags: Medium, Marketing, Money, Life Lessons, Writing

What I Learned From My Little Experiment With Short-Form Posts

The good, bad, and the face for radio

Photo by OCV PHOTO on Unsplash

Over the last couple weeks I’ve experimented with short-form Medium stories. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. To qualify (and get listed as) a short-form story, you need a few things:

The things

No title The first sentence must be bold The whole lock, stock, and Harold must be under 150 words (a shortcut for word count is a quick click to your drafts stories section and it’ll tell you).

Short-form posts can even get curated, so don’t forget to use all your favorite tags.

These little posts are shown in the entirety, versus getting a regular story truncated on your page or the various Medium screens. This means every view also counts as a read.

I wrote a total of nine short-post. They all got at least 30 reads. Some, many more. They all earned money. While these shorties aren’t a Medium miracle or anything I think they are a really good tool to promote your longer stories fast.

While I’m still investigating, there are a few good things I learned:

Every short-form story gets a 100% read rate, eventually. Sometimes the stats take a bit to catch-up. So don’t get discouraged if your stats are wonky when you first publish. You will earn money from these little posts. They take about 1 minute to write. My top-earner got me a dollar. Most earn around 25–50 cents. Do not look at these as a way to make money, but it’s not nothing. You can use them as a secondary sounding-board to promote something you just published. People can click your links straight from the summary window. They can click your full story as they scroll past the short-form post. Pretty cool. And I’m positive this has led to additional traffic for a few stories, by the way the read numbers coincide with spikes in the stories.

The bad:

I thought this would be a great way to help grow my email list, but the links I’ve added don’t seem to do much of anything. I think the primary benefit for short-form is their ability to reach more readers for your long-form stories.

The radio face:

Short-form stories are gimmicky. They aren’t that exciting to read since they’re under 150 words. I look at them as a commercial post for your real writing. I believe they have their place, and I’ll continue to use them as long as readers keep reading them, but don’t go too crazy, thinking that writing 50 of these a day will somehow get you more traffic.

I think a strategy of one short-form post per real story is a good metric.

If you bomb Medium with a bunch of short-forms you’re traffic will get throttled as spam, so take ‘er easy, Cheesy.

That’s all I’ve got.

Try adding short-form stories to your portfolio. They’re stupid-easy to write. There isn’t much of a downside. People clap and maybe even comment on them too. Add a link to your most-recent story and see if they’ll help add a couple new readers. Don’t forget to use your tags!

I’ve got something. Just for you… I want to invite you inside the fence.

When you build a tribe around your best work, even if you’re starting-out, you’ve got an instant audience when you’re ready to fly. No matter what kind of work you create. I want you inside the fence, but you’ve got to move fast, so I can shut the gate behind you.

Therefor, I built a free email masterclass for you. I hand-crafted the whole thing. It took me a couple months. I call the masterclass the Tribe 1K.

I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 (or your next 1,000) readers without spending a hot nickel on ads. Past students include New York Times bestselling authors. Yep, the ones you see in the bookstore.

Your email list will help you build a legacy creative business.

If you want to grow your creative business you need email before you lose that valuable reader’s attention. Start your list before you need one. Once you need a list it’s almost too late.

Tap the link.

Guarantee your seat before I start to charge an enrollment fee.

We’re waiting for you.