Give Medium What It Wants if You Want to Earn Money
In other words, you have to write about things you don’t want to write about
Medium is a platform that is biased to certain niches — there I said it.
Most aspect of it is not entirely Medium’s fault, excluding the lack of fiction on the platform’s front page — now that is entirely on their shoulders. I know a few people who would get behind my back on this.
Medium needs to support creative fiction writers.
In my time here on Medium, I have written plenty of articles and a few fiction to point out what topics get the best engagement.
Here are the two topics I’ve seen that consistently perform well on Medium:
- Writing
As far as I can tell, most Medium users are also writers. This just makes sense that the writing niche is high on the list of most engaged topics.
Everyone wants to be a better writer and personally, the tips I got from reading other people’s articles are useful, well-thought about and clearly came from years of writing experience.
When I see an article about writing that’s very well-done, I always think about why they settle on Medium but somehow I get it.
Medium allows professional writers to write whatever the heck they want and not think about clients
2. Medium
The order is insignificant because Medium is number one on the ‘best topic to write about on Medium’ list and I’m not making this up, whenever my engagement is low from my regular articles, I just whip up an article about Medium and it’ll be up again in a few hours.
Or you can just ask the Medium stars, they’ll either tell you the same or they’re lying.
It’s not a sin to write about all the “How to + Medium” articles, I was surprised by how many Medium users I managed to bring to Medium’s Facebook community.
Don’t knock writers who write about Medium just because you’re sick of seeing this type or because you don’t need them.
Some new comers on Medium do, I’m sure as hell thankful for all the Medium articles when I was just starting out.
Being a sell-out on Medium
Sell-out has such a negative connotation to it but for the sake of the peace of minds of people who’d disagree with me, let’s just call what I’m doing “selling out”.
On Facebook’s Medium community, I’d often see a post complaint about having too many Medium articles about Medium.
If you’re one of those people, here are my unsolicited suggestions:
- Try taking a look and maybe you’ll learn something interesting
- Ignore the post because you know, that’s an option
- Unfollow the writer
- See the bright side of things like maybe this type of article can actually help someone
I’m not trading my dignity just because I write a lot of articles about Medium, although the term “sell-out” partially means that.
If I’m going to be transparent, here’s why I write about Medium:
- The engagement
Of course, the higher the engagement on Medium, the bigger the payout — it’s simple math and I’m not going to sugarcoat my love of playing this platform.
2. To help other people
Boohoo.
Yes, I do want to help other writers; believe it or not. Whenever someone post a response on my articles saying how I’ve helped them — something warm envelopes my chest.
Although maybe that’s just my acid reflux.
Having a balanced goal
If you’re thinking about writing about Medium and other popular niches here, then welcome to the sell-out club!
Kidding.
Personally, I think it’s important to write what you want to write about — your dog, your childhood bully, your favorite color — whatever floats your boat.
Writing from the heart is good for your soul.
But, if you want to have decent engagement, I believe you’ll have to trade a little of your soul to Medium; just give her what she wants — you know, it’s listed above.
You can schedule to write a piece you want to write about and one other that you know will do well in terms of engagement.
Win-win.
I know there are writers who succeed on Medium writing solely what they want to write about and maybe that’s never about Medium. Honestly, they’re amazing but my patience is too slight for that kind of quest.
If one of your goals is to make significant money on Medium
Looking at others’ advice may help you with your goals on Medium, if you want more engagement here’s where to promote:
If you’re looking for an easier way, take a look at this:
and if you’re extremely new to Medium and by all the workings of the universe, you stumbled upon one of my articles, here’s something for you:
but with all these articles on Medium that tell you the “secrets” to unlock an easier dungeon or what to do and what to write, this is my honest and humble advice to you:
“You can read every article ever written about Medium but you won’t truly learn if you don’t experience it for yourself. There’s no absolute shortcut on Medium, you have to put in the work and write.”
