I love Medium articles (a tutorial for writing and publishing on Medium)

Medium is an American platform created in 2012 for curious people, by curious people, which has set itself the mission: “to help you find compelling ideas, knowledge, and perspectives”.

With nearly 120 million readers, and hundreds of thousands of professional and independent writers, you can find topics as varied as: technology, health, business, startups, data science, human relationships…

And one of the core principles of this platform is to let anyone share their experience and expertise with the whole community.

In this article we will see:

1. How to read Medium articles and why it is worth subscribing to the platform
2. How to write a Medium article and how the associated payment system works
3. How to increase an article’s visibility within the platform and why I joined a French-language publication
4. Why I love writing articles and intend to keep going

Depending on which parts interest you, feel free to jump straight to the section of your choice.

1. Reading articles on Medium

There are 2 types of articles on Medium: articles open to everyone, and restricted-access articles (with a little star) that only subscribers can read. Of course, the platform encourages authors to restrict access to their articles, but it is entirely possible to publish all of your articles in open access.

From the reader’s point of view, there are 3 options:

• Not signing up, and being limited to the few free articles + 3 restricted-access articles per month
• Creating a free account, and getting free access to one additional restricted article
• Subscribing for $50 a year (or $5 a month)

What do you get by subscribing?

1. Unlimited access to the whole platform, including restricted articles, with hundreds of new articles every day
2. The ability to follow authors and “publications”, which bring together communities of readers and writers around common themes
3. Personalized newsletters based on a selection of preferences, and article recommendations based on your reading history
4. Access to audio versions of many articles (usually in English)
5. The ability to financially support your favorite authors (see below)

2. Becoming a writer on Medium

The user interface is entirely designed to make the writing and publishing experience as simple as possible. To publish a new article, nothing could be easier, you just:

• click the “Write a story” button
• write the article
• click “Publish”

And it works just as well on a computer as on a smartphone, and you can perfectly well start writing the article on your smartphone and then finish it on your computer. Or vice versa.

And as soon as an article is published with restricted access, it gives its author the opportunity to be paid by the community.

Here is how the payment system works:

Every month, my subscription (~$5 minus Medium’s operating costs) is split among all the restricted-access articles I have read, pro rata to the time spent on each article:

—If I read only a single article, my entire subscription will go to the author of that article

— If I read 4 articles, and spend 5 min on each of them, each author will receive a quarter of my subscription

— If I still read 4 articles, but spend 10 min on the first one and only a few seconds on the next 3, almost all of my subscription will go to the first author.

As a reader, by reading an article carefully because I like it, I directly fund its author in proportion to the time I spent reading it.

So a subscriber’s read has no predefined value; it all depends on the time they spent reading the article in question, as well as the time they spent reading other articles during the month.

As a writer, several strategies are then possible, depending on the type of readers you want to reach:

• Writing fewer articles, but longer and more in-depth ones for occasional but demanding readers => maximize each reader’s reading time
• Writing more articles, on more varied topics, to capture binge readers who read hundreds of articles a month but will only spend a few dozen seconds on each => maximize the number of readers
• A mix of both…

A few statistics about Medium writers

For your information, a newsletter is sent every month to writers, presenting the platform’s payment statistics. In August 2020:

• 66.4% of writers who published at least one article earned money
• 6.2% of active writers earned more than $100
• $49k is the highest amount earned by a single writer in August, and $10k is the highest amount for a single article

These figures may sound like a dream, but reality (at least mine) is slightly different, for the following reasons:

• Medium is a platform whose readers (and subscribers) are mainly English speakers. An article in French (like this one), even if it racks up a few “reads”, will attract almost no subscribers, and so will rarely go beyond a few cents.
• To have any hope of “hitting the jackpot”, it is therefore better to write in English regularly, in order to 1/ grow your community, and 2/ polish your style
• Just like on YouTube, there are many writers who embark on the adventure and few who manage to earn a sufficient income from it

How to make your article go viral?

You quickly realize, then, that there are two possible ways to increase an article’s total reading time: write a better-quality article to increase the total reading time of each read, and increase the article’s visibility to increase the number of potential readers.

I will not talk here about techniques to improve an article’s content or title; there are dozens of articles on and off the platform that already cover that. I will focus solely on the tricks that make an article more visible within the platform itself.

The subtitle

By default, when the article is shared within Medium or on social networks, the subtitle that appears in the preview is the first sentence of the article. What’s more, this first sentence will most often be truncated, since only the first 140 characters are visible. So before publishing an article, it is very important to customize this subtitle to make the article more appealing. It is very often the only thing potential readers will read to decide whether or not they want to click the link.

Hashtags

Each article can also increase its visibility by selecting 5 hashtags. The Medium algorithm can then suggest it to readers based on the preferences they have selected. These hashtags also increase the article’s visibility in searches within the platform. Administrators (or “curators”) can also “spot” the article by filtering on these hashtags and then promote it in the platform’s various newsletters.

Publications

Hundreds (thousands?) of publications exist on Medium, and they serve a twofold purpose: for the reader — grouping similar content they might want to read; for the writer — giving their articles visibility by benefiting from a volume effect.

So as a writer, it is essential to get your articles published in publications. The more members a publication has, the higher the number of potential readers (via internal navigation, newsletters…).

Each publication has its own rules of the game for accepting content:

• some require the content to be submitted for their approval
• others require the writer to be accepted by the publication’s “administrators” first before being able to submit content
• and finally, the last ones don’t really say how to join them, and the best option is still to contact the “administrators” directly via Twitter, email…

In any case, publications generally only accept content that has not been published yet, response times are usually very long (~1 week), and you can only submit your article to one publication at a time.

On the other hand, once your first article has been accepted by a publication, you then just need to submit your next article to the publication with a simple button: the process is much faster.

It is also possible (but rarer) to be approached directly by a publication’s administrator asking you to “transfer” your already-published article into their publication.

Essentiel

Most publications are English-language, and so have little interest in publishing articles in French (like this one). What’s more, most French-language publications are abandoned and have few active followers.

Faced with this twofold observation, I decided with a few friends to join a French-language publication to showcase our articles in French. This publication is called Essentiel, and it is precisely the one hosting this article.

To subscribe to its content, nothing could be easier: just click “Follow”.

To publish your article on Essentiel, everything is explained here!

Why I write on Medium

Today, I write articles on professional and personal topics, because it allows me to:

• synthesize my ideas on concepts I think I master, and thereby force myself to clarify my thinking. For example, by writing an article on management consulting, I was able to take a fresh look at my own job. I now better understand the value I add for companies.
• dig into topics I care about, share the results of my research, and contribute to debates. For instance, following the many racial riots of May/June 2020 in the States, writing a critical article on Black Lives Matter helped me better understand the condition of being Black, of being white, and the shared responsibility on issues of racism. The coronavirus, the role of experts and fake news also pushed me to write an article.
• share discoveries, or lessons learned, that can help someone, somewhere, better understand the world. My very first article, for example, on the usefulness of Agile practices, was written out of the frustration I felt during an Agile training course, because I sensed that some of the participants’ questions had gone unanswered
• step out of my comfort zone and jump in at the deep end. There is indeed a delicious little thrill in clicking “publish” and waiting for comments on your article from friends, acquaintances, or anonymous readers.

With a few dozen euro cents earned per article on average, I am clearly not in a situation where writing articles has any impact on my income (and it certainly never will). But after twenty or so articles written, I am starting to see my writing sharpen, and the words line up more and more easily to express my ideas, which in itself is a first victory.

Conclusion

As a follow-up to my previous article on the benefits of favoring media that put content first, I hope I have convinced you to start reading, writing and sharing quality content.

Medium is certainly not the only platform that brings readers and writers together so simply, but if you want to join us, go for it!