How to Get Started Writing on Medium

Getting your writing seen on the internet can be a difficult task and can feel a bit disheartening when there’s already a sea of other websites putting out content. Especially if you’re just getting started as a writer, knowing the best place or blogging platform to share your words may not be obvious. 

One great place to start publishing work is on the website Medium.com. This site promotes both established and new writers. It can be just the jumpstart you need as a freelance writer. What you’ll need to learn is how to use Medium most efficiently to gain an audience. 

What Is Medium? 

Medium is a publishing platform for anyone to post their writing on any topic they wish. The site doesn’t run any ads, allowing for the most successful posts in their algorithm to be ones that dive deep on topics or provide a unique perspective. You can also see how many readers enjoyed your article by seeing how many “claps” it received, a similar concept to Facebook or Instagram likes. 

You can earn money by writing on Medium, though, and this is made possible through reader memberships. Readers can elect to pay a membership fee in order to have access to all articles without restriction, and this, in turn, allows the site to pay Medium writers. 

Can You Make Money on Medium? 

The Medium partner program is a way for bloggers on the site to get paid for their work. To apply to become a partner, you need to have at least one story published, 100 followers, and be active by posting at least once every six months. 

The money earned through this program is determined in two ways. First, the more time Medium readers spend on your articles, the more money you’ll make off it. There isn’t an exact calculation for earnings, as it’s based on the number of Medium members at the time, among a host of other factors. 

You can also earn money by converting free readers into members. If you do this, Medium pays you half of this reader’s membership cost. Seeing as membership costs run from $5 a month to $50 a year, you can see how this adds up.

How to Get Started Writing on Medium

At the beginning, in order to get on the path to earning money through Medium, you’ll want to focus on actually creating your blog and growing your readership. So, let’s go through the easy part of setting up a Medium account. 

1. On Medium’s homepage, click on Write in the menu bar and then click on the Start Writing button. This will take you to a page where you can sign up.

2. Choose the method you want to sign up with. You can use Google, Facebook, or email. Either connect an account or enter your email. 

3. After you verify your account with whichever method you chose, you can enter the name you want to use on Medium. 

Now, you can choose either to write a story first, or start designing your profile page. Either one is a good way to start, but you should do each as soon as possible. 

How to Write a Story

To begin writing and publishing your first Medium story, follow these steps:

1. First, click on your Medium profile picture in the top right-hand corner. 

2. In the drop-down box that appears, select Write a story. This will take you to Medium’s word processor where you can write directly on the site. If you prefer writing somewhere else, you can always copy and paste your end product there and do the final formatting in Medium. 

3. Once you’ve written your story, you can select the green Publish button in the top-right corner. Now, you can add a preview subtitle that readers can see before clicking on your story, as well as tags that tell readers what your post is about. 

4. After you add in this info, you can click Publish now or choose Schedule for later for the article to be posted at a later time that you set. If you’re doing this before designing your profile, scheduling it for later is a good idea.

As far as what to write on Medium, you can really write anything you wish. It’s possible to find an audience for many different topics on the site. Generally, Medium articles that do the best are ones that describe direct experiences with pressing topics or issues in the current world. If you really aren’t sure what to write, some of the most popular topics on Medium are technology, business, psychology, and productivity. 

You’ll also want your articles to be medium-length, not too long and not too short. You can see how long the reading time is on each article in your drafts page. A good amount of time to shoot for is 5-7 minutes. Longer articles will be good later on when it comes to earning money, but shorter articles will keep people’s attention and attract more readers. So, vary the length depending on the topic you’re writing about. 

How to Design Your Profile

Having a nice-looking profile will help give you a good image and gain more subscribers as a content creator on Medium’s platform. Thankfully, it’s also simple to do.

1. Click on your Medium profile in the top-right corner and select Settings. 

2. On this main page, you can change your name, photo, and bio that shows up to readers. 

3. If you scroll down to the Design section, you can change the font, heading, and colors that make up your profile. 

4. Scroll down to Connections, and you can choose to connect a social media profile such as Facebook or Twitter as well as show a link to your Twitter on your Medium page. 

These are small changes to make, but they can be incredibly helpful in establishing credibility with your readers and increasing your audience. 

How to Grow Your Medium Audience

Now that you’ve designed your profile and published your first story, you’ll want to hone in on growing your readership. Besides making sure to regularly post stories, getting to that 100 follower mark will be your final step in getting eligibility for a partnership. 

Make and Reply to Comments

A great way to get and keep followers on Medium is to write comments. This can be a thoughtful comment on someone else’s story that relates to your own niche, which will draw attention to your own profile. 

When somebody else comments on a story you’ve written, especially in the beginning, you’ll want to make sure that you respond. This will keep current followers involved in your writing, and net new followers as well. 

Submit to Medium’s Publications

On Medium there are in-house publications that can put your stories in front of a much larger audience, getting you more followers. There are tons of publications you can write for, including some geared towards new writers on the site. 

To publish with one of them, you’ll want to visit their page and look at the submission guidelines they have. Tailor your writing to these and submit it, you could potentially gain a good amount of followers this way if your story gets published with them. 

Get Curated in a Topic

One aspect of Medium you’ll want to pay attention to when growing followers is curation. Medium curates high-quality articles for certain topics and places them front and center in results for those topics. There are some things you can keep in mind while writing in order to get more of a chance of being curated. 

First, keep within the curation guidelines. Medium’s curators will disqualify you for including advertisements, plagiarism, duplicate content, undisclosed affiliate links, hate speech, distasteful nudity or sexual content, graphic violence, pseudoscience, or other breaches of their guidelines.

You’ll also want to follow formatting and quality outlines. This includes writing well-thought-out pieces, and content that feels finished and does not leave readers hanging. You can find all the specific guidelines on Medium’s site. 

Write On Medium to Grow Your Writing Career

Using this site is a great way to reach a potential audience for your work. No matter if you’re just starting out with writing content or have been for a while and want to try out a new publication avenue, Medium can help you expand your reach and influence.