Saturday 29 May 2021

Medium - how does it work? Is it worthwhile?


Medium is a website where you can write whatever you want and publish it like a blog, or submit it to a 'Medium Publication'. If it's accepted, the publication will publish it on their platform for better visibility. You then get paid for reads and claps by paying subscribers. The rates are low, but if you get a lot of reads and engagement, then it can pay well, so I hear anyway. I have yet to experience this delight.

Getting started

I decided to experiment with Medium after hearing about it on Twitter. I have 1000s of articles that have been published in magazines, and some are 'evergreen' in the sense that they don't really go out of date. So I've looked at what I could publish on Medium from this collection.

Inevitably things are never as simple as you imagine. Even 'evergreen' articles need some updating, and Medium guidelines say that on health topics you need to link to studies etc, which I hadn't always done for print press if it wasn't required. So by the time you've checked things, added links, updated, tidied it up, added anything new, sourced photos, and laid it out, it does swallow up a lot of time. But you don't earn if you don't try.

Don't press publish!

The first thing I learnt is DON'T PRESS PUBLISH if you want to make money on your articles. I pressed publish on two articles and regretted it. Medium Publications require you to submit a draft - then if they want to accept it, THEY press publish. This works well for both of you, because it means you end up in their latest news feed on their home page. This delivers greater visibility, more clicks, more earnings.

I did persuade two publications to take my first two articles, but one took nearly two weeks to adopt it, by which time it was buried under two weeks' of newer stories. The obvious thing would be to delete my story and start again, but that's against Medium rules and can get you banned.

The other thing to note is that you should join the MEDIUM PARTNER PROGRAM. This is how you get paid. Before publishing or submitting to publications, join the program. Then your articles should start earning you money. This is not the same as being a subscriber to Medium. You don't have to subscribe to contribute articles and start earning.

How's it gone?

Well, after just over two weeks, I've had four articles accepted by publications and I've earnt $1 on two of them. The other two only went up this morning, so haven't accrued earnings yet. I won't be retiring on the proceeds, but I hope to scale it up and make it worthwhile. If it turns out to be a waste of time, I won't continue.

Dealing with publications

I've found some publications easier to deal with than others. Illumination told me to run my article through ProWriting Aid, which told me the article needed big revisions to change it from passive voice to active voice. This is a stylistic preference and not poor grammar. Some of the changes suggested by the software would have introduced unacceptable errors to my work. So eventually I deleted the offending sentences and it was finally accepted. It's put me off offering them long complex articles again. But apparently a lot of people do well with Illumination and they have a big following, so I might have been unfortunate.

Conversely, submitting to Creatures has been a dream, with two stories adopted, great communication, and decent reads. Crucially, they made no demands that I should make major changes to my work. 

Exploring History adopted my war nurse story, and I've submitted another. They're slow to respond but seem easy to work with.

Patience is required

One of the big frustrations is that it takes ages to get a publication to put you on their contributors list, and until they do, you cannot submit drafts to them through the Medium platform. I guess I just need to be patient. The other option is to 'publish' without them, but then you might not get much visibility.

So far, it's been a time consuming and frustrating experience. But if you don't try, you don't know if it can work for you, so I'm going to persevere for a while longer. It's quite a learning experience too!

Follow me on Medium here: https://susiekearley.medium.com/

3 comments:

  1. It does sound complicated. I'm looking forward to your eventual decision on whether or not it's worth it.

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  2. Thanks for the info.

    I've just joined Medium and posted a few things, but haven't got involved with any publications yet. Seems like I need to do that.

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  3. Thanks for this Susie, I'll be giving it a go this week.
    Robert.

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