Stop Reading Articles About Succeeding On Medium
Medium spams the reader with articles about Medium: growing on Medium, making more money, and becoming a friend of Medium.
tBut Medium only serves as a means to a greater end. You don’t write on the platform because you like the platform itself. You write here because of the benefits you pull from the platform.
Here are the two goals you want to pull from the platform:
- Making money
- Finding what value you add to the world
- Building a name for yourself through your followers
Making Money
Don’t make money on Medium: it’s an unstable source of income with too much work compared to rewards. The money you get should be a side benefit of your work rather than the main reason.
Finding what value you add to the world
You want to find what skillsets or insight you have that other people resonate with so that you understand what value you bring to the table. But you only add value within the platform itself if your only topic is about Medium. You don’t learn what unique insight you have because insight about Medium is not inherently valuable.
For instance, if you write about history and you realize that the way you recount history resonates with people, then you’ve genuinely learned something about yourself. But knowing about the platform has no real-world value.
You only find out about your value if you start writing about value outside of Medium
Building a name for yourself through your followers
Let’s reconsider what you even want to build a name for. You want to gain ethos for your field. For example, a mechanical engineer would want to create a brand for himself so he can connect with others in the same field and come across as an expert.
But if your brand is teaching other writers to become better writers on Medium, you don’t even have a field you want to be an expert in.
Sure, you can be a “Medium guru,” but what value does that add to the world? Maybe you like the numbers next to your name, but that doesn’t mean anything if you’re only discussing the platform itself.
Stop Trying to Meta-Write on Medium
Meta-writing (writing about Medium itself) adds zero value to you or to your readers. Give insight about topics that matter to you instead.
