What is it like writing for Medium?

I mentioned before that I am going to start writing for Medium. Why not? I have a staggering amount of time on my hands. Now I should preface this by saying that I have been somewhat of a lazy bastard since I wrote that post originally.

The first thing I wrote on Medium and the interface

The first thing I wrote was an intro just saying hi and seeing how the interface works. It is actually a pretty decent writing platform that looks nice and very easy to use. I obviously know how to use publishing platforms like WordPress, so maybe I have an advantage, but it is remarkably easy. Like WordPress but with fewer bells, whistles and options.

You can link and drive traffic to your own website

I then tried linking to an article on this website. It is pretty cool that you can do this, especially if you have a website with a lot of stuff. If you are interested/ bored, I linked to a magazine article I wrote called Ghosts, spirits and demons in Thailand. I am not sure how much traffic this has driven back to this site, but it will surely build. Also, it is nice to be able to republish things you have already written. I followed this up with an article about how AIs might take your job, even creative ones that I had published here. They both got a couple of reads but I was relatively unknown and that was to be expected.

I then wrote a kind of article that was actually a story I had written in a book

I recently published an ebook about ghosts and spirits in Thailand called Haunted Thailand. It was actually a huge expansion of the article I just linked to above. But with loads more stories. It was an altered version of the story of the most famous ghost in Thailand that appears in the book. It also got a couple of reads and a fan. I then started looking into pitching to the Medium publications.

I then decided to pull my finger out, write a proper article, and it all changed

After my rather half-arsed approach thus far, I thought I would treat Medium as a more serious publishing platform and wrote a proper article. The sort of thing I might pitch to a magazine. It was called The plotting versus pantsing novel writing debate. Which one is best? This was a few days ago. On the first day, I was told that the Medium editors liked it and it was going to be ‘curated’. That means featured on front pages. I was pretty excited. The next day I was contacted by The Startup, the largest publication on the site, asking if they could publish it and did I want to write for them. In the last couple of days, my reads have increased by several hundred and I even earned some cash. This is still small beans compared to many writers on there but it seems like a good start.

Conclusion. Is writing for Medium worth it?

I would have to say yes. I will obviously still do my own websites and pitch to publications but Medium is a lot of fun. The fact that you can republish content from your won websites is pretty cool but I found writing something properly with a bit of thought and research are where the real rewards are. If you are on the fence, give it a go.