Udemezue John
Introduction.
There are so many tasks involved in running a whole blog, some of which involve web design skills, search engine optimisation, and even earning money; these skills take a very long time to master and even make it very hard to earn money with your blog without deep expertise.
How about I show you a platform with all these features embedded into it, all the way from inbuilt traffic search engine optimisation, and help you earn great money for all your articles? This platform is no other than Medium.
About Medium.
Medium is an online social publishing website created by Ex Twitter and Blogger founder Evan Williams and launched in August 2012. A Medium Corporation owns it.
The platform is an example of social journalism; it has a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications, has exclusive Medium blogs or publishers, and is regularly published.
Williams, previously co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, initially developed Medium as a way to publish writings and documents longer than Twitter’s 140-character (now 280-character) maximum.
The application software offers an entire WYSIWYG user interface while editing online, with different formatting options provided when the user edits the rich text format.
Once an entry is posted, it can be recommended and shared by other people, similarly to Twitter.
Posts can be upvoted similarly to Reddit, and content can be assigned a specific theme in the same way as Tumblr.
In August 2017, Medium replaced its Recommend button with a “clap” feature, which readers can click multiple times to signify how much they enjoyed the article.
Medium announced that payment to authors would be weighted based on how many “claps” they receive.
In October 2019, the company announced that it would no longer compensate writers through claps but that users could build a new one according to readership time spent on the article instead.
Users can also sign up using an e-mail address when they sign up using the Medium.com mobile app.
Medium offers users subscriptions to become members for a $5 monthly or $50 yearly fee.
With a Medium membership, access to “exclusive content, audio narrations of popular stories, and an improved bookmark section” is enabled.
Posts on Medium are sorted by topic rather than by writer, unlike most blogging platforms, including Williams’ earlier Blogger.
The platform uses a system of “claps” similar to “likes” on Facebook to upvote the best articles and stories, called the Tag system, and divides the stories into different categories to let the audiences choose.
Why Should You Write On Medium?
There are many reasons why so many freelance writers should start writing on Medium, and I will be sharing a few.
1. Medium Is free.
The cost of running and scaling a blog is far too much for so many people to bear, some people have the writing skills, but they do not have enough technical know-how to run it. Medium is a great place to get started.
2. You don’t have to worry about traffic.
One of the major things that cause so many bloggers to fail is the inability to generate traffic, this can cause their blog not to make money as soon as they want, and they eventually give up.
Medium is a community of over 300 million writers and readers. You have nothing to fear; all medium does is unite readers alongside writers under one umbrella to share common thoughts and reasoning.
3. You don’t have to worry about SEO.
When you start a new blog for the first time, the average time frame for it to hit the search engine is over six months and above only if you follow strict SEO guidelines such as writing good content and backlinks.
You don’t have to worry about that on Medium because every article you write becomes visible to search engines.
And if you doubt this, check out the Google discover page via your smartphones and look out for the articles that rank the most; they are that of Medium.
4. You earn a more extensive reputation.
One of the features embedded in the medium is the ability to follow each publication or personality. So when you become a more prominent name on medium, be sure to get a lot of accolades from admirers worldwide.
5. To Make Money.
Lastly, this feature is not available globally, but to be honest, Medium pays you royalties for all your work. Many bloggers have been blogging on their blogs for many years but cannot monetise it enough.
They don’t get monetisation strategies like affiliate marketing, consultation, and sponsored Ads, they still get confused, but this is different on Medium.
You don’t have to ask for one because from the day you publish your first article on medium, and then you are eligible to get paid.
How Medium works.
Medium is an online community of writers and readers, and all the platforms do is bridge the gap between readers and writers. Hence, as a writer, you get an already designed audience for your works, and as a reader, you get access to quality articles. So there are two kinds of profiles on the Medium platforms, and they are.
1. Personal Profiles.
This kind of profile is what you get when you sign up as a writer with Medium. First, you need to create a profile, and you begin to make various posts that are linked to you only.
2. Publications.
The second type of publication on Medium is publications. This type of medium profile allows you to contribute to other Medium writers.
Like newspaper works, you can create as many publications on medium and invite various writers to contribute to them. Look at it just like a Facebook business Page.
Medium uses a metered paywall and a subscription service that allows writers to be paid based on the engagement their articles generate over a while.
Readers pay a certain amount of money every month or even yearly to read articles. Then, as they engage the pieces they love, like making a clap to it, a certain amount is paid to the author of that article. You can start making money on Medium via the Medium partner program.
How To Post An Article On Medium.
Medium is an important platform that allows people to show their skills and expertise, and you don’t have to pay a dime. Here is a brief walkthrough on how to start posting on Medium.
1. Register an Account With Medium.
All it takes is an Email Address, or even you can choose to authenticate with either of your social media accounts if you have issues remembering passwords. In addition, there is no sign-up fee on Medium; in other words, Medium is Free to use.
2. Log on to your User interface.
After you must have signed up, you will be redirected to a discover page that shows you the top publication for that day; You can customise that page based on your interest or even get it done by the Medium inbuilt machine learning algorithm.
3. Click the link to the top right To start posting articles.
Getting started with a post on Medium is very easy and does not involve going through a rigorous process; all it takes is to click on a button then.
4. Start editing and creating content with the inbuilt WYSIWYG Editor.
Medium comes with an inbuilt WYSIWYG editor, which is easy to manipulate, even for newbies. You can add various text formatting and images drawn from the Unsplash API. I personally love the Medium Editor; it just feels like home
.How To Promote Your Medium Article.
Now that you have written an article on Medium, the next thing is to get people to read that article and respond to it.
You can leave it as is and let Medium do the heavy lifting to help you recommend such an article to its users or even allow it to get an impression organically in whatever way you like.
But if you would like to add a catalyst to the whole process, here are some recommended steps I recommend you take.
1. Word Of mouth.
This is a very crude way to tell people about your post, but I must tell you that it still works very well even now. You need to tell your friends about the new articles you just wrote and ask them to read them. You can also do yourself a favour by obtaining a URL link to the article and sharing it with them via an instant messaging platform for a quicker response.
2. Share on Social Media.
After publishing an article on Medium, a compulsory social sharing button usually gives you the privilege to share your articles on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
If you have massive followership on social media, you are free to reach out. Here is an article I recommend you read to get started on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
3. Email Marketing.
Another potent way to reach out is through the use of email marketing. If you have a massive list of subscribers, spreading the gospel becomes easier. I wrote an article for newbies in email marketing, and I recommend you read it.
Before consuming the above-recommended content on email marketing, I usually like to ease my reader’s stress to allow them to benefit as quickly as possible. I typically make this happen by introducing the best way of doing things to them.
It is my custom and tradition always to conduct a full forensic investigation on any online program and give my users feedback; this is more reason why I am recommending GeResponse as your official email marketing software.
I have used GetResponse, and I must tell you that it is indeed a fantastic company that constantly innovates and builds great products.
I recommend reading this article below to learn more about how you can benefit from this fantastic product and scale your email marketing campaigns to success.
4. YouTube.
All you need do to get your post out on YouTube is to make a short video or illustration of what your article is all about and add the link to the intended medium article in the video description, such a video might go viral, and you would likely get very much clicks.
You can read this article to help you get started on YouTube.
5. Collaborate With Other Writers.
Going viral alone as a Medium writer can be challenging, and in most cases, it takes time to build up that reputation that could shoot you to the stars.
It was easy to get visibility back when Medium started after one month of writing. Still, right now, as it stands, it has become a viral platform with more than one million writers constantly publishing articles on it.
One way to begin to collaborate as a writer on Medium is to reach out to other more prominent publications on Medium and ask them to add you as a contributor.
You should ensure that such publication does the same article niche you intend to publish to avoid rejection.
Generous networkers who offer plenty of opportunities to others tend to be the most popular guys and get a lot of help.
Also, make sure to write for many minor publications, even if they don’t have followers, to help the guys who have them.
Also, make sure to offer content to other writers or invite them to post content on your publications.
6. Monetize Your Medium account
Are you seeking to start making money on Medium? There are many ways to start doing so, and some will be mentioned in this section.
1. Join the Medium partner program.
As members read longer, writers earn more. Also, Medium distributes a portion of each member’s subscription fee to the writers they read most each month. So the main idea is that you have to get your articles to a larger audience and then, in turn, get paid for it.
2. Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.
All you need to start affiliate marketing is to recommend an excellent product service and share the link. I wrote an in-depth article on how you can start making money as an affiliate.
3. Sell products.
Whether it be physical products or digital products, you can choose to sell them via Medium. However, you might also need a third party website to handle your sales and business logic, and this is more reason I recommend that you read this article on how to run an E-Commerce business on your own.
Recommendation.
I know that Medium is stress-free, and it requires little or no mental effort; you don’t bother about things like website infrastructure, Search engine optimisation and having to buy items such as a domain or host, but come to think of it, this way, what if Medium shuts down? Then you are grounded.
For this reason, suggested below, I recommend that you own your blog, Guess what? You own everything on your blog and have dominance and control over it, and you can choose to monetise it anyhow you feel; I now hope you understand.
I wrote a full in-depth article on how you can get started with your blog today; click the link below to read it.
Before diving deep into the basics and hardcore part of owning a website or running a blog, allow me to assume that you at least have a basic knowledge of how a complete website or a blog should run, so it’s time to stop talking start doing.
I decided to drop a dedicated article on how you can own a perfect domain name and a cheap web host with BlueHost, and I recommend that you study and do what is advised in the article below.
Afterwards, you may return to fully digest the part you need to get started and stay on top of your game.
Here is a link to the recommended article.
Conclusion.
Medium is a fantastic place to get started if all you seek is intellectual prowess. Article based on every work and niche of life is constantly posted to enlighten their readers. So waste time no more and join Medium today.
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