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It's the dilemma of every writer—you need a list of fans to get published, but you can only get fans when you are published. Building a fan base is time-consuming and expensive, and it takes you away from the writing you so desperately want to do. You want to enter the conversation. You want feedback and challenges, as well as criticism and accolades, but when you publish, nothing happens. You wonder if anyone even read your piece.
This is the starting place for most writers. It sucks. But there is an answer.
Go to Medium.com and open an account. Here’s why.
Medium has the unique capacity to solve all those problems for writers.
First, Medium will get you readers and fans. If you write pieces that meet Medium’s distribution or curation guidelines, they will distribute your work for you. If you publish them in a Medium publication, your work will go to the publication’s subscriber list, and that will get you fans. You just need to write frequently, publish, and use good tags to grow that list. Read that again… You write what you want to write and publish it, and that gets you fans. It builds an audience. No Facebook ads, no conversion pages, no internet marketing. You just do what you do, interested readers will follow you, and you build an audience. Your cost? Initially, $5 per month. Once you have 100 followers and join the Medium Partners program, Medium pays you. You will never even think of your $5 per month again.
How It Worked for Me
I'm one of those who struggled to get an audience. I tried all the things everyone recommended, and I always came up short. Spend a lot of money to get the next biggest solution. I'd get something, but never enough to tip the scales. When it was all over, I was poorer, someone else was richer, and I didn't have the audience I wanted.
I first opened a Medium account in 2017 or 2018 hearing that Medium was for writers. I wrote a few things but it felt similar to everything else—lots of time and no gain. Just like Facebook. Just like Twitter. If there was a Partners Program for paying you, I wasn’t aware of it. So I let it go.
Somewhere along the way, I heard about Medium’s Partner Program in which writers are paid for their readership. You have to be a member of Medium, paying your $5 per month, and you have to have 100 followers to join the program. That 100 followers took me a couple of months. I wrote several articles, responded to all comments, and commented on other people’s articles to gain followers. I also asked ALL of my friends to follow me on Medium. That got me over the threshold.
Since then, a year and a half ago, I am now at nearly 1,000 followers. My monthly income from Medium bounces between $150 and $600 depending on how much I write and how well I do it. I have a robust dialog with readers since I engage them in nearly all comments I receive. I have also educated myself, learned, and grown as I participate in the dialog that matters most to me.
In other words, I built an audience and got paid to do it. And now, I am growing that audience and being paid more to do it. Do I earn enough yet to justify the time I put in? Not yet. But everything else I tried took the money, sucked my time, and diverted my attention to Internet marketing and away from writing.
If you are serious about writing, go to Medium.com and open an account. Yes, please use this link as it is an affiliate link and supports my work. Your membership will get you access to everything on Medium, not just my writing. And most importantly, it is your first step toward joining the Medium Partners Program.
Then, do these things:
Read articles in your subject area and comment on them.
Tell readers in your short bio you are going for 100 followers and ask them to follow.
Write articles in your subject area.
Respond to every comment and ask for followers.
Ask your friends to open an account on Medium and follow you.
When you get to 100, sign up for the Medium Partners Program.
This will get you started in the right direction. (BTW: If you have particular circumstances you would like to discuss with me, I offer consultations for $50 an hour. Drop me a line at sigwrite@gmail.com if you are interested.) It doesn’t matter if you are a poet, a nonfiction writer, a fiction writer, or anything else, Medium is a place where you can profitably establish and grow an audience. The readers are there. You just need to give them something to read.
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Write to me in the comments or at sigwrite@gmail.com for an appointment.
Write On!
Anthony
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