How to get more views, grow your account, and make money on Medium
Hi, everyone. Mod of r/MediumApp here.
I constantly see the same questions on here and all the Medium-related communities asking how to get more views and reads, how to get more followers, how to earn more, etc.
I also constantly see people confidently giving the wrong answers. Let's clear up the misconceptions.
First and foremost:
The Medium game is, in many ways, just like any other form of content creation. If you suck at making videos, you're not going to succeed on Youtube or TikTok. If you suck at writing, you're not going to succeed on Medium or Substack. And no amount of AI assistance is going to make up for a genuine lack of skill on your part. Therefore, the first step to growing and making money on Medium is to actually be a decent writer.
If no one has ever read something you wrote and said, "Wow, you're good at writing," you should seriously reconsider your platform. Sure, you can start improving your writing skills now, but there's probably a different skill you're better suited to leverage, assuming you're already an adult.
This is the most common problem I see. I see tons of people asking, "Why aren't I getting any traction or earnings?" and the vast majority of them simply don't have the writing capabilities that someone would actually pay for.
Are there examples of low quality writing that got a lot of traction (and possibly earnings) on Medium? Yes, absolutely. However, those articles were one-hit wonders that accidentally happened to have excellent titles and subtitles from a copywriting standpoint. Those authors generally do not sustain such stats over the course of multiple pieces.
I can only think of two exceptions to this rule:
Excellent content can make up for a lack of literary proficiency.
I've seen decently-performing writers who can't tell the difference between a comma splice and a semicolon, but have very interesting personal experiences. They travel the world and write from very unique cultural perspectives, they leverage their unique expertise in high-demand fields, or they convey unique opinions about their very relatable experiences. These are things that AI cannot emulate.Excellent copywriting skills can keep readers reading no matter what the content is.
Being good at copywriting is arguably just being good at writing, but it's worth differentiating because the kind of "good writing" you learned in English composition class and the rest of academia is vastly different from the skills emphasized in copywriting. It's hyper focused on the most effective techniques in persuasive writing specifically.
So, to succeed on Medium, you need to be a "good writer," someone with really unique experiences/views, an experienced copywriter, or some combination of the three. Ideally all three.
With that out of the way, let's go through everything else.
Formatting
If you haven't already read all the Medium Help articles about formatting, read them. They're important basics to master. Know how to format your title, kicker, subtitle, hero image, and image attribution. Know how to use all the tools at your disposal within the Medium editor. Know which paragraph lengths are optimal for both desktop and mobile readers (shorter paragraphs = more reader retention). When it comes to total article length, my own personal opinion is that 4-8 minutes brings the best results, but that might vary from niche to niche.
Reciprocal engagement
Medium has taken an active stance against reciprocal engagement: engaging with other writers' stories in order to get them to engage with yours. If you do this a lot (e.g. 30+ short comments on other writers' stories per day), the system will automatically flag your account as a potential engagement farmer. However, it's natural for us to genuinely engage with writers we like, and for them to check out some of our stuff if they like it. It is an online community, after all. Engaging with other writers in limited amounts is fine if it's completely organic and sincere. You're not going to be penalized for mutually engaging with just a handful of fellow writers with thoughtful and insightful comments. However, note that scaling this "strategy" isn't as rewarding as it used to be pre-2025. And if you're even thinking of using AI to automate this for you, that's a direct ticket to revocation or suspension.
Publications
Do you need to submit to publications? This point is debatable, especially since Medium is constantly changing how its algorithm works regarding publications. My personal testing has shown that it did not really matter some time ago, but that publishing through publications may have become more algorithmically relevant now. Maybe. If you hear anyone giving very confident opinions about publications, though, take what they say with a grain of salt. No matter if your article has been published through a publication or just your own profile, Medium's algorithm will serve it through their internal distribution network (General Distribution) initially, but it remains to be seen if non-publication pieces are bottlenecked in any way that isn't related to Feed Clickthrough and Read Ratio.
Feed Clickthrough and Read Ratio?
These are the most important two stats that determine how well your story performs. In normal marketing terms, these are CTR and (the inverse of) Bounce rate, respectively. In plain English, it's how many people clicked on your piece out of all the people who saw it in their feeds, and how many of those people spent at least 30 seconds reading it (while scrolling like a human -- yes, Medium uses software to track scrolling behavior).
In order to get a higher feed clickthrough rate, you need to have a compelling headline/title. In order to get a higher read ratio, your content needs to make the reader want to keep reading. When it comes to writing better headlines, this article by Medium staff has been extremely helpful to me.
If you have a high enough feed clickthrough rate and read ratio, the algorithm will automatically serve your piece to more people, leading to a compounding effect of getting more views and reads. This is how stories go viral within Medium's internal distribution. For example, if your feed clickthrough is 15%+ and your read ratio is 70%+, it's almost guaranteed that your story will go viral, no matter if it's in a publication or not.
ALMOST guaranteed.
There are cases where stories with high stats will start gaining traction but will experience a sudden, sharp decline in stats like this:
Stats from one of my own stories
If your story starts gaining enough traction, it eventually gains the attention of Medium's curation team. They're the ones responsible for giving "Boosts" to the stories they like. They're also the ones responsible for shadowbanning stories they don't like by categorizing them as "Network Only" aka "Network Distribution." This means your story will no longer appear in readers' feeds, and your stats will take a plunge.
Every story you publish starts in General Distribution. That's where the algorithm does the work of distributing your story internally so that it has a chance to gain traction. Getting your distribution changed to either Boosted or Network Only is done manually after it catches the attention of the curation team.
According to Medium's distribution guidelines, really great stories will get boosts and thus higher earnings. However, stories that have clickbait, unconstructive negativity, low-value content, NSFW content, misinformation, spam, and Medium meta are supposed to be relegated to Network Distribution (also referred to as "Network Only Distribution" in other past help pages).
Seems reasonable, right? Well, not always. A lot of the curation team's judgments can seem very subjective, and a strong case could still be made for a piece relegated to Network Only to still qualify for General Distribution. Your piece could be perfectly within their General Distribution guidelines by your own personal understanding but, if a curation team member happens to subjectively decide that your headline looks too clickbaity or your subject matter looks too controversial, they can make a unilateral decision to switch off its earning potential.
This happens silently. You don't get notified. You just see a sharp decline in stats.
Some people misunderstand this process, thinking that it's automatic. It's not.
Medium meta (Medium stories about Medium) pieces, for example, don't automatically get Network Distribution upon publication. They sit in General Distribution until they get enough attention for a curation team member to manually review it.
How can I check if my story is in General Distribution or Network Distribution?
If you had a story with growing stats experience a sudden, sharp decline, could it be for a different reason? Maybe. Maybe the whole world decided to collectively and voluntarily boycott consumption of any content related to chicken parmesan, and that's why your story about your grandmother's life-changing chicken parmesan recipe took a nosedive.
You can confirm your story's distribution network by checking the archives of one of its tags. Let's say one of your story's tags is Pop culture. Click the "Pop culture" tag at the bottom of your story, scroll down, and click "See more stories." You'll end up in https://medium.com/tag/pop-culture/archive
Then, scroll down to where your story chronologically should be. If it's there, it's still in General Distribution. If it's not, it's been sent to Network Only hell. DM me or let me know in the comments if this has ever happened to you (I have some news for you specifically).
This distribution stuff is generally only an issue for writers who already make close-to or above triple digit earnings per month, though.
This should all give you a solid framework of understanding how to leverage the algorithm to help you gain more traction.
For most decent writers, it's usually just about constructing better headlines that improve your feed clickthrough rate. For that group, focusing the majority of your efforts in that area should give you the most improvement. Just hope that your improvements don't make the curation team think you're writing clickbait.