TCC Podcast #419: Writing on Medium with Thomas Smith

Summary

The Copywriter Club Podcast - Episode #419: Writing on Medium with Thomas Smith

Release Date: October 29, 2024
Hosts: Kira Hug and Rob Marsh
Guest: Thomas Smith
Podcast Description: Ideas and habits worth stealing from top copywriters.

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1. Introduction to Thomas Smith

In Episode #419 of The Copywriter Club Podcast, hosts Kira Hug and Rob Marsh welcome Thomas Smith, a successful Medium writer and the creator of the course "Thrive on Medium". Thomas shares his journey of leveraging Medium as a substantial revenue stream and building a content consulting business around his expertise.

[04:13] Rob Marsh: "Thomas, welcome to the Copywriter Club podcast. Love to start with your story."

2. Thomas Smith's Background

Thomas Smith holds a degree in cognitive science with a focus on AI from Johns Hopkins University. Combining his interests in AI and professional photography, he launched a company in 2010 that uses AI to help archives manage and utilize their photo collections. Over time, Thomas honed his ability to simplify complex technologies, leading him to publish articles on Medium starting in 2019.

[04:36] Thomas Smith: "I developed an expertise in explaining complex technologies in simple terms and started publishing articles about photography and AI."

3. Choosing Medium as a Platform

When asked why he chose Medium over personal blogs or other publishing platforms like Substack, Thomas highlights Medium's built-in audience and its subscription-based model. Unlike starting a blog from scratch, Medium provides immediate access to a large readership, allowing writers to focus solely on creating valuable content without the overhead of audience-building.

[08:17] Thomas Smith: "Medium sends out the majority of its subscription revenue back to the writers who contribute on the platform."

4. Understanding How Medium Works

Medium operates on a subscription model where readers pay between $5 to $15 monthly for access to all content on the platform. Approximately one million paid subscribers contribute to Medium's substantial monthly revenue, which is then redistributed to writers based on various engagement metrics.

[07:55] Thomas Smith: "Medium is a subscription platform where people pay a monthly fee to access all the writing, much of which is behind a paywall."

5. Monetization Strategies on Medium

Thomas outlines five core ways to monetize content on Medium:

1. Partner Program:
   By joining the Medium Partner Program, writers earn money based on the number of reads and the engagement their stories receive.

   [21:23] Thomas Smith: "You get paid for every person who reads that story from literally day one."

2. Lead Generation:
   Utilizing Medium as a lead generation tool by sharing valuable content and including calls-to-action (CTAs) to attract potential clients.

   [24:20] Thomas Smith: "Use Medium to publish about what you do and include a CTA for hiring or subscribing to your newsletter."

3. Newsletters:
   Building and expanding an email newsletter audience directly from Medium stories, enabling deeper engagement with readers.

4. Thought Leadership/PR:
   Establishing authority in a particular niche by publishing insightful articles that can attract media attention and speaking engagements.

   [29:24] Thomas Smith: "I’ve gotten coverage in major publications through writing on Medium."

5. Affiliate Marketing:
   Promoting tools and products through affiliate links within Medium articles to earn commissions on sales generated.

   [31:22] Thomas Smith: "If you write a helpful review and include an affiliate link, you can earn commissions when readers make purchases."

6. Getting Boosted on Medium

A significant opportunity on Medium is the Boost Program, designed to highlight high-quality, human-curated content amidst the surge of AI-generated material. Boosted stories receive exponentially more visibility, leading to higher earnings and follower growth.

[16:32] Thomas Smith: "The Boost Program can amplify your story to about ten times more people than a typical Medium story."

Thomas emphasizes that while the success rate for being boosted is relatively low, the impact of getting a story boosted can be transformative, as evidenced by his own best-performing article garnering around 11 million views.

7. Building and Engaging an Audience

Building a dedicated following on Medium involves active engagement:

• Interacting with Other Writers: Commenting on similar topics and contributing valuable insights to build rapport within the community.

  [12:33] Thomas Smith: "Connect with people on the platform by leaving comments and engaging with their stories."

• Leveraging External Platforms: Sharing Medium stories through newsletters and social media to attract a broader audience.

  [13:05] Thomas Smith: "Share your stories with your external audience to drive more traffic to Medium."

• Utilizing Publications: Submitting stories to established Medium publications to tap into their large followings.

  [15:00] Thomas Smith: "Getting into a publication can catapult your story's reach significantly."

8. Republishing Strategies Across Platforms

Thomas advises that republishing content across multiple platforms, including personal blogs and newsletters, can maximize reach without hurting SEO performance. He suggests:

• Publishing First on Medium: To take advantage of Medium's domain authority and SEO benefits before sharing the content elsewhere.

  [42:56] Thomas Smith: "Publish on Medium first, then republish on your blog or newsletter with canonical links to preserve SEO."

• Avoiding Audience Overlap Issues: Ensuring that republished content doesn't overwhelm subscribers by managing how and when content is shared across platforms.

9. Starting a Medium Publication

For writers seeking to amplify their presence, starting a Medium publication can be beneficial, especially if it involves curating content from multiple writers. Thomas notes that managing a publication requires commitment but can serve as a robust branding tool linked to a custom domain.

[46:07] Thomas Smith: "Only start a publication if you're planning to connect a domain name to it or accept stories from other writers."

10. Getting Started on Medium

Thomas provides a concise guide to launching a successful Medium presence:

1. Create and Subscribe:
   Set up a Medium account and subscribe to the platform to join the Partner Program.

2. Publish Quality Content:
   Focus on writing valuable articles that help readers learn new skills or improve existing ones.

3. Engage and Build:
   Actively engage with the Medium community and consistently publish to accumulate followers and passive income.

4. Leverage Monetization:
   Utilize the various monetization strategies discussed to generate income over time.

[48:34] Thomas Smith: "Start by creating a Medium account, subscribe, and publish your first story. Then apply for the Partner Program."

11. Resources and Further Learning

Thomas recommends his website thriveonmedium.com for comprehensive resources, including a free mini-book on finding clients, a newsletter with optimization tips, and his in-depth course featuring 25 video lessons on succeeding on Medium.

[55:45] Thomas Smith: "Head over to Thrive on Medium for detailed resources and my full course to help you thrive on the platform."

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Key Takeaways:

• Medium as a Revenue Stream: With its large subscriber base and Partner Program, Medium offers a significant opportunity for writers to earn passive income.

• Diverse Monetization Methods: Beyond direct earnings, Medium serves as a platform for lead generation, building thought leadership, and affiliate marketing.

• Boost Program Advantages: Achieving a boost can exponentially increase a story's reach and earnings, making it a coveted goal for writers.

• Audience Engagement is Crucial: Active participation and strategic sharing are essential for building a loyal following on Medium.

• Long-Term Commitment: Success on Medium requires consistent effort and a long-term strategy to accumulate followers and monetize content effectively.

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For those interested in diving deeper into optimizing their Medium strategy, Thomas Smith's "Thrive on Medium" course is an invaluable resource, offering detailed guidance and actionable insights based on his extensive experience.

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This summary provides an overview of Episode #419 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. For a comprehensive understanding and access to resources, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode.

Transcript

[Rob Marsh]

It has been said so often that this idea has almost become a meme.

[Thomas Smith]

It's the idea that successful millionaires, or maybe it's billionaires, I can't quite remember. But successful millionaires have on average, seven different streams of income. They may have a salary or an income from a business that they own. They earn dividends on their investments, perhaps they they have income from property that they own, and so on. And people share this idea with the.

[Rob Marsh]

Intention that those of us who hear.

[Thomas Smith]

It, who are not necessarily millionaires, will also think about ways to earn different potential income streams to our businesses or to our lives. But as a content writer or a copywriter, you may not have access to the same investments that pay dividends yet, or property that you can rent out, or many of the other traditional ways these very wealthy people earn money. That doesn't mean that there aren't options for us, though. In fact, some of these options may be easier for you and me than.

[Rob Marsh]

For the Jeff Bezos and the Elon.

[Thomas Smith]

Musk's of the world to capitalize on. Hi, I'm Rob Marsh, and on today's.

[Rob Marsh]

Episode of the Copywriter Club podcast, I.

[Thomas Smith]

Talked with successful Medium writer Thomas Smith. Thomas has been writing on and making good money with Medium for a long time now. He recently released a course that shows.

[Rob Marsh]

How how he does it, and I.

[Thomas Smith]

Wanted to talk with him about all the possibilities that we have as content writers and copywriters to use Medium as a potential revenue source, especially for the kinds of writing that we might want to do for ourselves instead of for our clients. If you write for you, you may want to listen to this episode twice so that you can pick up on all the ideas that Thomas shares about growing an audience in an income stream using Medium.

[Rob Marsh]

Before we get to that, though, you.

[Thomas Smith]

Hear me talk about the several resources that we've put together to help you build and grow a successful writing business here on the podcast. I'm going to quickly list a few of them here so that you can get the help that you need in order to grow your business. So first, we have a free Facebook group called the Copywriter Club. Many of you know about that already. You're already a member in there. You can find us at the Copywriter Club on Facebook. Just request and we will try to add you to that group in the next few days. In that group, you're going to find seven years of threads about all kinds of copywriting and business questions, advice on finding clients, how to write all there's just an amazing treasure trove of Content there. Even though some of it may be five, six, seven years old, it is still incredibly valuable for copywriters who are trying to grow a successful business. Obviously you know about this podcast. You're listening to it right now. And there are more than 400 interviews with successful copywriters and other experts in our backlist. So once you've listened to this episode, scroll through to find interviews with people like Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, Jericho Hawke, Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, John Benson Kennedy, and literally hundreds of others. In my opinion, it's the best free library of content, copy and business ideas that you're going to find anywhere in the world. And it's all here at your fingertips in your podcast app. And then right now you can get our free 36 page mini book called how to Find Clients. When you go to the copywriterclub.com findaclient. I guarantee that once you download that resource, you will find at least one, and probably five, maybe as many as 10 ideas that you can use to find ideal clients for your business. I just wanted to list these out because we're here to help you build a business, to work on your business skills and do all of those things that make it possible to spend the time that you spend writing for your clients even more productive so that you can be more successful. So be sure to take advantage of.

[Rob Marsh]

All of these free resources that we've provided for you.

[Thomas Smith]

I will link to them in the show notes if you don't have time to grab them right now so you can come back to them and get them later. And now let's go to our interview with Thomas Smith.

[Rob Marsh]

Thomas, welcome to the Copywriter Club podcast. Love to start with your story. How did you become a content consultant, a writer, creator, I mean, of your course Thrive on Medium, which is, I.

[Thomas Smith]

Should just mention right up front, it's a course not just about writing for.

[Rob Marsh]

Medium, but actually making a living from it.

[Thomas Smith]

So how did you get there?

Yeah, so my background is actually in AI, going way back to before it was a thing. Like I have a degree in cognitive science with a focus on AI from Johns Hopkins University. I was studying that kind of technology when it was literally on a whiteboard, you were drawing the neural networks with a dry erase marker. So it's come a long way in the time since then. But that was my original background and I'm also a professional photographer. So I combined those two interests. I launched a company that uses AI to help archives understand what's in their archives, find photos in their big collections, get those out there for people to use. Been doing that since 2010. And along the way I really learned how to kind of take those two interests of AI and photography and combine them in my own business, but also to explain them to people, because AI is super confusing and photography is very technical. It's also creative. There's a lot of things that people have to understand in order to do both of those. So I kind of developed an expertise, I would say, in explaining those kinds of complex technologies in fairly simple terms, and started to publish articles about photography and about AI. And originally I was just writing for.

Publications in the photography space, writing for.

Some bigger publications too, IEEE Spectrum and that kind of thing. And I came along, Medium, found Medium.

This was in 2019.

And I can go into a lot more detail about exactly how Medium works, but it just felt like it was.

Going to be a great home for.

My writing where I could basically talk about these topics that I'm very passionate about and have a lot of real.

World experience in and explain them to.

People and kind of share how to.

How to use AI and how to do photography and how to build a business.

All the stuff I picked up along the way in a way that would be really helpful. And it turned into not only a successful kind of platform for me, but also something that helped me launch a.

Consulting component to my business, where now.

I'm not just doing photography and using AI and helping archives, but I'm actually.

Helping other companies understand how to tell.

Their story in that space, how to share what they're doing with on Medium and on other platforms. So it's.

It's turned into essentially a content consulting.

Business that's now almost the size of my core business with photography and AI. So Medium's been a huge piece of that.

Not only direct earnings on the platform.

Which I'll get into, but also the.

Way it's helped me kind of add.

That onto my existing business.

[Rob Marsh]

Yeah, that's amazing. So as I hear you talk about this, I'm curious and maybe this is where we get into how Medium actually works. But why Medium over, say, my own blog or substack or some other publishing.

[Thomas Smith]

Platform where I can share what I write.

[Rob Marsh]

What's so great about Medium?

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah. So I think, you know, it probably makes sense to step back and talk just briefly about what Medium is. I think everybody's probably aware of it, especially if you're a writer, you've seen it, it's out there. But basically to break it down to.

The very basics, it's a subscription Platform.

So people pay $5 all the way.

Up to around $15 a month.

There's different levels that people subscribe at.

And in exchange for that, they get access to all of the writing on the Medium platform. And a lot of it is behind this Medium paywall, where you have to.

Be a paying subscriber to have access to it.

At the moment, Medium has about a million paying subscribers. They've grown tremendously over the last few years.

They were around 750,000 coming out of the core pandemic time when people were at their computers all the time. They've since grown even more dramatically up to around a million. So think about, they're bringing in probably.

Five to seven million dollars a month.

From these subscribers, and they basically send.

That back out, the majority of it back out to writers who contribute on the platform.

And so what I really loved about it initially is that I was an AI expert, I was a photographer, I.

Was working with archives.

I had all this knowledge, but I didn't really know how to build an audience on a blog. I didn't know how to create substack, I don't even think was necessarily a thing at that time.

It was, it was in its infancy.

But, you know, I was pitching these big name publications. I'd get a lot of stuff rejected. It was a lot of work just to keep pitching. I didn't know how to launch a.

Blog and build an audience around a blog. What appealed about Medium is if I went and just shared really useful stuff that helped people.

Based on my experience, Medium had this built in audience of that time, probably 500,000 people. Now it's a million people. And if I just shared stuff that was great, they would bring that audience.

To me and monetize it for me. And I could just focus on the writing and focus on being helpful.

So I really love that element of.

It, that it didn't require the expertise and the work of building an audience.

It just required writing great stuff that people found useful.

[Rob Marsh]

Yeah, I like that too. I think one of the big challenges of getting the word out is having your audience. It's great to, you know, drop an.

[Thomas Smith]

Email to your list, but if you've.

[Rob Marsh]

Only got, say a thousand people or maybe Even, you know, 200 people on your list, that's the limit. Whereas there are platforms like Medium where you can get so much more exposure. So let's, let's talk about how you do that then. Because it's one thing to write something great hit publish on Medium. And I've actually seen that Happen where you do that and then crickets.

[Thomas Smith]

Right.

[Rob Marsh]

So obviously there's some tricks here.

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah. So it's definitely. You can publish stuff and it can go nowhere. You can publish stuff and it can take off. My best story ever on Medium. And I should just preface this by saying I've written about 790 articles on the platform now. It's changing every day because I'm always constantly adding to that. My best article ever got around, I.

Think about 11 million views.

So, yeah, when you say the sky's the limit on it, I don't have 11 million people on my newsletter, I can tell you that.

So there definitely is the potential for a story to go big and go.

Out to a broad audience, basically. Fundamentally, there's two ways that you get traffic on Medium.

One of them is Medium's own internal audience.

So again, that's a million paid subscribers. But there's also people who create free.

Medium accounts and are on the platform.

I don't know exactly how many people there are, but there's this internal audience that Medium is sending stuff out to. And the other piece is there's an external audience which is basically the entire Internet. And Medium is tied into that very well. So for I know you talk about.

SEO and SEO topics here on the.

Podcast, Medium has a domain rating of 94.

So if you're in the SEO space.

You'Ll know that's very powerful domain.

It ranks really well in search.

So people come in from there. All kinds of aggregators like Google News will pick up Medium stories.

People will link to them and cite.

Them in other places. So there's external traffic, which is all.

The traffic from those sources. And then there's the internal traffic that comes from Medium's own audience.

And to get the internal traffic, there's a couple of different ways to approach that.

One is to build your own following on Medium. So like most social platforms, you can.

Write a story on Medium and people can follow you and kind of opt to get more of your content going forward.

And you can do a lot to.

Connect with people on the platform. It's a very kind of community oriented platform. So yeah, if you just publish something and don't do anything, it's probably not.

Going to go anywhere.

But if you publish something and go out and find other people who are writing about similar topics, chime in on their stories and share some kind of useful insight. Because you can leave comments on a story that can help to build your audience. If you publish something there and share it with an audience on another platform, like, if you do have a newsletter.

You can send your Medium stories out to them.

If you're active on social, you can do that, too. You can share stories with clients directly and bring people over to the platform. You can also, if somebody comments on.

Your story, which happens quite a lot.

Again, it's a kind of a community orientation there.

You can respond to their comments.

Medium seems to be really prioritizing that now.

If you do that, that helps to build your following.

And basically, over time, by doing those.

Things, you'll build up your own following on Medium.

And when people follow you, it doesn't mean they necessarily get every single article that you publish.

But Medium sends everybody who's a subscriber.

To the platform, something they call the Digest every day.

And it's basically a set of stories that come through a person's email to.

Basically an email newsletter that's automatically generated.

Based on their specific preferences.

Stuff they like, stuff they're interested in.

Stuff they do professionally. A medium learns this about all of their subscribers over time.

And so if you write something and.

People come and read it, and they.

Have particular preferences and interests, then Medium will start to send your story to.

Your followers in their Digest, who have similar preferences and interests.

And as you can imagine, as you.

Build your following on the platform, there's more people who can potentially get each of those stories. As you cover a broader range of.

Topics, there's more kind of topics that you can cover. And Medium will even send things that are three or four years old in some cases. So as you build up the number of stories and the followers, you can get traffic on stories you wrote five years ago. Even I've seen that happen.

So it's sort of a cumulative thing. It's a slow build on that piece of it. There are, however, a couple of ways.

To accelerate that internal traffic. One of them is to get into a publication. So Medium has these almost like internal.

Collections of stories, I think about them.

They're still on the Medium platform, but they're called publications.

They are run by an editor. Most editors are volunteers.

So they aren't getting paid.

They're not taking any of the earnings.

From your story, and they basically curate stories. And then you can submit your story to a publication.

And if the editor decides to publish.

It, it'll go out not only on.

Your own Medium profile, but also on the publications page. And a lot of publications on Medium.

Have their own very large following. So people can follow a publication just.

Like they can follow an author.

And so some of the bigger and.

More Established publications could have 200,000, 700,000 people following them. And if you can get a story in there, even if you're a fairly.

New writer, then you get access to that big audience. And that's going to get your story.

Out to a broader set of people again through that digest and the recommendations.

Medium sends out, and then that'll kind.

Of come back to you, too.

So if you engage with that audience, then people will not only follow the.

Publication, but they'll follow you.

So getting into a publication is a great way to increase that reach, kind of catapult yourself a little further ahead. That's how I got started. I published to basically crickets for a long time.

I pitched a big publication, no longer exists.

It's called 1 0.

About three or four times the editor rejected me.

Finally I got a story in there.

And that really started that snowball effect of accumulating followers.

Now, I think the biggest way, though, and the one that's most exciting, there's.

A new program on Medium.

It's been there for about a year. It's called the Boost program. This is basically Medium's response to the.

Huge amount of AI content that's out.

There kind of polluting the Internet at the moment. It is a human focused program.

It's a human curation program. And so basically, Medium went and found over 100 at this point, subject matter.

Experts in every field you can imagine. Physics, parenting, all kinds of stuff, travel. I'm personally one of the subject matter.

Experts for generative AI, for example, based.

On my background, and found all these people and turn them into Boost nominators. So basically, we can go and have a publication on the Medium platform.

We can find stories that are in.

Our area of expertise.

When we do that, we nominate those stories to the Medium team.

Again, very manual process.

The Medium team will review that story.

And if they think it's great and it's pretty hard to get boosted, I.

Can'T say the exact number, but it's.

A fairly low success rate. But if you do get boosted, it.

Means you have really fantastic writing. And that story will go out generally to about 10 times more people than.

A typical Medium story would. So I've seen writers come to the platform who are brand new, who have.

Three followers, and in the first week.

If they write a great story and it gets boosted, they can get thousands.

Of views on that story and pick up hundreds of followers pretty much overnight.

So that's sort of the swing for the fences. You're probably not going to get stuff boosted early on, even as a veteran writer on the platform, my success rates probably 30, 40%. But when you do, that's the best way to grow that audience and earnings too, which we'll get into very quickly.

[Rob Marsh]

Okay, so I've got a lot of questions about this then. As far as Medium goes, it feels like it's a little bit of a library or a wild, wild west of content. You could basically write about anything. So, you know, again, considering our audience, copywriters, content writers, they may have personal things that they want to write about. You know, maybe I want to write a western, you know, fiction story of some kind. Maybe I want to write about technology like AI. But for the core business things that we write about, how good is Medium.

[Thomas Smith]

For business compared to platforms like LinkedIn.

[Rob Marsh]

Where you expect to have business articles on the feed all the time?

[Thomas Smith]

It's actually, I think, one of the best things to write about on Medium. So, yes, it is a platform. You can write about anything.

That said, Medium's audience cares deeply about specific topics. And the ones that are biggest, I.

Would say, are kind of. It's really anything that helps people level up is the way that I like to put it. It's kind of like if they can learn a new skill, if they can find a better way of doing something.

A way to optimize something in their.

Life or their work. That's why people are on Medium. And there's certainly you can write poetry, you can write fiction, but the majority of people want to learn some new skill, they want to improve in some way. And so learning a new business skill is a really fantastic way to, you.

Know, something people want to do on Medium. And sharing a way to learn that.

New business skill is a really great way to engage with that audience. So I would say topics that relate to running a business, to building a business are definitely one of the most engaging topics on there. And so if you're writing about, you know, how to win clients in the copywriting space, if you're writing about how to edit a story to get it into a big name publication, or how to start a local newsletter or anything like that, that content would do extremely well. Again, if you're helping the person level.

Up and learn some new skill or.

Improve their skills in some way, then.

That'S a great thing to be sharing a medium.

[Rob Marsh]

And then you kind of answered this question already. But how long can it reasonably take to build up an audience or to get to the point where you're, you know, you've got the views that you want or that you're even making money in doing this.

[Thomas Smith]

You know, it really depends on what you're writing about and if you can get something boosted early on or not.

If something gets boosted in the early.

Days, you can earn substantial money just through the Medium partner program. But let me step back for a second. There's a bunch of different ways to monetize on Medium. I'd say there's probably five core ways that you can monetize.

The one that most people jump to is the partner program.

And Medium is kind of unique in this area in that, you know, a lot of partner programs, like if you're going to publish on TikTok or something, you really have to have a huge reach before you're going to make any money at all from it. Even something like the Facebook bonus programs is one that I think a lot of people are focused on right now.

You need millions of views, you need a lot of followers to even get.

Into the program, the Medium partner program. You all you have to do is become a paid Medium subscriber. So you got to pay your five bucks a month and you're pretty much.

Into the program to live in a geography that's allowed. But there's about 70 countries now where you can be in that program.

And once you're in the partner program.

And you pay all your content on.

Medium, you get paid for every person.

That reads that story. And there's a whole formula that determines.

Exactly how much getting things boosted makes a big difference. Having followers makes a difference. The amount of time people spend reading the story makes a difference.

But fundamentally, you're getting paid for every person who reads that story from literally day one.

So are you going to earn a ton of money from the very get go if you get something boosted?

Yeah, you can earn hundreds of dollars.

On a story in your first week. I work with somebody who came to the platform, got a story boosted in this first week, and was at about $115 in a week on the platform. Most people, it's probably not going to.

Be that quick of a build.

It's going to be something where you build up a set of stories over time.

Maybe you sometimes get stuff boosted and.

Get a big bump, but it's going to be this gradual sort of cumulative.

Building of the earnings from the partner program.

And at this point, with almost 800 stories on Medium, if I just sit down and do nothing on the platform, if I literally don't publish a story for a month, I'm still earning about.

$1,200 or $1,300 a month from the.

Partner program just from that passive set of stories that I've built up. So, you know, it's not going to.

Be job replacement income for most people.

But it's a pretty nice passive thing. If I write more stories and I get stuff boosted, then the earnings go up from there. In August, for example, I made $4,424 on the platform. My best month ever when I got that 11 million view story was 19,000.

In a single month from the partner program. So again, that's a lot.

[Rob Marsh]

I mean, that's nothing to sniff at.

[Thomas Smith]

Yes, exactly. That would be nice if it was every month. It's certainly not even the 4,000 was a particularly solid month.

But that gives you a sense of the potential there. It's a slow build as you build.

Up your collection of stories with these big spikes. If you get stuff boosted essentially. There's plenty of other ways to monetize though. I think the partner program is maybe my number two or three way to.

Monetize on the platform.

[Rob Marsh]

Let's talk about some of those others.

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the best one and probably the one most relevant to folks here is to use Medium as a lead generation strategy for your business. And what that looks like is you publish a story on Medium about something that you do and that could be again, for copywriters. It could be, how do you write in a way that doesn't sound like AI? How do you write a landing page that encourages more people to sign up.

For your newsletter or to purchase a.

Course or a product or something like that? It could be tips for using AI.

Effectively in your writing.

It could be tips for tools that you could use. Really anything that would be relevant to.

Your target customer and you share something useful to them. And then at the end of your story, you include a call to action.

That can be as simple as, you know, if you wanted me to do.

This for you or you want to hire somebody to do this work or.

To coach you through it. Here's my email address. And it can be literally, again, as simple as that. If you have a newsletter, you can.

Include a call to action for people.

To sign up for your newsletter. That works extremely well too, especially if you have a lead magnet. If you're giving away a guide or an ebook or something that people want, that can be a very effective strategy there. But basically you write about the stuff you would want people to hire you to do.

Can't be salesy, has to genuinely deliver value. And again, at the end you Put.

In a CTA for people to contact you.

And I know writers and writing coaches who have built a whole business just out of that. You know, sharing tips for editing, for.

Example, sharing tips for getting into big publications. They include a call to action about hiring them. They've built a whole client base just through writing on Medium. In my case, again, I added a.

Whole consulting arm to my company, basically.

By writing about what my company was doing and then including my contact info.

And I had people start to reach.

Out and say, you know, hey, can.

You just do this for me? I don't.

I don't want to learn how to do it. Can you just come in and do this work? And I've started to do content consulting. I've started to teach people how to use Medium. I've done PR consulting.

I've done anything that revolves around content.

Essentially out of that.

So just write about the stuff you know, deliver value.

Include a CTA either to your newsletter or directly contacting you.

And again, Medium's audience is there to learn.

They're there to level up. And if the fastest and easiest way.

To level up is to hire you.

People on that platform will go ahead and hire you.

[Rob Marsh]

Makes sense.

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah.

[Rob Marsh]

Okay, so that's two of the four or five ways to monetize. What else?

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah, so I think those are the two there. I would split out into two different ones. So there's partner program, there's lead gen, and there's newsletters. I kind of lump them together. But in reality, combining those together, the.

Newsletters and lead gen, is probably.

There's probably people who will do one or the other. So even if you're not trying to.

Bring in new clients to your business.

You can easily capture people's email addresses and build a newsletter publishing on Medium. So that would be, again, including a cta, ideally.

Ideally, a lead magnet.

You can build your own list. I use ConvertKit. A lot of people use Mailchimp.

There's all different kinds of programs. You can even pitch your substack on there.

A lot of people have a substack already, and they come to Medium and use it as a way to grow their substack. So you can basically have a CTA.

That says, if you want more of my writing, you subscribe to me directly on this other platform.

Even if you're not immediately selling something.

Or you don't have space for another.

Client that allows you to capture that person's contact info and send your new stories out to them. Send. If you have a course, you can.

Pitch that to them.

If you have other tools where you're.

An affiliate, you can pitch that to.

Them and it's in a way to capture that relationship and take it off.

Of the Medium platform.

One of the cool things with Medium is they actually encourage you to do that. So anyone who posts on Facebook or even LinkedIn knows if you try to bring people off platform, you get penalized in your reach. They don't want you to do that. Medium is different, doesn't seem to impact.

Reach at all to include those kinds.

Of calls to action. And Medium even gives you away to.

Put a subscribe link in the in the cta. That's all within the Medium platform.

People can actually press a button and.

Get on your email list within Medium and you can export those emails and.

Put them in ConvertKit or Mailchimp or whatever. So partner program Lead gen Building an Email newsletter Another great way is to use Medium as a platform for what I think people would call kind of like thought leadership. Or it could also be considered almost like a PR platform. And I know you recently had a guest talk about PR and going to PR through a different approach. I think a lot of the tips shared there are very relevant here too.

I have gotten coverage for my company.

In the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CoinDesk, a very specific place, talking about crypto and a whole bunch of other publications through writing on Medium. And the reason for that is that.

A lot of journalists are Medium members.

It's a platform where journalists might publish their own work. They read each other's work on there. There's big name people like Barack Obama who publish stories on Medium. So journalists are there and following along.

And so when I've written pieces generally.

About my company, but with some kind of broader tie in, like I did a story about how a tool from Microsoft called Copilot, this was early in the generative AI days, was helping me.

To code better to write Python code. Even though I'm not a great coder, I could use this tool and improve that.

And this hybrid of me and the tool is more powerful than me or the tool alone.

And a journalist from the New York Times read that story, reached out, asked.

If he could interview me, and ended up doing a feature story about my company and how we've used AI and this specific tool, as your guest before had shared, it's incredibly impactful to your business, both in terms of SEO, backlinks, that kind of thing, but also just.

Notoriety to be featured in these big name publications. So using it as a platform to.

Connect with journalists using it as a place to publish those kind of thought.

Leadership pieces to get speaking engagements.

And that kind of thing I've found can be really effective. It's a little more indirect way to monetize, but if you're building a business, it really helps when I can say, you know, my business called Gadot Images, Gardo Images, as seen in the New.

York Times, you know, does blah blah, blah.

It establishes that credibility.

And that again all came through Medium.

The final way to monetize, and this.

Is one that I do a bit.

But I've seen other people do incredibly.

Successfully, is through affiliate marketing. So if you have tools that you.

Use that you find to be really effective in your own work, you can often sign up as an affiliate for that tool.

Where if you promote that tool or.

It could be somebody's course, we have a friend who has a course and somebody purchases that, then you get a commission on that sale. And I've done this for everything from like I wrote a story about the Swiffer Wetjet, which is a cleaning product, all the way to I've written like detailed software explainers about AI tools that.

I use in my company.

And as an affiliate you can write about that on Medium, you can include a link to that tool with your own affiliate tracking code. That's totally fine with Medium you have to disclose that it's an affiliate link.

But if somebody clicks on that and makes a purchase, then you end up with a commission.

And again, thinking about the fact that medium has a Dr. 94, it ranks.

Very highly in Google.

If you write a great software explainer about some high priced, complex piece of B2B software, even something as simple in the copywriting space is I've reviewed Grammarly and talked about Grammarly and how it.

Fits for specific parts of my business.

And where it doesn't work and that kind of thing. I'm in their affiliate program. I include a link if somebody decides.

To check them out and click through.

I got a commission on that.

There's so many affiliate products and if.

You write good reviews, not sort of, there's a lot of affiliate stuff that gets a bad rep, I think because.

It'S not well done.

But if you write a really good and helpful review and you include an affiliate link and disclose it and people.

Click through and buy. I've had single stories on Medium that have earned over $1,000 a month for in some cases a year and a.

Half just from the affiliate links in those stories. So yeah, that's the final piece. So Basically partner program, affiliate marketing, thought leadership, building a newsletter, which again you can then use for all of the above. And then finally, I think the biggest one, the best one, is direct Legion.

[Rob Marsh]

Yeah, all of that stuff that we probably should be doing in our own businesses. Even if all you do or think.

[Thomas Smith]

Of yourself as a copywriter or a.

[Rob Marsh]

Content writer, there's so many different ways that a platform like this can help boost a business. So as you were talking, I noted down a couple of additional questions.

[Thomas Smith]

You mentioned paywalling your content.

[Rob Marsh]

Is there ever a reason why you wouldn't want to pay while your content. Obviously you don't make money on stuff that's not paywall. I believe I could be wrong about that. But is there ever a reason why you would want free content on medium?

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah, it's a question I get asked a lot. If I'm doing lead gen, should I still paywall? I tell people in general default towards paywalling your content. And the reason for that is that I have not seen a big difference in external traffic to articles that are paywalled versus articles that aren't. So medium, like most platforms is not going to kick out like the Google bot or the, you know, the bots for search engines or, you know, AI tools and that kind of thing. At this point they're going to be able to see the article, they're going to be able to index it, and.

Most people have a certain number of.

Free medium stories they can read remaining in their account.

And I don't know how many medium.

Gives them before they pay wall stuff.

And sort of make it a hard paywall.

But most people can read a couple medium stories per month before they get sort of kicked out of the platform. They can't. They have to subscribe to access. So what I find is that most of the time if I write a story in paywallet, the people who are coming for that one off external view, like they've searched the topic on Google and they come to medium, they probably have a free story and they can.

Probably read it and still click my affiliate links and still find my lead.

Gen CTAs and still get on my newsletter.

It's not going to make a big difference.

But the people who are within the medium platform who are in the paying subscriber list are still going to see that story and read it and also.

Get paid through the partner program.

So I think of it like YouTube. You know, most people who are on YouTube and are monetized, they're not making.

A living off of the adsense Income.

That comes from Google, from YouTube ads from Google, what they are doing is making an income from sending people to their business, sending people to their newsletter, getting sponsors, that kind of thing. But the money you get from Those ads, those AdSense ads on there, it's.

Nice, it's a little extra bonus.

Even if you never get any other benefits, you can still pick up a little money there. Maybe it's latte money, maybe it's not life changing income. Yeah, I would think of it as being very similar to earning on YouTube. And I think that, you know, you're, you're still going to make that sort of background layer of income from the partner program. The majority of the income is going to come through those other opportunities in the, you know, in most cases. But just like with YouTube where if you have a video that really goes viral and takes off, suddenly those earnings from the AdSense trickle that's normally just sort of like supplementary income can become very substantial.

And that's the same way to think.

About it on medium, the partner program earnings are kind of that nice baseline.

It's passive income in the long term.

It'S a little bonus on top of what you're going to get through those.

Other strategies I mentioned.

But as my $19,000 month illustrates, if something gets really a lot of play.

Which can happen or in the new.

Environment on medium, if it gets boosted, then you can really make substantial money just from that partner program. So I wouldn't cut that off, I would leave it paywalled for that possibility.

That it's going to go viral and.

Then you can make a huge amount.

From it or over the long term that little trickle that comes in and.

Cumulatively builds to $1,200 a month or whatever it is for me now. But at the same time, if you do pay wallet, you're probably not cutting that many people off.

The only exception I would say to.

That is if you're writing a story.

Where really your only goal is affiliate.

Marketing, you're trying to rank on Google, you're trying to bring people in and send them over to a tool that you use or something like that, sometimes.

I will take those stories out from.

Behind the paywall just because that's my main way to monetize, there's probably not.

Going to be that much internal traffic.

To them on medium. So you might as well just take that paywall down. Otherwise though, I just encourage people, don't be afraid to paywall because it really doesn't seem to turn that many people away.

[Rob Marsh]

Yeah, that makes Sense. So another question. You know, you were talking about pitching publications, pitching your stories, your articles to publications.

[Thomas Smith]

Would you pitch old stories?

[Rob Marsh]

You know something, you've got 800 stories.

[Thomas Smith]

Hopefully most of them are good.

[Rob Marsh]

Would you ever go back and say.

[Thomas Smith]

Okay, well, I wrote this two years.

[Rob Marsh]

Ago, but it's still relevant, it's still good. Can I pitch that to a publication? Or are they really only interested in the newest stuff?

[Thomas Smith]

Mostly it has to be, you know.

Under six months old.

[Rob Marsh]

Okay.

[Thomas Smith]

To get into publication. It, you know, it can vary, but that's sort of the sweet spot. You can actually send a draft to.

A publication before it has even been.

Published, a lot of publications like that.

Because then they're sort of the first.

Ones to publish it and get it out there. So ideally, you write a draft, you submit it to a publication, they accept it. They actually control when it's published, and then it goes out and you get access to that audience. One thing that can happen, that is another nice thing about Medium. If you write a great story and.

It starts to get traffic on Medium.

Independently of a publication, a lot of.

Publication editors who are also reading Medium.

Will see it and people will actually reach out to you in many cases and say, hey, I think this story.

Would be a perfect fit for my publication.

Do you want to submit it? So a lot of it can actually come about organically, just by publishing stuff that you know about and then waiting for editors to approach you.

[Rob Marsh]

Makes sense. And then are there rules or maybe a medium culture about submitting to multiple publications at the same time? You know, is it not cool to do that? Or how does that work if I'm a publication editor? Am I going to get mad if I see your article show up in somebody else's publication after you've pitched me?

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah. So Medium, actually, you can't submit to more than one at a time. So the submitting to the publication, it's.

To get into the publication in the first place. It's usually a very manual process.

It's literally like every publication is different. Some have a Google form, some have.

Just an email for the editor.

Some have submission guidelines, some of them you just have to guess. But you basically connect with the editor of the publication. They can then add you as a writer on meeting.

Once you've done that, it's all on the platform.

You can write your story. When you're in the draft, you have.

A little dropdown and you can choose any publication that you're a writer for and choose to submit the story to that publication. When you do that, the editor will.

Get that story and they can decide to publish it. They can make edits to it or they can decide to reject it. If they reject it, it comes back.

To you and you can still publish it on your own profile or find another publication. But you can't submit it to more than one publication at a time.

So it is this serial process. And you know that can be frustrating because publication editors are volunteers. Some people get a very small stipend to participate as nominators. Medium is very straightforward about that. But it's small.

So it's mostly a volunteer opportunity for editors.

They don't get a cut of your.

Partner program earnings either.

You still get all of that.

So it's usually sort of a labor.

Of love or somebody who's building a.

Publication that relates to their own business.

So the times to wait depending on the publication can be weeks in some cases. So you do have to prepare yourself for that. But no, unfortunately you can't directly send.

It to multiple publications.

One thing you can do, and I encourage people to do though, once something's published on medium, you can pitch it.

To as many traditional publications as a.

Reprint as you want to. So I've had a lot of stories.

On medium that then end up getting reprinted elsewhere in much bigger publications. And again, if your strategy is lead.

Gen and thought leadership, that sort of follow on effect and ability to double dip can be really substantial too.

[Rob Marsh]

That's almost my next question. You know, I know that there are some adjustments you can make to a Medium article once it's gotten its popularity or it's gotten a lot of traffic.

[Thomas Smith]

Where you can adjust the canonical back.

[Rob Marsh]

To your own website if you're republishing. But what should I be thinking about as far as republishing? Should I publish on my blog first? Publish on my substack second, medium third, Medium first, substack second.

[Thomas Smith]

What is the optimal way to get.

[Rob Marsh]

It in front of as many audiences as possible?

[Thomas Smith]

It depends on the story. Medium is very okay with posting content that you've published somewhere else. So even for boosted stories, it's not.

Going to hurt you to take something that you wrote on your blog and.

Publish it on medium. So yeah, some people think, oh, it has to be original.

That's not the case.

They're fine with stuff that's republished as.

Long as it's yours.

The one thing they don't want is you taking somebody else's story and trying to publish it on there. So that's the first piece is you can always Publish it on your own blog. You can always publish it on your substack and then publish it on Medium. As you mentioned, you can canonical link back.

So basically all of the SEO impact.

Of that story will pass through over to your blog. It won't steal traffic from your blog to republish it on Medium. So that's the way I see a lot of people do it. They publish on their own newsletter first or on their blog first. Then they republish the story over to medium 48 hours later, in some cases, sometimes months or years later. If they have a big blog or a big newsletter and they want to.

Add Medium as kind of a new.

Separate channel, they'll go back and take their back catalog of content and just go through and publish it on Medium.

Maybe tweak it a bit to fit.

The audience, throw in some CTAs, submit it to a publication, or publish it on their own. That's a very legitimate way to do it. Another way I've seen it done is to write the story on Medium first, publish it on Medium, try to get.

It boosted, see where you can go.

From there, and then later publish it.

To your newsletter or your substack, or.

Publish it out on your blog. I think if your audience overlaps between Medium and those other places, that's a better way to do it, because Medium will send the story out to all the people in all your followers in their email. So if they do that and the person gets the story, and then you go ahead and take that story and send it later, or you sent it.

To your substack, and then they get.

It on their Medium Digest, they're sort of getting the same story multiple times. And people sometimes unsubscribe or, you know, they get upset because they feel like they're getting spammed. So what I like to do is publish it on Medium first. And then I actually have a tag in my newsletter software that says that the people who are my subscribers on Medium basically leave them off of the.

Email when I send a Medium story out.

And that way it avoids them getting the story twice. If you publish to your substack or your newsletter first and then publish on.

Medium, you can't tell Medium, hey, don't.

Send it to all the people who are substack subscribers. So that's the one where if you have a very overlapping audience, maybe do Medium first and then set up that.

Manual exclusion so you're not kind of spamming people.

[Rob Marsh]

Yeah, that makes total sense. How about, like, as far as publishing goes, say that I've published a bunch of articles, I'm getting the hang of it. I seem to be getting a little bit traction.

[Thomas Smith]

Should I start my own publication or am I better off using other people's publications as an audience tool?

What I tell people is only start a publication if you're planning to A connect a domain name to it, which you can do, or B accept stories from other writers. If all you're going to do is publish your own stuff and you're not.

Going to connect a custom domain to.

The publication, then there's really no reason to do it. You're better off just publishing to your own profile.

If you want to connect a custom.

Domain, which Medium lets you do, that's great because you can then connect it to Google Search Console, for example, and see what people are searching for to land at it on it. You can have basically a brand that you build around it. That can be a great way to take the Medium platform and use it almost like your own personal blog with monetization and all those tools still enabled.

The downside is you lose the SEO impact of Medium's very strong domain.

So if you're trying to get stuff to rank on search, it's not as good of a solution.

But again, if you want better analytics and you want to build your own.

Brand within the platform, creating a publication, connecting a domain, it's a good way to do it. I have one about called DIY Life Tech. It's a Medium publication. It's got its own custom domain. It's tied to my YouTube channel in that case. So I'm not as worried about getting traffic within Medium, but it's cool. I don't have to run my own separate blog if I want to link to it from YouTube and I can still monetize on Medium. The second one is if you're going to get stories from other writers and if you want to do that work and be an editor, that's fantastic. You're doing a real service to the Medium community by doing that and build up that publication pitch. Basically go out, find stories you think.

Are a fit message.

The author say, do you want to.

Be in my public?

You can get people in there over the long term, it can be a great thing to do, especially if you're.

Running a business and you can say.

To your colleagues, hey, you should publish your story on my Medium profile.

It's a great offer for people.

It's a great way to meet new.

Writers and build a community.

I run a publication called the Generator about generative AI, it's a lot of work. It's fun, but it's a lot of work. I would not bite that off until you really feel like you have the time for it. In the early days, I would focus.

On submitting to other publications or publishing.

On your own profile, again with the exception if you want to connect a custom domain.

[Rob Marsh]

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, we've talked about all of the reasons we should be doing it, all the benefits. Let's do a quick primer. How do you get started? As my first article to publish, what are some guidelines here so that maybe I get a good first bang for my buck and I feel really good about the process and I'm willing to invest in this thing.

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is getting started is very easy. You create a medium account, it's free. You subscribe as a paying member.

It's $5 a month, so it's not a big investment.

Once you do that and you publish your first story, you can apply for the partner program, you connect stripe to it, you fill out a tax form, and you're monetized. You can do it in an afternoon.

It's very, very easy.

So that part is quite simple. Choosing what to write and deciding how you're going to build an audience on the platform. I think you want to look at.

What are skills that you have in your professional life or experiences that you.

Have in your personal life that you.

Can write about, you would enjoy writing.

About and that other people would again.

Get some benefit from. They would level up in some way.

They would learn something new from that.

And if you are a copywriter, that could be copywriting, it could be editing.

It could be pitching stories, it could.

Be working with journalists, writing sales page.

Copy that converts, building a newsletter.

All the stuff you do for your own business is all fair game to.

Write about and would do well. It could be case studies.

I did this for a client and here was the outcome.

There's a bunch of different ways to approach that. I think that would be a great place to start based on your own work experience. Personal stories, though, can do extremely well too. So if you went through something, if you experienced some life challenge, maybe your.

Business didn't go well when you first started it.

That's also a great thing to write about. It really just has to be based on something, you know, in the real world. It's not like SEO writing where it's kind of, you adopt this generic voice. It's not you. It doesn't have your own voice in It Medium is very different. People want to hear from you. They want to know about your expertise.

Your experience, your trials and failures and successes. And they want specific, you know, real world data.

So anything where you feel you can do that and deliver some value to the audience, that's a great place to start. I also encourage people look at the.

Topic list for Medium.

There's actually a medium.

You can go to Medium.

If you search medium topics on Google, there's.

I'm sure we can include a link too, but there's an actual list of all of the categories you can write.

In and that can give you ideas. That's how I got started. I went through and was like, oh, photography, yes. You know, art, yes.

Technology, Python coding, like all these things. Yes.

I can write about all of those. So that can provide you some inspiration and that can get you started.

If you can get a story boosted.

In the early days, that's a, huge, you know, win for your motivation. But I encourage people really come in.

Thinking about it as a long game.

Yeah, don't think about it as something where you're going to get even the $100 quickly. It takes time. Like my first month on the platform, I made $7 and I probably published.

Like 10 really solid stories.

So it's a cumulative thing.

It builds over time. You need that followership, you need the community.

It's not a get rich quick type of thing. It's not a side hustle where you know you can do it, you can.

Launch it and be making tons of money in the first month.

It's something that's going to be a.

Slow burn and you have to be.

Ready for that and ready to keep publishing. Like any writing, you're going to get rejected. Things aren't going to do well. You're going to write a great story and it's going to get zero traffic. That's going to happen. So if you can weather that and keep publishing and keep writing great stuff.

Cumulatively over time, that's where you're going.

To start to see those benefits.

And it was probably three years into.

Writing on the platform that I really started to get clients out of it.

And build that content consulting piece to my business.

I was still earning money from the.

Partner program along that whole route, but.

Kind of think of it as something.

You'Re going to do over the long term and that's going to set you up for success and ultimately those bigger.

Wins down the line.

[Rob Marsh]

Two things that I really like about this for copywriters, content writers is number one, you Know, we spend so much time, so much of our time writing.

[Thomas Smith]

For our clients and writing marketing materials, but at the same time, we often.

[Rob Marsh]

Have ideas of things that we want.

[Thomas Smith]

To write for our own.

[Rob Marsh]

You know, I mentioned, you know, maybe.

[Thomas Smith]

I want to write a western or.

[Rob Marsh]

Maybe I want to, you know, write something else. And this seems like the place where you can really broaden your reach of your writing skills and just have a place where there's an audience to consume some of that stuff.

[Thomas Smith]

So I love that.

[Rob Marsh]

And it can be done for fun.

[Thomas Smith]

But also may lead to a little.

[Rob Marsh]

Bit of income for you. And then the second thing that I.

[Thomas Smith]

Love about this is just the opportunity that's there.

[Rob Marsh]

Like you said, so many different ways.

[Thomas Smith]

To grow a business. We're already writers. We know how to catch attention with great headlines, we know how to write.

[Rob Marsh]

Hooks, we know how to hold attention as we write an article or a.

[Thomas Smith]

Story or whatever that is.

[Rob Marsh]

And so having the extra exposure of a medium audience over a personal blog where you might get a dozen web visits a month or whatever, it just feels like it's a, it's an opportunity that if you're doing writing anywhere, if.

[Thomas Smith]

You want a place to explore, this.

[Rob Marsh]

Is a good place to do it. Really low risk with the potential not.

[Thomas Smith]

You know, certainly no guarantees, but the potential of a decent reward, especially over time.

Absolutely. And it's just very freeing.

That was my, you know, the thing that keeps me there beyond the benefits to my business is just that, you know, you write for SEO and it's, you really, it's just boring. You don't know who wants to write a 3,000 word article reviewing, you know, some very specific appliance or something like that.

[Rob Marsh]

Must include this keyword in the second headline and that keyword in the third headline. Right. All of those kinds of things are.

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah, you're writing for a machine and it just gets boring. And medium is so freeing because it's your voice. You can write about whatever you want. You can find an audience. There's gonna be people on there who care about it. You build community. There's a lot. You get a lot of feedback. You start a lot of great conversations. You get people engaging with your work. And especially, yeah, if you're kind of.

In this space of just writing for.

Clients or you're writing for SEO and you're writing for machines all the time, just try it and I guarantee you're going to feel so much better about the stuff.

It's going to engage you creatively in.

A way that that kind of writing, you know, sometimes does, but often it.

Can become just sort of rote. And I think you'll be a better writer across your business if you have.

That outlet in addition to, you know.

Sometimes that kind of writing that you.

Just sit down and write from the.

Heart or your own experience in your.

Own voice, that ultimately actually drives even.

More interest in the business.

So, yeah, it's very freeing. It's a wonderful experience just to be.

On that platform as a writer.

[Rob Marsh]

That makes a lot of sense. So, Thomas, I know because of the success that you've had and the experience that you've got writing Medium, you've put a lot of this stuff into a course to help other people do this. Obviously, you've given us enough to get started here. But if somebody wants to go even deeper, figure out exactly step by step what they need to be doing to. I guess a great word would be to thrive on medium. Where would they go? Or what should they be looking for?

[Thomas Smith]

Yeah, so you can go to thriveonmedium.com that's the page that I have all about this. And I share a lot more detail there. Totally for free. You can go. You can get on my newsletter, too. I send out all kinds of stuff.

About optimizing headlines, choosing topics, finding the.

Niche that's going to work for you, case studies, breaking down exactly how much specific stories have earned, and that thing on there. And then, yeah, if you want to dive even deeper, my course is probably 25 video lessons at this point, talking about everything from getting started, getting monetized through to pitching publications, how to get boosted. I have a whole module about that. If you sign up on the website.

I have a boost checklist where you can check through and see if your.

Story is boost eligible and tweak things and fix them. I have a getting started checklist, again, totally for free. So, yeah, head over to Thrive on Medium. You can access all those resources and then if you want that really like sequential walkthrough of everything I've learned on.

The platform, those five different ways to.

Monetize, exactly how to do all of that and all those case studies, then that's the course.

And again, you can access that on.

The Thrive on Medium site.

[Rob Marsh]

Yeah, we'll definitely be looking at that. And I'll link to it in the show notes in case anybody's driving and they can't type that in really quickly. One last question about that. The boost program. So there are these boosters, you know, who can find content.

[Thomas Smith]

Is there a list of these people? So that we can forge personal connections with them.

[Rob Marsh]

Or is it purely by luck they.

[Thomas Smith]

Have to discover you?

Yeah. So it's a combination. I would say probably about 80 of the boost nominators have chosen to be public about it. Obviously I'm one of them.

Medium has a list of all of the Boost eligible publications.

I linked to it from within the course. I'm sure you can find the link we can share here too, but you can start there.

And it has contact info for all of the people as well as what topic their publication covers.

And again, it's everything, don't think, oh, I'm not a Python programmer. I don't do natural language processing. I'm not going to be a fit. There's Boost denominators for every topic you can possibly imagine.

There's also people who are like the Michelin inspectors of the world who choose to remain anonymous.

[Rob Marsh]

Sure.

[Thomas Smith]

And they will find you. Or you may publish in their publication and not even have any idea that they're the one nominating your story.

Medium also has their own team of Boost nominators.

Very secretive, we don't know exactly who they are that go around and look for stories on the platform to Boost.

Independently of them being nominated by a subject matter expert. So their own team is out there searching too.

And all that's really just to say if you write something really great, and it does have to be really great on the platform, it's likely that that's.

Ultimately going to be found and boosted.

There's a lot of different ways to.

Get into that program.

[Rob Marsh]

Well, this gets my brain going, you know, because I'm writing in so many other places and especially when we talk about repurposing content. If I'm already writing it in one.

[Thomas Smith]

Place, why not have it in Medium just in case?

[Rob Marsh]

And you know, with all of the potential that's there, it seems like a no brainer in a lot of ways. So I just, I want to thank you for sharing so much about, you know, this.

[Thomas Smith]

Not just the platform, but you know, how to get started and your approach to it.

[Rob Marsh]

You mentioned Thrive on Medium course. But if somebody wants to follow you personally or see what you're up to, maybe on Medium, maybe elsewhere.

[Thomas Smith]

Where else can they find you, Thomas?

So I'm on both Medium and X, formerly Twitter as TomSmith585, so you can find me there. You're also totally welcome to email me directly.

It's Tom T o mges.com g a.

D o images.com Happy to answer questions. Happy to, you know, send along links and send you over to the course if you can't find it, or to add you to my newsletter. Feel free to reach out anytime, just, you know, directly by email.

[Rob Marsh]

Amazing. And someday we'll have to have you come back and talk about photography and AI and some of your other expert, but I appreciate your time. Thomas thanks.

[Thomas Smith]

Thanks so much for having me.

Thanks Thomas for sharing so much about how he's been successful on Medium. This isn't the kind of thing that's.

[Rob Marsh]

Going to bring you money overnight, but.

[Thomas Smith]

Medium could be a long term play for you to bring money into your business. Especially if you like writing about different topics or you write fiction or you just want to get your ideas out into the world and not have them get lost in a social media feed. Now a few weeks ago we interviewed Gloria Chow on the podcast that's episode 413. She talked about PR as a platform for building authority and Thomas mentioned something very similar about using Medium for this task. The one thing that I like about Medium's potential for this is that they have an engaged audience of readers who are there waiting for great content. They're not browsing through social media trying to find something to entertain them, but they're actually there looking for good content to read.

[Rob Marsh]

And the audience is so much bigger.

[Thomas Smith]

Than you're ever going to be attracted on your be able to attract on your own blog. And there's almost certainly more people on Medium looking for your content than people who are going to find you on social media or LinkedIn, where they're going to see your thoughts before they scroll onto the next thing. Even beyond the potential to earn money, it's a great place to build authority and who knows, maybe you'll get noticed there and be added to an ev even larger platform. And we heard Thomas talk about that earlier. If after listening to this episode you try out Medium, or maybe you've been writing on Medium for a while now, I'd like to hear about your experience. Hit me up at rob the copywriterclub.com and let me know how you fared at Medium and maybe keep an eye out there for some content from me and possibly the Copywriter Club in the future. Who knows, maybe someday there will be a Medium publication by the Copyright Club where we can all share and boost each other's writing.

[Rob Marsh]

Thanks again to Thomas.

[Thomas Smith]

Be sure to go to all of the places that Thomas mentioned where he can be found. We will link to his course in case you're interested. Those will be in the show notes also to his LinkedIn and various places where you can find him. That's the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter Addison Rice. The outro is composed by copywriter and songwriter David Muntner. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone you know. Or if you don't know anyone, you can always leave a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. We always appreciate that. Thanks for listening. See you next week.

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Copywriters coming together to help the world write better copy and make more money. Here I am, Copywriters Club that can make you lots of money. Listen to Akira and Rubs. Copywriters Club can make you lots of money as long as you listen through the whole damn episode.

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