Joshua Mason's Newsletter

These two factors account for most of my Medium success

Author

Joshua Justice
April 12, 2024

I am not a great writer. After reading the works of great writers, it's painfully clear to me that I'm not one of them. 

I'm a former cop, and writing police reports is the opposite of what writing on Medium should be.

But my last four months of writing have taught me that I don't need to be, and you don't need to be, either.

If you've followed my journey, you know I made no money during my first month of writing. I was shocked to make almost $300 the following month and happy to make nearly the same the third month.

Everything exploded in March. I made almost $4000 and am on pace to make the same for April. However, I haven't posted a single story in April—it's all from prior stories.

It's surreal even to write a comment like that.

I've spent hours looking back on how that happened, and two things stand out—two things you can implement to help you on Medium.

They are deeply personal
Of my 25 stories, almost all of my money has come from five of them. Those five are deeply personal, and I struggled with sharing them. Sharing is not in my nature, and I struggle with it. I'm often uncomfortable when writing, but I'd be a fool not to know that that somehow plays a role in my success here.

They came with the help of a writing mentor
I developed a writing mentor. It happened by accident, but it's likely the most meaningful factor to any measure of my success on Medium. Here's how you can find one:

Develop a relationship by following people whose writing you deeply admire on Medium. 

Read their work and comment on it. Please do not ask them for anything. If they are editors, submit to their publications. Give it some time, and it may happen organically.

If it doesn't happen, there is a Discord community where you can find one. Robin Wilding runs it, and anyone can join for free. Robin calls it finding your writing bestie. They may not be exactly a writing mentor, but having someone to bounce ideas off of until you find one will make a notable difference in your writing.

Robin wrote an article about it, the link is below. I don't know her personally, but her writing is wildly unique (no pun intended), and she is a Boost nominator.

Talk soon,

Josh