Joshua Mason's Newsletter

I have no business writing.

I hated doing it in school and, until four months ago, never considered doing it for fun.

Yet here I am. I just posted my 25th story to Medium and am closing in on a $3,000 month from the Partner Program (this is how you earn on Medium).

A fantastic number for someone who hated to write.

This unbelievable month of earnings came with two surprising lessons I’ll share here.

1 - The Boost nominators prefer when you take the time to link claims you make to scholarly research.

I wrote an article about interviewing, and an editor I trust told me he wanted to nominate it for the Boost program. But before he did that, I thought it would help my chances if I backed up my claims with research.

I made the changes, he nominated it, and it was selected for the Boost.

2 - You can write an unboosted article that’s more popular than a Boosted one.

I wrote an article called “I Am a (Actual) Detective. Here are Five Signs You Are Being Lied to.” It was nominated for the Boost but ultimately not selected. The title may have been too aggressive for the Medium Boost team, and I didn’t back up my claims with research.

Even though it wasn’t selected, it has become far more popular than any Boosted story I have ever written. It has over 23k views where some of my Boosted stories only have 1k.

It also got picked up for republishing in an online magazine. You can see the differences in the screenshot below.

Interestingly, that viral article made less than half the money of the last Boosted article.

Where does that leave us?

The viral article gained viewers and followers and expanded my readership. The Boosted article made me more money. Both have their place, so don’t get discouraged if an article doesn’t get Boosted.

Most of mine still don’t get Boosted. Of the 19 articles I've written that were eligible for the Boost, only 4 made it.

The winning Medium strategy remains putting your best stories forward and not worrying about what happens next. Writing one quality story per week will handily beat writing daily mediocre stories.

Talk soon,

Josh