Do You Have a Smart Strategy for Dealing with Medium?
I offer help for all us Medium misfits!
I’m a new member to the Substack community, and right away, I see just how easy it is to slip into former patterns, similar to how I typically conducted myself on Medium.
You folks know what patterns I’m talking about, like engaging in any and everything the platform and community has to offer, but often to the detriment of whatever your actual objective might be.
What I’m about to share can realistically apply to any content creator, on just about any online platform. But as far as the audience I specifically wrote this information for, I’m directing it to other Medium misfits like me. We’re the writers in the community, who still have ties to the Medium website.
In one way or another, scores of writers remain connected to the stories and valuable content they continue to have hosted on Medium. As one of those writers myself, with nearly 2,000 stories caught in the crossfire, my reasons to stay far outweighs my desire to leave the platform for good.
But I didn’t let that stop me from joining the Substack community, and with a very specific goal in mind.
Just like expected, it wasn’t easy to find myself falling in love with a new site and community of writing peers, which leads me to yet another new and very real concern.
Now, my greatest fear is allowing myself to get swallowed up by another online writing platform full of eager and anxious content creators just like myself.
Whether we realize it or not, we writers typically radiate to one another like moths to a flame, and in many ways, the end results can often be just as disastrous.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had the pleasure of making some of the best online relationships possible, on Medium and also other writing platforms.
Over the many years I’ve been a freelance writer and content creator, I’ve seen and can recognize exactly how every one of the writing platforms seem to use similar tactics when recruiting and holding onto us valuable members.
Here’s a quick for instance:
Before I decided to come check the Substack platform out, I was lured in – momentarily – by the Benable website, as a potential money-making alternative to writing and publishing on Medium.
Being caught up in my emotions about what I consider to be unfair treatment to writers on Medium, Benable seemed like a welcoming place to run to.
If you read the various Benable related stories I published, gushing over the website, you’ll see why I wrote what I did.
Due to my particular frame of mind at the time, I viewed Benable’s treatment of their members, in the best possible light.
I also read other stories by writers (some whom I recommended to Benable) who seemed to feel the same sense of joy over the site as I felt. But before long, there came a point when I began to look at things more clearly. I forced myself to see what was really happening, even before I eventually became disillusioned with Benable.
It started with me accepting the fact that getting regular updates and “kudos” from Benable, regarding the progress I was making on the site, was really no different from the stats updates from Medium.
I immediately saw a red flag, when I noticed myself gearing up to go all in, and overextend myself with promoting and supporting another platform like I had done for Medium.
Shortly after that, my enthusiasm about reaching the halfway point of Benable’s $90 payout thresh hold began to diminish, thanks to something unexplainable happening with a missing commission I knew I had earned.
Without bothering to get upset, or even write about the incident on Medium like I normally would have done (This is the first time I’m even bringing it up). I simply accepted the fact that this is how things go when you’re beholding to online platforms.
Apparently, the negative experiences on Medium, made me better prepared to prevent the same kind of disappointment from reoccurring.
Good or bad – online platforms operate the same
Collectively as a group, all the platforms seem to play from the same playbook. This can be both a good and a bad thing, but the fact still remains, they operate the same way when it comes establishing and cultivating a certain culture in a community online creators.
All they really need to do is give US the tools and resources to interact with one another on THEIR platform, on a continuous basis. By having the ability to put ourselves, our creativity, and our ambitions on display, we provide the platforms with an endless supply of talent, traffic, and ultimately, revenue.
That’s their strategy, and it’s a damn good one!
Now, what’s yours?
My strategy for Medium is my main priority
Writers on this platform, and any other platform they create content for, should have a sound strategy when it comes to handling the coercion and subtle manipulation that all platforms seem to employ.
The sites use strategies that are usually the very diversions that end up distracting writers from their original purpose, and throwing many of us off our game.
Think about how often you find yourself playing “platform politics” instead of writing or actually working on something creative. How about the times you spend talking about and evaluating the ongoing events and activities on a platform and writing community?
This type of behavior is typically great for the platform, but not so much for the creator who allows their time to be monopolized in this way. Believe me, I’m speaking from first-hand experience, based on trying to turn a decent portion of my 5,600 Medium followers into actual readers.
Our exuberance and willingness to freely promote a platform that appeals to and strokes our ego is easily recognized and does not go unnoticed. I suspect that’s why I once wrote that the Benable algorithm liked me and my activities.
Currently, for the moment, all the attention I was prepared to devote to Benable is most certainly on hold.
In fact, that brings me to Medium and Substack, and the strategy I’m focused on, regarding my Medium stories.
My purpose on Substack was and still is, to “fix” the stories I currently have on Medium (according to my own definition of what fixing them involves). That is my main priority, and I believe the strategy I’ve already described in The Meta Fixer newsletter will help me accomplish my goal.
I can only be successful, if I stick to the activities that work in harmony with my own goals and objective, and not those of the Substack platform.
Using your own strategies to help you stay focused
Personally, I’m not currently on a mission to pursue as many members as possible, and gain subscriptions from everyone I can.
Based on the endless nudges and suggestions I’ve seen generated by the website; constant reminders to SUBSCRIBE clearly work in harmony with their strategy to keep us engaging on the platform with one another.
👉 Unfortunately, focusing too much on doing that, is actually counterproductive to helping me with my own strategy to fix my Medium stories and publish them here on Substack.
Getting diverted due to Substack’s strategy can only interfere with my own, and if that happens, I’ll never get my Medium portfolio sorted out.
I can’t afford to let that happen, therefore, I’m about to get serious with the huge job of relocating content from Medium, and making it exclusive to Substack subscribers.
I have plenty of time later on, to obsess over what other Substack members are doing and how they’re successfully running their newsletters, thanks to Substack suggestions and strategies. But for now, I’m more interested in getting this content transferred first, and making it available where I can control and monitor it.
For the time being, I can’t concern myself with how often I should post, how much free content to make available, and other issues that take up so much space and time in my brain.
Networking and engagement is obviously important to any platform, but none of that really matters, if you lose focus of your purpose for making connections in the first place. We have to learn to stay focused on strategies that matter most to us as creators.
All this talk about the strategies and tactics that online writing platforms employ, isn’t meant to be a put down or to bad mouth the websites we rely on. The point is to help us remember to stay focused on our own agenda, because if we don’t, we’ll end up idly following someone else’s agenda.
So many of the stories I wrote and previously shared on Medium, actually contain lots of content with helpful strategies that relate to navigating on the Medium website.
I’m not simply referring to stories about Medium tools, features, and functions, which tend to be “how to“stories that are concrete and detail oriented. Those are the resource related stories I publish in The “Meta Fixer” newsletter, where I showcase many of the step-by-step guides and tutorials I once published on Medium.
Soon, the archives for the The “Meta Fixer” will be filled with a large number of extremely valuable posts, NO LONGER AVAILABLE ON MEDIUM.
This is great news for niche writers who still have meta filled content on Medium. However, don’t sleep on the stories and Medium related stories that contain strategies that are not as cut and dry as my “how to” content.
By subscribing to Just Goode Writing, you’ll have access to other stories that also provide smart and effective ways to perform on Medium.
For instance, instead of coming here to find a story about how to use the schedule feature on Medium, instead, you’re more likely to find a story that talks about “why you should use the schedule feature on Medium.
All the previously published stories my newsletters publish, all contain effective strategies that worked for me when I built my audience and story catalog of 1,900+ on Medium.
The stories are being provided here on Substack EXCLUSIVELY, and that includes the Free and the Paid content.
Final Word
Naturally, thanks to the recent policy changes and various transitions that took place on Medium this year (2025), not all the strategies I originally shared about how to interact and grow on Medium still apply, or are as effective as before.
Even still, I offer a great deal of information that not only continues to be relevant, but remains to be just as valuable as when it was first published.
My goal is to eventually get the best of this content posted and available to a new audience of readers; readers who are either former, current, or even future Medium writers.
Those are the individuals who I hope will continue benefiting from so much of the content that can help them progress.
During the past few weeks, I’ve been on Substack, posting story after story, and note after note, trying to establish a solid foundation.
Thus far, I’ve been able to create 2 different newsletters, with the intent of using them both as vehicles to help accomplish the ultimate objective:
👉 Fixing and posting my existing Medium stories, currently identified as “meta” content, and uploading additional stories from Medium, regardless of the topic or theme.
To get this work done, I can’t get preoccupied with worrisome decisions related to the logistics of operating a “traditional” Substack newsletter (if there is such a thing).
Both my newsletters will publish posts on a random, but continuous basis, so subscribers can expect multiple new entries on a regular ongoing basis throughout the course of the month.
This even applies to the paid newsletter (The Meta Fixer) I publish. Those subscribers will receive no less than 3 weekly posts (No less than 1 completely paid and the others partly free, but paywalled at certain points).
That’s my current strategy on Substack, but more importantly, it’s my strategy for addressing my valuable Medium content that is still so important to me.
Do you have a strategy for your Medium stories? If you do, make sure you don’t lose your focus. Stick with me and I’ll help you stay on target.