The 3 Principles That Helped Me Reach 100,000 Views on Medium

I’ve been writing on Medium since the beginning of 2019. It’s been a wild ride, starting with sharing my articles with coworkers on Slack and eventually teaming up with the awesome folks at Better Programming.

I earned $5.32 the first month—and I was absolutely stoked. Then $0.00, then $3.82…eventually, though, I broke through with articles exceeding 100,000 views!

I can’t promise that you’ll hit 100,000+ views and be able to pay all your monthly bills by writing on Medium, but what I will do is share my guiding principles—my three north stars—that led to gradual and eventually explosive growth.

Before I move on, it’s important to be clear about the type of writing I do on Medium. I write brief, mildly-opinionated programming tutorials. I was tired of trudging through arduous “articles” that read more like chapters in a textbook.

My articles take between three and five minutes to read, have a very tight singular focus, and will have my opinion/experiences mildly injected into them so you know it’s not being written by a soulless vessel and you avoid all the vitriol of StackOverflow.

So without further ado, here are the three rules that I credit my success to.

1. Be Helpful, Not Profound

In the beginning, most of my time was spent staring at a white screen, blinking cursor mocking me. It’s paralyzing trying to answer the question, “What can I write that will break the Internet?” Don’t waste your time.

I spent hours brainstorming ideas, then trying to come up with fancy projects to deconstruct. I’ve heard YouTube content creators lament about coming up with projects just for the sake of the video instead of creating what they want…I was held down by similar thoughts.

I stopped trying to be the cool guy or the innovative guy and just help people. The reality is that there are exponentially more beginners than experts, and if your focus is on impressing the 1%, well you’ve just cut out 99% of your potential readers.

There’s nothing wrong with publishing a topic that’s been written about—just do it more clearly, succinctly, or with better context. Regardless of how much you shatter a reader’s worldview, they read the article just as much as the next person. The goal is views, reads, and interaction.

How to implement

I transitioned away from creating custom projects — often for the sake of blogging about it — and began looking for “level two” concepts that could be written about in under 1,000 words.

Early on I created a command-line script that would convert a CSV file to JSON. It took at least a week to brainstorm, create the script, test it, write about it, and publish.

These were some of my earlier articles that didn’t reach the viewership I expected:

• How to Build a Command Line JSON Splitter
• How to Build a Command Line JSON/CSV Converter in Python
• How to Refresh An Access Token Using Decorators

Nowadays my content is not “original” per se. I browse release notes, documentation, and StackOverflow to find individual concepts or practices that beginners are unaware of. I consider myself a curator with exceptional communication skills, not an innovator who’s inventing a new wheel.

Here are some headlines of my more popular pieces:

• What is the Walrus Operator in Python?
• Stop Using For Loops to Iterate Over Arrays
• How to Start Using .map() .filter() and .reduce()
• Stop Using Square Bracket Notation to Get a Dictionary’s Value in Python

The result has been significantly more eyeballs on my work and a dramatically improved read ratio. Sure each piece is a three to five minute read instead of 10 to 15, but it evens out when you get 100x or 1,000x views.

2. We’re in a Coffee Shop, Not a Lecture Hall

Have you ever listened to a professor lecture for hours only to meet up with a friend afterward and demystify everything over a cup of coffee? There’s a reason we turn to peers and informal settings to reinforce learning—they speak the same language.

Just because you’re an expert or authority on a topic doesn’t mean you need to communicate it as such. From my experience, the best writers know how to take a complex topic and explain it without a textbook, whiteboard, or presentation.

Write in a style that’s conversational, inclusive, and paced with “sip breaks.” Long blocks of text are difficult to follow and lead to a loss of interest. Talk to your readers, not at them. Your readers are the most important thing, not the content.

There’s no need to explain every single nuance and technicality when writing. If I wrote articles on learning English, the goal would be to help the reader become conversational, not fluent.

How to implement

Style and tone can be touchy subjects. Ultimately, you need to write in a way that you’re comfortable with. That being said, there are a few simple tweaks anybody can make to their writing that will result in a more inclusive tone and improved cadence.

• Substitute ‘I’ and ‘you’ for ‘we.’ This is a big one. There’s no better way to make your reader feel included than to use inclusive pronouns. Don’t draw a line in the sand where you’re on the expert side and your reader is the beginner. Imagine sitting at a round table as opposed to an office desk — I know it sounds silly, but it works.
• Use encouraging transitions. Don’t take your reader’s emotional state for granted. Transitions are an excellent opportunity to boost their morale and encourage them to go further. You can sweeten up your transitions with a Great, now it’s time to… or let’s get started by… or even a simple Awesome! Forget those SAT vocabulary words — transitions should be the equivalent of a linguistic high-five.
• Write shorter paragraphs. The length of your paragraphs can either invite the reader to continue at an uptempo pace or leave them feeling like they need a deep breath before diving into the next section. I keep my paragraphs at a maximum of three sentences. Yes, I write one and two-sentence paragraphs. The white space from one to another is the speaking equivalent of pausing during a speech or sipping a drink while telling a story — it lets the brain catch up with the eyes.
• Ask rhetorical questions. This requires that you understand the headspace your readers are in, but asking rhetorical questions can literally turn your article into a conversation. A quick that wasn’t too bad, was it or have you ever… will resonate with your reader and works to further dissolve the separation between you.

3. Build the Snowball

Unless you’re a unicorn, don’t expect your first, second, or 20th article to strike gold. As a content creator, you’re at the mercy of algorithms and momentum.

Low viewership can be discouraging when you begin writing. Shed that negativity. Every article is a touchpoint, an opportunity to lead to something else. Eventually, you’ll see momentum build in the form of claps, followers, and social media shares.

Always add to your portfolio of articles, never delete and republish. I’ve seen others recommend the opposite; however, early on the goal is to cast as many fishing lines as possible.

One of my most successful articles recommended a programming practice that turned out to be older with better alternatives having been released. I didn’t take that article down, but I acknowledged my mistake through an addendum and I took that new knowledge and turned it into a second article!

Nowadays I try my darnedest to link at least one of my previous articles in each new piece. Remember that even though the majority of views will come in the first few days, things don’t die on the internet and you’ll continue to receive residual traffic.

How to implement

Building the snowball is all about seizing every opportunity to connect with your readers. You’re already focusing on writing helpful content with a conversational tone, and so don’t pass up a chance to show them a new article or let them know you’re a real human.

• Be consistent. I keep a schedule of writing two to three articles a week. Remember, these aren’t long pieces. I use Gmail’s tasks to log hyperlinks throughout the week. Then each Friday I choose my topics, research, and outline. Saturday I’ll write, edit, and submit to my publication. This is all because I’ve found Medium is far more active at the beginning of the week and tapers off over the weekend.
• Link to previous articles. I cannot stress this enough, linking to your older articles will help immensely with residual views. I’ve found that the people who begin following me have read two to three articles (one of them being my most recent). That’s double or triple the reading time from that one person.
• Read your responses. This is controversial — a lot of people will tell you to skip them, “ignore the haters.” Sure, some people will be plain negative — move on from it. The majority of readers will leave constructive criticism and it’s a chance to offer a short reply thanking them for their contribution and saying you appreciate them. This increases their chances of responding again, which means they read another article.
• Don’t ignore social media. I treat a share/like/comment on social media just the same as one on Medium. I thank them for their support, like every share, and often respond with links to previous articles when appropriate.
• Write in an evergreen style. There is an element of attrition to building the snowball. Try to write in a style that won’t age and doesn’t focus on time. For example, I generally skip the “Best 3 XYZ of 2020” articles. Your content is dead within a year. I recently wrote a series of articles on new features in Python 3.8— a popular programming language. Instead of “What’s new in 3.8” I focused on each feature and wrote articles like What is the Walrus Operator in Python. This article won’t fade in a year, and from my perspective, people search for what’s in front of them, not the milestone that it belongs to.

I hope sharing these rules will provide guidance in growing your own reader following. I cannot stress enough that these rules work for me, and they help align my own mental and emotional processes. This results in clarity, efficiency, and resilience as I continue to write.

You’re not going to hit 100,000 views on every article. If you do, please tell me what you do because I want to know!