I love Medium. But they have a lot of unique terminology that can cause some confusion when you’re just starting out.
Which is why I made the quick start Medium Jargon guide. These are all the terms I had to individually Google when I started out because I couldn’t find a guide like this one.
So let’s dive in shall we?
Views, Reads, and Fans
When you publish an article and look at the stats you get to see three numbers: the Views, the Reads, and the Fans.
Views – This is how many people have clicked on your story. They’ve seen it and clicked it open but they haven’t read the entire article (how dare they right?).
Reads – This is how many people have read the entire article. They’ve clicked it, which counts as a view, and then read through it to count as a read (we like these people).
Read Ratio – You guessed it, Read Ratio is the percentage of people who’ve seen your article who then go on to read it.
Fans – This was the new one to me. Fans are the number of people who’ve clapped the article. This means they’ve seen it, read it, and enjoyed it enough to hit the clap button. (Thankfully they’re not giving you the clap)
But what’s a clap?
Read on…
Article Claps – Medium’s version of a like
Claps on an article are basically Medium’s version of a “like” but with one big difference. You can clap an article up to 50 times by holding down the clap button.
Claps are a way to show you enjoyed the article enough to applaud it. And if someone claps your article, they become a fan of that article.
Publications
These are simply publications, sort of like online magazines. Usually organised around a theme, publications are a great way to get your writing in front of more eyes. When a publication posts your article it gets put in front of their followers as well as yours giving you more eyes on the prize.
There is normally some sort of application process to write for a publication and there are always editorial guidelines.
Pro tip: Make sure you read any guidelines thoroughly and do what they say to make the editor’s job easier. The editors are real people and you want to make their life as easy as possible to increase your chances of getting published.
Tags and Topics
You’ll find these when you’re reading or writing on Medium. When you’re publishing you’ll get asked to include up to 5 topics, which in Medium’s words lets “readers know what your story is about”.
When you start typing one in it will start auto-filling with suggestions and tell you how many times the topic has been used.
The advice I’ve seen is to pick a range of big and small topics in terms of popularity. And for inspiration on what topics to use look at the bottom of articles you read on Medium to see what topics were tagged.
Boosted & Curated
You’ll quickly come across people talking about how to get your article “boosted” on Medium. But what is it? Basically, if your article gets “boosted” it means that Medium will push it in front of more people. Probably something you want, right?
Getting your article boosted is a little trickier. I’m no expert on getting boosted but Medium have their own guidelines published here on how to do it. Zulie Rane has also published a great article/video with some of the heads of Medium talking about “Boosted” and what it means.
The old version of this was “Curated”. Your article would get curated and the promise was the same: more views and more readers. However, I had an article curated and nothing seemed to happen…
[image of being curated]
So I’m glad they retired this feature because I’ve heard much better things about Boosted now that it’s rolled out fully.
Partner Program
This is where you can start earning money from Medium. Once you are a paid medium member, you have 100 followers, and are in the correct country, you can apply to the partner program and put your articles behind a paywall.
Then when someone who is a paid member reads your article you get a share of their membership fee. Plus you can refer new members to Medium and earn a share of their membership fee that way.
Anything else you don’t understand? Leave a comment below and I’ll update the list!
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