3 Surprising Reasons Why Most Beginner Writers Fail on Medium
#My dreadful experience.
Not many online writers would share the lessons that I’m going to share with you today. Many writers have this fear of being judged or misunderstood, or they just want to maintain the limelight on themselves as superficial and invincible gurus that you believe in.
Not me. I’m just a regular guy who tried online writing because of my love for the craft but unfortunately, failed.
I started writing on Medium many years ago, and I began with on-and-off records of the track. Each time, I wrote a few stories, published them on my profile, and let them do the work for me. I came back after my day job and checked them. To my surprise, my stories didn’t perform.
It’s because of my awful decisions and the recurring pattern of these dreadful habits that I failed multiple times as an online writer. I never reached my goal of making six-figures in income and hardly accumulated the dream audience I’ve always desired to have.
Here are the three surprising reasons why beginner writers fail on Medium.
1. Writing on Medium for Ben-Franklin or fame or an innate desire to fulfil one’s own selfish motives.
You’re allowed to debate with me on this topic in the comment section below, but as a beginner writer, it’s a total lack of clarity to write on Medium for all these reasons alone.
While a desire to achieve fame, be well-known for one’s work, and make money doing so is what we all desire, it’s total ignorance to think you’ll achieve all this by just publishing articles on Medium.
Adopting the mindset of a businessman and a producer is what you need to succeed on Medium or anywhere else.
Imagine the world of Medium as a society where people of all different demographics and regions align to create something good. So, in this content economy, trying harder to fulfil one’s own desire won’t help you succeed, but fulfilling the market needs definitely will.
And I won’t say there’s something wrong with a desire to fulfil our selfish motive or to make some Ben-Franklin on the side. That’s great, actually.
But when you have this mindset, all you do is publish content that’s nothing but total sh**. Unhelpful. Lacks clarity. And it’s just there hanging without any use. All it did was make you feel like you wrote something; call yourself a writer now. It boosted your ego. It felt good. But, in reality, the content was of no use.
Always remember: Each article you publish on Medium must be there for some use. It must help at least one person gain some clarity, learn something new, solve a problem, or make them feel good. It may have nothing to do with you. But, each time someone in need reads it, they must learn something new.
Unfortunately, many beginner writers on Medium lack this clarity. Hence, they fail.
2. Being stuck in a pattern that’s killing your growth.
When I started writing on Medium, I had this erroneous feeling to crush it on the platform and become a six-figure writer from scratch. Tell my stories of how I beat all odds and reached where I am. The ultimate rags-to-riches story. Well, we all have this fantasy in some ways, don’t we?
Whenever I published a set of articles on the platform, and I did it for a few days in a row, I felt good. Only days later, I felt uninterested and lazy and didn’t want to focus on my writing again.
The days went by, but no articles were published. This killed my growth. Only weeks or months later, I repeated the same pattern again.
While this may not be true for you, there are things that you do consistently and regularly that are killing your growth. And it’s not a matter of repetition for just a few days or weeks, but you repeat it continuously. It’s a pattern.
Whether you have imposter syndrome or you fear being judged or anything that doesn’t make any sense to the real world but you, recognize it and write it down. What is it? And does it have to be the same way forever, or do you want to change? Or do you just want to be stuck in this never-ending cycle and remain mediocre your entire life?
The choice is yours. The only thing killing your growth on Medium is that never-ending pattern stopping you from publishing articles on Medium. Get rid of it soon. That’s good for your writing career and you.
3. Not trying to appeal to a particular person but instead trying to manipulate the masses.
This boils down to one of the biggest lessons in the advertising industry. Without it, no ads would have ever reached the highest level, nor would they have made any sales.
It’s this: customer persona. Ignore this in your ad, and see how it kills your growth and sales.
Your articles must be there for a reason. They must be there to serve. They must be there for a purpose. Not to make you feel good about yourself because now you own a blog on one of the biggest blogging platforms in the world or to boost your ego by calling yourself a WRITER on Instagram.
Instead, to serve. And to serve, what you must do is help. And to help, you must know the problem and whom you’re writing for. It’s awful to know that many beginner writers start their journey on Medium just because they love the act of writing.
Well, if you have nothing to say, your articles are just a bunch of words arranged in a chronological order to make some sense.
Who is it that you’re writing for?
Does it inform him/her about anything new?
Does it solve a problem?
Does it make him/her feel good?
Does it help him/her move away from pain?
Take a moment of a break and ask yourself, who is it that you’re writing for?
What kind of person is he/she? What kind of problem does he/she have?
I never considered these things before and wondered why do I get writer’s blocks or why don’t I have any more writing ideas? How many times does this happen to you?
Now you know, it’s not your writer’s block or the lack of writing ideas; it’s your lack of customer persona and not having that one person you’re writing for.
It’s the same reason many non-fiction and even fiction books outperform the rest because of the fact that those which perform the best are written from a point of experience or the writer had something to communicate instead of just adding another book to their portfolio list.
