How to Get Started on Medium

Priority One: Race your way to 100 articles and don’t look back.

Tim Denning
12 min readNov 29, 2019

Illustration by www.sebastiankoenig.net

Medium can be a challenging platform to get started on because there are a lot of invisible functions to a new user who hasn’t been at this for several years. But it’s a stunningly beautiful platform.

Both the UI and the writers you’ll find on here will impact your life in a positive way. There are some brilliant storytellers on Medium and you have the opportunity to become one yourself.

If I was to discover Medium for the first time today and had to start again, these are the steps I would take.

1. Set up a profile

Create your Medium account and write two sentences that describes how you seek to help people with your writing.

Add a close-up of your face so people can connect with you at a deeper level.

Insert a link to a landing page or website you own. (This will become apparent later).

2. Pick one of these goals

There are seven outcomes you can achieve using Medium:

  1. Reaching people through writing
  2. Earning money
  3. Building a business/audience that you own via an email list
  4. Gaining experience as a writer
  5. The ability to teach
  6. The superpower to inspire
  7. Access to major publications

Pick one or more of these goals and get started.

If it were me, I’d think of the money as an added bonus, not the focus.

3. The path to your goal

Medium has several tools that allow you to reach one or more of the goals mentioned above.

Claps

When users clap (like) your story, it gives your post a boost and allows it to be seen by more readers. The more claps the more readers you have the chance of reaching.

Curation

Medium has a staff of in-house curators who review each story that is posted. If the story meets a…

Tim Denning

Aussie Blogger with 500M+ views — Writer for CNBC & Business Insider. Inspiring the world through Personal Development and Entrepreneurship — timdenning.com/mb