How to Get Published on Medium

Medium is not a masthead, and an honest guide has to start there.

It is an open publishing platform. Anyone can create an account and publish. There is no editor standing between you and the publish button, and no newsroom deciding your work is worth covering.

What Medium actually is

Medium hosts writing from anyone who signs up. You write the piece, you press publish, and it is live under your own byline within minutes.

That makes it a publishing tool rather than a publication in the sense people usually mean. A post on Medium is your story, in your words, published by you. Nothing about it has been commissioned, assigned or vouched for by a title with a masthead behind it.

None of that is a criticism of Medium. It is a good platform doing exactly what it says it does. The problem only appears when someone presents it as something else.

How Medium publications work

Inside Medium there are publications: collections with their own names, their own editors and their own submission rules. Some are large and genuinely selective. Many are not.

Getting into one means being accepted by that publication's editors. Usually you ask to be added as a writer, read their guidelines, submit a draft and wait. They may edit it, ask for changes, or decline it.

That acceptance is real, and it is worth something in proportion to how selective the publication is. What it is not is coverage by a staff-written masthead. An editor accepting a submission you wrote is a different thing from a journalist deciding to write about you, which is the same distinction we draw in what a contributor article is.

Why "featured on Medium" is oversold

Because it gets sold, regularly, as though it were a major-media placement.

It is not one. In most cases what is being sold is an account, a piece of writing and a publish button, all of which you already have for free. Anyone charging major-media prices for that, or guaranteeing a "featured on Medium" result as though a decision were being made by someone else, is overselling. The same logic applies to every promised placement, which is why guaranteed PR deserves a hard look.

The test is simple. Ask who decided this should exist. If the answer is you, it is self-publishing. If the answer is an independent editor who could have said no, it is closer to earned media, and the further that editor sits from you, the more the placement is worth.

How we treat Medium

Digital Networking Agency does not present Medium as earned editorial coverage, and we will not write a client's page so that it implies otherwise.

Overstating a credential is the thing that gets checked. An investor, a journalist or a partner's legal team clicks the link, sees a self-published post, and quietly re-evaluates everything else you have claimed. The accurate description costs you nothing and survives scrutiny. The inflated one does neither.

If what you want is a placement a stranger reads as third-party coverage, that is different work: a real publication, a real editor, a real decision that could have gone the other way. Consumer titles like Maxim sit at the far end of that scale, and they are earned rather than bought.

What Medium is genuinely good for

Three things, all legitimate.

• A byline you control. You choose the subject, the argument and the wording, and you can update it later. Useful for setting out your thinking in your own voice, without an editor shortening it.
• A place to develop a story. Writing something out is how you find out whether you actually have an angle. Plenty of strong pitches begin as a post someone wrote to think aloud.
• Reaching an existing audience. Medium has readers and a recommendation system, so a good post can travel beyond your own list. That is distribution, and distribution has its own value.

There is a fourth use worth naming: a reference piece. If you keep explaining the same idea to clients or journalists, writing it once and linking to it saves everyone time, and a well-argued post makes a better attachment to a pitch than a deck.

Used that way it earns its place in a plan. It is simply not the part of the plan that does the credibility work.

How to publish something worth reading

Write the piece only you could write. Specific, first-hand, with a point of view and something at stake in it. Posts that restate general advice do nothing for anyone, including you.

Then approach a publication properly: read what they actually run, follow their submission rules exactly, and send a finished draft rather than a pitch. Editors at the better publications receive a great deal and decline most of it.

Afterwards, keep the claim accurate. "I write on Medium" is true and perfectly good. "Featured in Medium" invites a question you would rather not be asked.

Frequently asked questions

Is publishing on Medium the same as press coverage?

No. Unless an independent publication's editors accepted your work, it is self-publishing. Press coverage is someone else deciding, on their own judgement, to publish something about you.

Should I write on Medium at all?

If you have something worth saying, yes. Treat it as a byline you control and a way to develop material, not as a credential to put in a footer.

Can an agency get me into a Medium publication?

It can write the piece and submit it, but that publication's editors decide. Anyone guaranteeing acceptance is promising something they do not control.