The Most Painful Book I Wrote is a Guidebook for Medium

It took 4 months of non-enjoyable work

David O.
3 min readNov 24, 2020

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Photo by Henrikke Due on Unsplash

When I started writing on Medium early in 2018, I had no guide. I had to figure it out myself. Of course, I was glad that I found a platform where I can grow my writing craft. But I didn’t know anything about growing an audience. In my first month, I published 4 stories. Then I observed I had to do more to get more eyeballs on my work. And it was rocky all the way.

I remembered I took an online course that said to follow a lot of people at random. I think it was 200 per day. It didn’t take too long for me to notice that it doesn’t work that way. The idea was that some people will follow back. Turns out very few people do. So I knew there has to be a better way. And my account proves that I have found it.

For about two years, a treated Medium as a hobby. And I witnessed little growth. But late in 2019, I took it seriously. And I was surprised at how everything changed since then.

Medium is not a perfect platform. It has several flaws. Some are obvious, while some stay hid. But it is a great way to earn money writing online.

I have made thousands on this platform. And it wasn’t accidental. Of course, predicting that a viral article is hard. But in the multitude of quality posts and the secrets I have come to know, viral content will result from your work one way or another.

There are lots of online courses about Medium already. And there are quite some books too. But there isn’t one that can be called a comprehensive guide — a book for both beginners and experts. This is because even experts lose their way. Or at least, they get confused and burned out. And they need a guide to get them back on their game.

The interesting thing is that I had some of my best ideas for Medium while working on this book. Compiling the book recently refreshed my mind about what the platform is about. And it is opening my mind to ideas I haven’t noticed.

Anyway. I want everyone to have what I am having. And I have squeezed out my best insights about writing on Medium into a book.

I must confess — writing the book was painful. I remember agonizing that I wouldn’t sell the book for anything…

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David O.

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