Cover Photo by Karim Ghantous on Unsplash
Know what works on Medium with less than three minutes of research
If you’re anything like I was when I started writing, you want to know what works on the platform you’re using — for a sense of direction. By knowing which Medium articles have worked best in the past, you can analyze their headlines, featured images, and content and adapt them for your own articles. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it can help you learn valuable lessons quickly.
In this short article, I’ll give you two simple steps to find the best writers and their top content.
Step 1. Scour the Popular Tags for Top Writers
This is what the tag pages look like:
You know a tag is popular when you see the “Top Writers” link. Less popular tags don’t have it.
Also, note that the list of “Top writers” is ordered by descending order of popularity. For example, in the following screenshot, Ayodeji Awosika is #1 and I’m #5:
To save you the trouble, here are a few important ones (in no particular order):
Life Lessons: https://medium.com/tag/life-lessons/top-writers
Self-improvement: https://medium.com/tag/self-improvement/top-writers
Relationships: https://medium.com/tag/relationships/top-writers
Inspiration: https://medium.com/tag/inspiration/top-writers
Education: https://medium.com/tag/education/top-writers
Productivity: https://medium.com/tag/productivity/top-writers
Creativity: https://medium.com/tag/creativity/top-writers
Entrepreneurship: https://medium.com/tag/entrepreneurship/top-writers
Technology: https://medium.com/tag/technology/top-writers
Leadership: https://medium.com/tag/leadership/top-writers
Mental Health: https://medium.com/tag/mental-health/top-writers
Step 2. Finding the Most Popular Content of Top Writers
This step is easy but, at least at first, it’s not so obvious. Go to Medium’s home page and type the name of a top writer whose content you want to read. Like this:
I have doppelgangers :)
Do not click on anyone listed in “People” or “Publications.” Instead, click on “Search for person name’.” It will lead you to a page like this:
In the Stories tab, my top articles are ordered by the highest number of views, meaning my top articles are on top. You won’t be able to tell how many views they got, but I can assure you that’s the order they’re in.
The number of claps can give you a good indication of how popular the piece is. For example, 8 Timeless Skills to Learn Now in Under 8 Hours to Change your Life Forever has 646K views. For that number of views, it’s a pretty low clap count. But anything above 10K claps should be a big success that generated over $1,000.
You can repeat Step 2 for any top writer you found in Step 1.
Let me give you a few examples from the top writers found in the list from Step 1:
Ayodeji Awosika: https://medium.com/search?q=Ayodeji%20Awosika
Jessica Wildfire: https://medium.com/search?q=Jessica%20Wildfire
Michael Thompson: https://medium.com/search?q=Michael%20Thompson
These are just a few examples. From any of these pages, just change the name to the person you’re looking for here:
That’s it! Using these two simple steps, you can find the content that worked best on Medium!