How I’m Using the Boost Nomination Pilot
What I’ve learned from two months of boosting
What I’ve learned from two months of boosting
∘ Introduction
∘ Privacy Notice
∘ How Many Stories Have I Submitted?
∘ How Many Authors Have I Submitted?
∘ Have I Received a Boost Since I Joined?
∘ Where Do My Nominations Come From?
∘ What Topics Have I Nominated?
∘ Acceptance Rates
∘ Conclusion
Introduction
There has been a lot of talk on Medium about boosting. What is boosting you might ask? It’s when a select group of Medium members are allowed to submit your article to Medium Curators. If the curators agree that your article matches the quality they’re looking for, the curators will apply a “boost.”
Think of a boost like rigging the algorithm in your stories favor. The website will show your article to, on average, 1k extra people than it normally would. Most articles I’ve boosted top out around 2.5k views in the first few days. If you happen to be a Medium Partner Program member, having an article boosted can earn you a sizable uptick in your earnings.
As I announced nearly 2 months ago, I am a member of the Medium Boost Nomination Pilot. I work tirelessly to make sure I find the absolute best articles that match with Medium’s guidelines.
I wanted to take a moment to be transparent on how it’s going while still maintaining the privacy of the writers.
Privacy Notice
For the sake of privacy of the writers, and to protect those who were not accepted, I won’t discuss the authors names, when I submitted a particular article, or the names of the articles I submitted.
How Many Stories Have I Submitted?
I’ve submitted 33 articles since I was allowed into the program on June 1st. That’s one article submission every 1.5 days and I spend 20–25 minutes to complete each nomination request. This time is due to looking over a long list of articles I’ve kept track of during editing/publishing, reading the story, analyzing, and writing a great nomination letter that not only explains philosophical/religious topics, but also states why I believe it qualifies for a boost.
How Many Authors Have I Submitted?
From the beginning I’ve kept track of every article I submitted, who wrote it, what publication it’s under, date of publication, and submission date.
My 33 submissions were written by 25 different writers. Only 4 writers have been nominated more than once. Therefore, 84% of my submissions were written by a new nominee.
Have I Received a Boost Since I Joined?
Yes. We don’t know who nominates each story or if the curators boosted it by themselves without help from a nominator, but we aren’t allowed to nominate our own stories. So, to whoever was involved in boosting my story, thank you!
Where Do My Nominations Come From?
When I was invited to the program, I was asked to join because of my niche and topic of interest from the publication I run. The Taoist Online is a collection of religion, spirituality, and philosophy related content. So, all but two of my nominations are inside TTO. I have nominated one article from another publication and one article that was not in a publication.
What Topics Have I Nominated?
My nominations cover 17 different topics. Since they are mostly from TTO, the topic variety isn’t as far spread as the number of authors, but I have still managed to “share the wealth.”
It’s interesting to see the categories at 0% acceptance rate— faith and stoicism. Especially because Stoicism is one of the original topics TTO wrote about at our inception. I believe faith is at 0% due to only being nominated once and before I had learned more about the program.
Acceptance Rates
As you can see from the table above, not everything is accepted, but most articles are. Let’s focus on my numbers.
In June, 70% of my nominations were accepted. During this month, July, 92% of my nominations were accepted.
Conclusion
I like to think of this program like taking a college writing class. You probably won’t do well on your first paper because you don’t know what the professor likes. But afterward, you learn more about your professor and tailor your work to their liking. In this case, the Medium Curators are the professors. They have a particular style of writing they are looking for and it takes time to learn what to submit.
It hasn’t been easy, and sometimes I’ve had to remind myself not to take rejection personally. It’s surprisingly easy to put your self-worth into each article you submit because art, particularly writing, can be extremely personal. However, I remind myself that this whole program is to help writers when I can. We don’t always agree, just like I didn’t always agree with my university professors, but I’m getting there!
If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or DM us on Mastodon!