5 Reasons Why Writers Have Sold Out
Their posts and methods are almost exactly the same, yet they all make lots of money.
Have you noticed a trend on Medium where lots of titles seem to start exactly the same way?
- “7 Steps To…”
- “17 Things I Did To…”
- “5 Things All Successful Writers Should Know…”
It’s insufferable to me — it really is. I eyeroll even harder when I see how specific these posts [and their clones] can get:
- “Here’s How I Made $7,437.19 in One Month From YouTube”
Okay, we get it. You made a lot of money off of YouTube, but you’re not the only one with a post like that. In fact, there’s another one on the front page of Medium that looks almost exactly the same.
I understand that the writers who post titles like these are following a formula. They often do this for a living and know what works and what doesn’t. They’ve realized that posting clickbait-y titles gets people to click on and read their work, ultimately leading to them making more money.
I get it, but it comes off as grimy to me. Instead of writing unique content that stands out from the pack, they just milk readers for their own gain. I stumbled upon a Medium writer’s YouTube channel and watched how they wrote one of their articles. I was appalled when I saw them put ‘TK’ in their title of all places.
For those of you who don’t know, ‘TK’ is something that you can insert into your piece as a placeholder. Before you hit ‘Publish,’ Medium will look for any ‘TKs’ in your article and let you know “Hey, looks like you’ve got a placeholder here — wanna take care of it first before you publish?” The writer had placed TK in the title of their post because they were debating how many ‘steps’ to write about. Do they give us the 7 things we need to know, or are 6 re-hashed points enough for our little brains?
I know these people don’t mean any harm with these posts — they’re just trying to make money. However, as someone who genuinely tries to put out unique content that’s different from everyone else, it’s actually somewhat annoying that this is what makes money; this is what people click on. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve clicked on those articles too, but they don’t even seem to say much of anything. A lot of it is just common sense. “Want to be a good writer? Use proper grammer.” Uh, I could have told you that and I wouldn’t need to write an article about it to do so.
But wait — “your title said you’d share 5 reasons why writers have sold out.” Too bad; not doing it. I’m not about to waste your time specifically listing out 5 arbitrary posts that will likely overlap or teach you nothing. This post can get 1 view and $0.00 for all I care; I just felt it was worth speaking out about this annoying trend of ‘algorithm optimization.’ I’d rather people just write good content, but unfortunately we live in a world where everyone feels the need to take advantage of every little thing.
I’m glad that people are making money off of Medium, but I genuinely can’t respect articles with these clickbait titles. It’s clear that they’re just being written to make as much money as possible rather than for the sake of the content inside. I support anyone and everyone that deviates from this trend and just writes about what’s on their mind.
