Why clapping is important in Medium
For the last two years I used to read articles on medium every once in a while. But I never logged into my account frequently. But of late when I started working on Javascript I saw myself ending up on Medium multiple times and I found many insightful articles on Medium. So I finally logged into my account started exploring the features Medium provides.
I am very lazy in general and in writing a degree higher. So when I see a good post I know the amount of effort that would have gone into the post and the amount of dedication/discipline that would have been required to finish that post. Most of the times the authors don’t get paid anything for their effort. So the only motivation that keeps them going is the feedback that they get on their article. I generally comment on posts, only if I need any clarifications or if I have anything to add on to the posts. So I make it a point to clap whenever I see a good post. There are multiple reasons I make it a point to be logged into medium and clap on posts that I like. Read on and let me know your once you are done reading.
Feedback
Feedback is very important. But there are many constraints to get feedback. It could be a mental block as you are not comfortable reaching out to people for feedback. It could be a physical feedback as it would be difficult to reach out to people of relevance meet them and get their feedback. It could be a distribution problem where you cannot make sure that your content reaches enough number of people. It could be a problem on the other end where people are not willing to give their feedback. There could be multitude of reasons. But internet has solved many of these issues already to a great extent.
You can read about my post on feedback systems in my upcoming post. https://medium.com/@gokulnk/feedback-systems-75393a1cf859 It is still a work in progress. So I would like to have your feedback to finish the post.
Claps are all they get
I have been writing a couple of posts on Medium and was naturally let down when my posts didn’t reach enough people or didn’t generate enough claps. I know, I know. Yes, I do know that I shouldn’t be bothered by all these factors but after all I am human. Can you blame for getting demotivated. That was a fact. I wanted to do something to keep myself motivated.
So I created a “declaration of intent” which would be me my guide for the remaining part of the year. You can read it here https://medium.com/@gokulnk/declaration-of-intent-2018-f222ce76b6c8
It helped me to concentrate on things that matter. I realised that even if one person claps on a post it means that he found it useful. That in itself is a reason enough to write. This has helped me to read more, write regularly and share frequently.
Around the same time one of my posts about my Javascript learnings generated some interest and gave me enough motivation to keep at it.
This post has crossed 17k likes already and it makes me feel good :)
Medium Partner program
Earlier I mentioned that claps are all the authors get. But that is not the whole truth. Medium has a partner program where authors can earn. I am not sure if it has really caught on.
But there are many users who claim that they are making more than 1000USD per month. So I guess it is doing good. I can’t know it personally as MPP is not yet rolled out in India. If you think it should be rolled out across the world sign this petition.
I did buy the membership because it gave me access to better content. You can become one by buying your membership from https://medium.com/membership While I am ok paying for the membership I am a little uncomfortable with marking my posts member only. I think it kinds of defeats the purpose.
Update : I got to know that there is something called “Friend Link” that you can share with your friends and followers. So even when you write a members only post you can share it with your friends and followers who can read the post inspite of not having the membership. For example you can read my members only post “Why comparing cryptocurrency prices is wrong” even if you are not a member by following the above link which is my Friends link.
Personally I would still prefer a Steem like model where you can post your content and people can read it for free. Based on the feedback your post garners you can get paid. But steem has its own issues of content discovery which I will discuss in another post.
So for now Medium Partner program seems to be a good bet. You can read more about the partner program in the link below.
Clap, clap clap your hands.
While we have to wait to see if the Partner program takes off or if medium takes the Steem route there is one thing that we can do now, right this moment. And that is CLAP.
Clap, clap clap your hands. Because your claps keep the authors ticking until the they start making some Moolah.
One thing that I have realised recently is that if you keep something to be done towards the end, there is a fair chance that you will end up not doing it at all. This applies to creating tutorials after learning something, cleaning up the code once the feature is complete, or understanding the basics after getting something to work etc etc. The same applies for Clapping on posts you read as well.
What I have found is that starting both the things(learning and creating tutorials, documentation and code etc etc) at once and then interspacing them based on your comfort works out best. So if I am learning something I create the medium draft first. I start learning something and I keep putting in all relevant links and rough thoughts in the draft. Every once in a while I take some time to expand. And once I am done with more than 75% of the work or learning, I start spending time cleaning up things. This helps me clarify my thoughts and also helps in the learning. The power of small repetitive incremental changes is grossly underrated.
Coming back to our topic, for clapping on posts also I take a similar approach. But before getting into that let us know a few things about clapping.
Medium claps
1.) It doesn’t cost you anything to clap.
2.) The minimum number of claps is 1 time and the maximum number of times you can clap on a post is 50 times.
3.) You can cancel your clap on a post. But I am not sure why you would like to this. Let me give it a thought. Only three scenarios I can think of as of now.
3.1 — You have already clapped on a post and you consider it unfair to some other similar post that you didn’t clap on.
3.2 — You would like punish the author for something that he said or did that didn’t match your expectation.
3.3 — You are a sadist :P
But if you still need to unclap here is how you can do it. Mouse over on the Claps symbol and then click on the close button.
4.) You can clap on any number of posts. There is no limit to number of posts that you can clap on.
5.) There are no daily limits on clapping. So you can keep clapping whenever you find good article.
6.) Clapping increases the visibility of the posts. The posts with more number of claps seems to be distributed more widely(Need a confirmation on this).
7.) Other users can see which are the posts you have clapped on and hence claps increase the visibility indirectly as well.
My clapping strategy
I make sure that I am always logged into Medium. I bookmark all the posts that catch my attention, so that I can get back to them later. Medium Reading list is a handy feature.
I see something interesting, I clap couple of times. I see something that is insightful, I clap couple more times. I see proper headings, representative images, good formatting and relevant links, I clap couple more times. I see a good code sample that makes the explanation easier to follow up, I clap again. I see something intriguing that I couldn’t have thought of myself, I clap again. I see links for further reading, I clap again.
By doing this I am making sure that I don’t need to spend my mental energy at the end of the article, thinking how many times I should clap. I have split this exercise and distributed it across the time I spend on reading a post. So by the time I reach the end of an article or if I decide not complete the post I don’t need perform a separate action.
My reading on medium is well organised and I have enough metadata so that I can always go back and see what I have read, clapped, bookmarked and highlighted. It is a shame that we can’t do the same across the internet. Or is it?
We recently developed a chrome extension and an android app that lets you highlight, add private notes and tags across the internet. Check out our demo.
If you think it will be useful to you, install these.
- http://bit.ly/use-highlights
- http://bit.ly/highlights-android-app
- Search in my public highlights — Public Highlights
