The Best Medium Publications in 2020
One of my goals this year was to write more, so naturally, I went on a mission to find the best Medium publications that I could submit my articles to.
In my mind, the adjective "best" was suitable. However, when I typed "best Medium publications" into Google, most of the front page was packed with the "top Medium publications"; ie: the publications with the most subscribers.
While top may be synonymous with best, I didn't necessarily want the publications with the biggest subscriber base. Sure, that metric was a proxy for interest, but it's also the accumulated progress over time and not necessarily a snapshot of now. More importantly, when I looked closely at the current engagement of some of those publications, I saw the following:
- Some publications were once popular but no longer are
- Some publications are completely dead
- Some publications had restrictions like the posts needing to be published on Medium first
- On the other end of the spectrum, there were publications that seemed to accept nearly everything and lacked any uniqueness or appeal to a specific niche
On top of that, it was a struggle to identify which publications were accessible. Some were written by a small cohort of writers (ie: not open to the public), while others made it extremely difficult to participate. This publication, for example, has ~70k followers but only one dude writes for it and he hasn't posted since 2016. Not helpful.
So, I went on a [probably too] long search for some of the best publications on Medium that:
1) Were still alive in 2019
2) I could contribute to
Out of personal interest, I also kept an eye out for industries that are picking up steam but may not be mainstream yet. Things like remote work, futurism, and women in tech: all topics that I frequently write about.
Outcome
Here is what I found:
1) First of all, I stumbled upon SMedian, which is a great application for sorting through and applying to Medium publications. There are some other tools out there, like Top Pub, but this was the best option which streamlined the application process as well. The only problem with SMedian is that not all publications are present on there. If they were, I wouldn't have had to write the rest of this article.
2) Since I found that only a fraction of the publications that fit my criteria were present on SMedium, I continued researching. That led to a simple spreadsheet of ~30 publications. Again, this doesn't seem like many, but a majority of the publications I explored didn't fit the criteria of welcoming contributors and having more than a couple dozen followers.
Below is a list of Medium publications by category along with the number of followers at the time of me writing this. To learn more about how to submit to each publication, refer to the attached spreadsheet.
Entrepreneurship/Digital Marketing
These publications focus on startups and building companies. Anything from growth hacking to a founder story (or blunder) is welcome here. You'll often see articles featuring hockey stick growth or innovation trends like the rise of chatbots and technical founders.
The Startup - 411k
Startup Grind - 368k
Entrepreneur's Handbook - 84k
Noteworthy - The Journal Blog - 25k
Personal Development
As the first name indicates, these publications are focused on helping people improve as humans. Anything from general well-being to intentional personal development is covered in these and Better Humans actually pays for articles, but naturally expects a high quality bar and unique pieces.
Better Humans - 281k
Be Yourself - 153k
Thrive Global - 145k
The Bigger Picture - 13k
Tech Publications
HackerNoon and Free Code Camp are well known, but there are also many less crowded tech-focused publications on Medium. All of these publications are accepting posts ranging from technical tutorials to framework trends, or even pieces on how the industry is changing.
Free Code Camp - 528k
HackerNoon - 416k
Towards Data Science - 164k
DailyJS - 91k
CodeBurst - 66k
Frontend Weekly - 13k
IT Next - 11k
Trends
This section is my personal favorite. These publications are focused on spotting trends and while also showcasing "trend-setters". The Mission focuses more on startups and innovation, while Predict welcome articles around the future of work, and Authority Magazine is centred around leadership and culture.
The Mission - 508k
The Ascent - 51k
Predict - 2k
Authority Magazine - 1k
Design
These publications are pretty straightforward: they focus on design inspiration, resources, user experience, and more.
Muzli Design Inspiration - 182k
UX Planet - 144k
Sketch App Sources - 81k
Diversity and Inclusion
Another personal favorite, these publications focus on diversity and inclusion. Most are focused on gender inclusion, while Bright focuses on health, education, and social impact.
Bright - 82k
Code Like A Girl - 38k
Athena Talks - 37k
Lady Pieces - 23k
Women 2.0 - 21k
I hope that this short article was helpful and saved you a few hours of searching through publications which don't accept submissions or are essentially dead! Now go and submit your work to some of these publications and see the page views flow in. 🌊🌊🌊
Remember, you can access the publications and submission links anytime here.
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