I never thought of myself as a writer. I’ve written business plans and documents. So then I figured out that the first step of succeeding on Medium is throwing everything I know down the drain, except for one thing, my zest, and love for entrepreneurship. While I did not know it, this zest led me to become a 5X Top Writer on Medium.

Business writing for investors is not the same as writing on Medium. Writing for the masses is an entirely different game. It pushes you to ask the questions, “What does everyone want to read about?” and “Is this interesting?”

However, this is absolutely not enough. There are hundreds of writers on Medium that just write on trending topics and hope for the best. They could achieve mediocre results in years. The real reason for that is their own motivation behind this.

The moment I started writing on Medium, I was thinking the following:

• I need an extra income stream.
• I like entrepreneurship. So writing about that could be fun.

With these two points in mind, I was destined for mediocrity. Yet, something happened when I was writing my first article. I fell in love with it.

At that moment, I noticed that whether the extra income stream arrives or not does not matter at all. I’ll keep doing this.

I started writing about things that I found extremely interesting in the business world. Then I learned more and more about what people like. Eventually, I became a 5X Top Writer on Medium with over 190k views and more than $10k of earnings.

Here’s one of the untold truths of Medium. People like reading stories. I then started writing from the heart and experience of my consulting world.

For instance, I was on a 3-hour ride in summer and just struck a conversation with the person next to me. It’s just friendly and common courtesy. 99% of the people would brand this conversation as not important.

So I decided to write an article about it.

A while before that, I randomly saw a piece of news about Ford, so I wrote a simple business analytical article. Accidentally, it struck an audience who loved a brand (Tesla) and others who hated it.

Then I realized the absolute hard truth of Medium. If people are reading, you are succeeding. It’s up to you to figure out what your audience would read. The first step you need to do is start. The second is to keep going.

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I’m Al, a business consultant in Zurich, Switzerland. I believe in the power of delivering value to you, the reader. Follow me on various social media platforms if you’re interested in the value of my content.