What makes a story great for Boosting?
The stories you nominate should clearly meet Medium's Distribution Guidelines.
Are older stories eligible for Boosting?
No. Only stories originally published within six months (180 days) of the nomination date are eligible for Boost. So for instance, if you’re nominating on January 1, 2024, anything published before July 1, 2023 is ineligible for Boost. Newer stories benefit the most from the Boost distribution.
Does the length of the story matter for Boosting?
No, the length of the story is not a factor. Although it can be difficult to meet Boost Guidelines with shorter stories, we have Boosted them, and we’ve also Boosted very long 20+ minute read stories. The length just needs to be appropriate for the story.
Can I nominate a story that’s not behind the Medium paywall?
Yes! A story’s paywall status is not a factor that’s considered in Boost selection.
Is AI-generated content eligible for Boost?
NO. Medium is a home for human stories. AI-generated writing is not eligible for distribution (let alone Boosting), and can result in the story’s writer being removed from the Partner Program.
The one exception is that stories that contain AI-generated images are currently allowed – we recommend a best practice of identifying AI-generated images in the image caption.
The real problem with AI-generated stories is that they lack what we especially prize: the writer’s experience and expertise. If you look for this element in the story itself (rather than who the writer says they are), you can avoid nominating AI-generated stories AND your nomination acceptance rate will improve. These stories on the Medium Blog provide additional context on our policies on AI-generated stories:
- Our curation team’s approach to keeping AI-generated content out of your recommendations (Medium Blog, March 2024)
- We’re ramping up efforts to protect the Medium community from spam and fraud (Medium Blog, March 2024)
Are stories featuring explicit sex, erotica, or violence eligible for Boost?
Not at this time. We're working on improving our tools so that folks could specifically opt-in to explicit content (such as sex, erotica, or descriptions of graphic violence), but we're not there yet. Explicit stories, or stories with shocking or sensational titles, subtitles, or cover images are not eligible for Boost. For more information, see this section of the Medium curation manual, and this story from our head of curation.
Are stories with profanity eligible for Boost?
Yes, although you should avoid profanity in the title. Gratuitous profanity could hurt a nomination’s chances of getting selected for Boost. For more information, see this story by our head of curation.
Is a story with affiliate or other self-promotional links eligible for Boost?
The more marketing or self-promotion a story contains, the less likely it is to be selected for Boost. The key is the usefulness of the story — does the story provide more value to the reader than it does to any companies, individuals, or products being linked? Is the writer producing this content to add value for the reader, or simply to promote themselves and/or profit from the links?
Here are some specific kinds of links that can be problematic within this context of usefulness:
- Affiliate links: All affiliate links must be prominently disclaimed, as per Medium's policies. Best practice is to disclaim the affiliate link before it appears.
- Promotion of the author’s other writing, books, website, courses, or other offerings: we’re not against this per se, but if the message to the reader is that the purpose of the article is to drive sales, it’s not a good article for Boost.
- Promotion of a publication’s other offerings: Some editors add promotions to the end of their author’s stories.
- Overly @tagging other Medium authors to get their attention and/or get responses
- Heavily embedding other stories: A couple of relevant related articles or friend links are fine; a story with multiple story embeds or friend links starts to feel more about promoting the author’s work than benefiting the reader
Remember: curators assess stories on a case-by-case basis. These aren’t hard and fast rules and it’s understandable that a story might include one or two of the above elements. The more aggressively promotional a story is, the less likely a story is to be selected for Boost.
Are imported or syndicated stories eligible for Boost?
“Syndication” is making content available from one website to other sites. When we talk of syndicating stories on Medium, we’re talking about a story that’s been copied from another site with permission. Sometimes this permission is inherent because the Medium user posting the content already owns it. Sometimes it’s given, in the case of writers who assign rights to publications that are not on the Medium platform.
Syndicating/importing stories from elsewhere on the web is definitely allowed on Medium – we even provide tools to help writers do it.
However, not all syndicated or republished stories are eligible for Boost. To be eligible for Boost, the syndicated story must be posted by the same writer or publisher who originally published it.
Here are some example scenarios of syndicated stories and their eligibility for Boost:
| NOT eligible for Boost | Eligible for Boost |
|---|---|
| An editor finds a story on the web with a Creative Commons license to republish; they post a copy of it to their publication on Medium giving the appropriate source credits. | The author copies their story from another site to Medium under their own account. |
| The author creates two Medium accounts and copies one of their stories from one to another. | A print magazine republishes one of their articles as a story on Medium under their own Medium account or publication, with credit to the writer at the top of the story. |
| The author deletes their Medium story and publishes a new duplicate of it. | A book publisher runs a publication of excerpts from the books they publish. |
| A Medium publication editor decides to spin-up a new publication on Medium and creates a new story by copying one of the stories from the previous publication. (Note that we are is getting into Medium Rules Violations with these last two examples, even beyond Boost eligibility) | A book author publishes an excerpt from their print book to their Medium account. |
Can I nominate my own stories for Boosting?
The focus of the Boost Nomination Program program is on you as an editor. That said, as a concession to nominators who are also writers, you are allowed to “self-nominate” no more than two stories you wrote per month as part of your 20 story quota. (The 2-story limit remains even if you have a lifted nomination quota.)
Contact us via bit.ly/nommerhelp if you have additional questions about selecting stories and figuring out which stories are eligible for Boost.