Updated rules to publish your drafts in this specialized publication for writers, book authors, bloggers, and content marketers
Dear Content Creators and Marketers,
To provide a comprehensive understanding of this unique publication, I have included an overview of its history, current landscape, and strategic direction. As a result, this piece is more extensive than typical submission guidelines. If you are already familiar with the background and present context, feel free to skip ahead to the submission guidelines, which are concisely outlined in the middle section of the article.
After founding ILLUMINATION in 2020, a generic publication, I established an integrated SYNERGY, a specialized one, in 2021 for our group of publications based on requests from many content developers and marketers who wanted a publication to share their content with like-minded writers and readers on this platform.
SYNERGY’s mission is to provide a platform for freelance writers, book authors, bloggers, editors, content curators, and digital marketers seeking to transition their blog posts or other type of content like books or marketing materials into engaging Medium stories.
With a strategic and entrepreneurial outlook, this publication aims to facilitate synergistic collaboration, empower writers, and amplify their voices to reach a broad audience.
Our objective is to amplify the voices of writers at all levels, from absolute beginners to accomplished ones, offering a space for articulating their concerns, aspirations, achievements, and progress within the Medium community.
We extend an open invitation to writers on Medium from various platforms, including Substack, News Break, Vocal Media, Hub Pages, or Patreon, allowing them to showcase their profiles and stories from those platforms on our publications.
SYNERGY is a collaborative hub where writers from diverse backgrounds converge, bringing their unique readerships along. In this spirit of collaboration, stories gain visibility as each writer introduces their audience to fresh perspectives on Medium.
So, SYNERGY enables a writing community that extends beyond Medium’s borders, creating engagement in different writing communities.
Synergy as a Newsletter Booster for Freelance Writers
Now, we add a new dimension to SYNERGY based on our new content development and marketing strategy and brand it as our Newsletter Booster. In Chapter 9 of my Substack Mastery Book, I explained how our supplementary boosting will complement Medium’s and Substack’s boost programs to empower freelance writers and content entrepreneurs.
To give you a quick background, after closing our flagship pub, ILLUMINATION-Curated, we created a new publication called Curated Newsletters to accelerate our transition to newsletter growth for our writers, mainly working on Substack to gain free or paid subscribers.
While we publish newsletter-type content on any topic in Curated Newsletters, we believe that specific newsletters related to freelancing, blogging, editing, content curation, or digital marketing can perform better on SYNERGY as it has an established audience. Therefore, we decided to create these new submission guidelines to help our contributors.
Why We Focus on Newsletters as a Strategic Direction
Medium is a storytelling platform, and readers love it. However, our goal is to empower our writers to build their audience and diversify their content on multiple platforms to remain competitive in the market.
Therefore, transforming our stories into newsletters is a strategic way for writers to achieve financial freedom. Medium provides a solid platform for initial visibility, but Substack has emerged as a powerful tool for writers to meet long-term goals.
Like Curated Newsletters, SYNERGY will host and boost newsletters. Therefore, we brand it as Newsletter Booster while still keeping its original name. While Curated Newsletters publication, a generic platform, serves as an educational guide to help writers bridge the gap between these two platforms, SYNERGY will serve as an amplifying publication for newsletters of freelance writers, bloggers, book authors, editors, curators, and digital marketers.
Unlike social media, where algorithms dictate content visibility, newsletters allow writers to maintain ownership of their audience and content. This stability ensures that writers’ hard work isn’t affected by platform changes, offering a consistent reach to readers.
Newsletters also open doors for monetization through subscription models, sponsored content, and premium offerings, making them an increasingly viable way for writers to sustain their careers and achieve financial independence.
Additionally, newsletters help build a writer’s personal brand, establishing them as credible experts in their field. The creative freedom to experiment with different formats and topics further engages readers, while the direct feedback loop from subscribers creates a sense of community.
As newsletters grow in popularity, mastering this tool might offer freelance writers prospective opportunities, from product launches to book deals, making newsletter writing an essential skill in the evolving digital content landscape.
Some Background Info on Synergy for Beginners
As we are writers and many of the publication’s readers are also writers, your stories must be of high quality. If you are a new writer and want to improve your skills, we can help you find volunteering mentors from our community on the Slack workspace.
We have a thriving community. You can collaborate with thousands of fellow Medium writers, contributing to our publications through our free and moderated Slack workspace. Explore special sections and community clubs designed to support your writing endeavors.
SYNERGY benefits from its affiliation with ILLUMINATION, boasting a substantial following of 128K+ readers. Your impactful stories will enjoy amplified reach.
Once you have writer access, you can submit your drafts. To obtain writer access, you can send a request via our writer registration portal. Please point out the name of the publication in the application form.
SYNERGY can make an ideal home for your stories related to writing, blogging, freelancing, and content marketing topics. We now only accept drafts like all other publications, as self-published stories no longer perform on publications. It is a waste of time for writers and editors.
You should refresh your old stories with substantial changes and submit them as new drafts for your benefit. But please ensure that you don’t have identical copies of your stories on Medium, as duplication is against platform rules.
We allow re-purposing from your blogs on other platforms, but our publications have strict rules about plagiarism. We have a zero-tolerance policy. We do not accept plagiarized content. Your stories must belong to you. When our editors identify plagiarism through their investigation, they reject your story and remove it from our publications.
To speed up the publishing process and meet Medium rules, you must include links to previously published content on other platforms. In cases where your content is time-sensitive and requires expedited attention, we have a priority helpdesk on Slack to log issues.
We also offer a subscription-based priority publishing service with multiple other benefits for freelancers. We also offer a free publishing service for those who don’t need priority service.
You can also remove your stories from SYNERGY when you need and want to. There is no penalty for withdrawing your articles from publishing them in other publications. Our goal is the success of every writer on this platform. Publications are only tools.
Since the primary goal of the publication is collaboration, you need to introduce yourself. We recommend you submit a bio by introducing your writing practice.
You can make it an excellent presentation of your background, goals, aspirations, and anything else you want to share. There is no size limit for writer bios. We use them to promote our writers to our readers.
We do not censor content as long as stories comply with Medium’s. However, you need to ensure your stories are engaging. Many readers don’t like boring text-book-style descriptive narration. SYNERGY is not a scholarly publication. You may discuss scholarly topics if they suit your content, but they must be engaging and benefit our readers.
We know writers may have affiliate links for books and writing services. You are welcome to share affiliate links, but you must disclose them.
Since Medium now requires paid membership for the Partner Program, we will also include stories of members for this publication to maintain our quality standards and commitment to our loyal readers. However, our other publications still support non-members.
All photos must be copyright-free and captioned, pointing out the image sources. If the photo belongs to you, please highlight “photo by author.” It is difficult for us to verify the copyright of photos from different sources. Therefore, we accept photos only from free stock sites such as unsplash.com, pixabay.com, and pexels.com.
Our publication rules are documented in the master onboarding pack, which we regularly update. You may save the attached master copy to find updates on changes.
Master Copy: Onboarding Information for New Writers
Welcome and information pack for new contributors of ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Mediummedium.com
Please review our onboarding pack before sending any story to ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications. We only accept content meeting Medium policies and our guidelines.
Topics Covered and Published on SYNERGY
You can submit stories related to writing, blogging, and freelancing practice to SYNERGY. Here are some ideas.
1 — Writing, blogging, editing, content curation, and freelancing tips
2 — Writing prompts, contestes, and new opportunities for writers
3 — Book, article, or training program reviews,Testimonials and references
4 — Financial and accounting aspects of writing
5— Marketing and promotional aspects of writing like how to market non-fiction, fiction, or poetry
6— Business, management, and leadership aspects of writing
7 — Legal aspects such as copyright, distribution models, privacy
8 — Job search opportunities, recruitment, and industry liaison
9 — Success stories for earning, including stats and progress in various platforms
10 — Networking, collaboration, events, awards, and competitions
11 — Using social media for content marketing
We might cover other relevant topics which might not be listed here. If a story does not meet the requirements of SYNERGY, we don’t reject them, but our editors inform writers via private messages to transfer them to other generic publications like ILLUMINATION, Curated Newsletters, or ILLUMINATION Mirror. Each publication has its own guidelines, which you can find from this shortcut, so you need to check them before submitting your drafts.
SYNERGY 2024 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
We are not after masterpieces as we refrain from perfection. However, we have high standards for this publication to delight our readers and bring optimal outcomes to our writers. We aim for high quality but don’t insist on perfection. We are practical and believe every writer can improve with feedback from readers, editors, and peers. Our main goal is to provide our subscribers with a pleasant and satisfying reading experience.
A Summary of Key Points for Draft Submissions
Reader-centric writing: Put the reader first when writing your stories. Consider what they want to know and how you can best communicate your message.
Value to the reader: Your story should be informative and engaging. It should provide the reader with something new or valuable to learn. We don’t accept copy and paste from the web or generative AI tools.
Clarity and readability: Your writing should be easy to understand and follow. Our readers expect simple language and explanation of technical or scientific terms.
Valuable reading experience: Your writing should be a pleasure to read. It should be well-organized and easy to follow. Submit stories that you want to read yourself.
Honesty in writing: Our readers expect truthful and accurate content. Your story shouldn’t mislead or deceive the reader. Honesty and integrity are our key values in all ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications.
Rigorous content: Your writing should be well-researched and supported by evidence. In addition to telling the reader what you think, you may also show them why you think so.
Self-editing for error-free submissions: Take the time to self-edit your work carefully before submitting it. This will help you catch language errors. Your submission should be free of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.
Proper formatting: Your draft should be formatted correctly and be appealing to the eye. This includes using the correct font, size, and proper headings. Photos in your drafts should be relevant to the topic and appropriate for the audience. Please check our photo handling policy.
No AI-Generated Content: Except for the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION, our publications don’t accept AI-generated content. You may learn about our AI writing policy.
Please use our standard checklist before submitting your stories.
Before submitting your stories to SYNERGY, we recommend using the following checklist to ensure your work aligns with our publication standards, delights our readers, and increases your stories’ visibility and income. After gaining experience, you may not need this checklist after a while.
Level 1: A Practical Checklist for Content Quality Improvement
I’ve created a simplified, comprehensive, condensed guide (A4 size) for aspiring storytellers, essay writers, and…medium.com
I also created a comprehensive checklist for advanced writers to take their writing to the next level. This extended checklist is an option, but it might increase the chance of your stories being selected for a boost by the platform.
New Writers: Enhance the Chance of Boosting By Using This Checklist
A comprehensive checklist and guide for aspiring writers and bloggers planning to write online writing platforms based…medium.com
Practical Ideas for Beginners to Improve the Quality of Drafts Before Submitting to SYNERGY
Improving the quality of your stories is a continuous journey, and several practical approaches exist to consider. Here are some valuable tips.
1 — Familiarize yourself with Medium’s distribution guidelines
2 — Get your sroies reviewed by your fellow writers or friends
3 — Use language and editing tools like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor
4 — Submit as a draft
5 — Study Curated, Boosted, and Viral High-Quality Stories and Learn from Experienced Writers. Here is a sample boosted story collection.
Analyzing curated, high-quality, boosted, and viral stories can provide you with valuable lessons in style, presentation, and content.
Our volunteer editors curated numerous volumes containing hundreds of stories across various topics. They usually publish them from our pub accounts like ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curators, or ILLUMINATION Amplifiers. Here are two new sample curated collections prepared by Mike Broadly, DHSc and Aiden (Owner of Illumination Gaming).
I wrote many stories to guide new writers. You may find some of them in the attached list.
Writing, Content Development & Marketing Strategy Guides
As pubication topics, you may tag Synergy, Illumination, and Curated Newsletters in your stories to aggregate them on the topic pages on Medium for readers to find them easily and for search engines to index them easily.
Meet the Editors of SYNERGY
These editors are all writers like you. You can connect with them on our Slack workspace.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Dr. Preeti Singh, Dr. Gabriella Korosi, Lanu Pitan, John Cunningham, Britni Pepper, Josh Balerite Acol, Brooklyn Muse (editor), Suzanne E., Poornima Verghese-Ram, Surekha Chandrasekhar, Aiden (Illumination Gaming), Elin Melaas, The Sturg, Indra Raj Pathak, Joanie Adams, Nuno Campos, Ntathu Allen (she/her), Annie Wegner, Philip Writes, Sobaan Saeed, tarun bhatt, You, Me and Happiness, Mike Broadly — Healthier Lifestyle, Kim Petersen, T. Cagliari, Sylvain Zyssman, Charlie J 🕊️, Satrio Jagad, Marcus Musick, Aiden (Owner of Illumination Gaming),ILLUMINATION, and ILLUMINATION-Curators.
Some of these editors have profiles, so you can learn more about their backgrounds from the Collection of Editor Profiles.
Invitation to New Writers
ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications are inclusive and diverse, supporting 32,000+ contributors. Different levels of writers, from absolute beginners to the most accomplished ones, delight our readers with their educative and engaging content. To join our vibrant publications, please send a request via this link. We will help you gain visibility and succeed as a writer on Medium. Please mention the publication name with your Medium account ID in the request.
ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications include:
ILLUMINATION, Curated Newsletters, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters, The Lampshade of ILLUMINATION, Technology Hits, SYNERGY, Readers Hope, Illumination on YouTube, Illumination Gaming, ILLUMINATION Health & Science, Integrated Healthcare, Substack Mastery, ILLUMINATION’s Blog, EUPHORIA by Dr Mehmet Yildiz
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life. I look forward to your feedback on refining the first version of this submission guidelines. As I use my main account for newsletter activities, I created a new account to support my readers within my expertise areas from the following account.
End of Guidelines
Conclusions and Takeaways for News Writers
Change is inevitable, and embracing it is essential for growth. As platforms evolve, so do reader expectations and writers’ capabilities. Our ability to adapt is what will keep us thriving.
We all face setbacks, criticism, and rejections. These are normal human behaviors. The important thing is to reframe them, forgive, let go, and move on toward our goals. For example, recently, some sour grapes started rumors that I am leaving Medium, and opportunist scammers used it as a tool to deceive my readers. But I forgave all and moved on.
So, despite these challenges, I remain steadfast in my mission to empower writers and readers by cross-pollinating them to build a resilient community on Medium and beyond. I am happy with the joy and pain of my community work. So, I invite you to join me on this exciting journey.
The new submission guidelines for ILLUMINATION are still a draft designed to evolve alongside our community. We remain flexible and ready to introduce new rules and services that better support our writers and readers on both Medium and Substack.
I view publications as powerful tools for nurturing creativity and connection — not as commercial entities but as community-driven initiatives managed by dedicated volunteers.
Medium and Substack are both exceptional communities on their own, but by uniting them, we can achieve our shared goals more effectively. I created multiple community resources on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Quora, and Reddit.
I am thrilled to announce my latest bestselling book, Substack Mastery, designed to guide writers through this exciting journey. To ensure its value, I am sharing free versions of the chapters across multiple platforms for beta readers. However, due to algorithmic restrictions, these chapters have only reached a select few so far. Don’t miss out — explore the insights and strategies from my hard-learned lessons from the free resources I published.
Links to Available Chapters of Substack Mastery Book for Beta Readers
Preface of “Substack Mastery” for Beta Readers, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapters 12
I wrote these submission guidelines myself in my busy schedule as a way to give back to the writing community, as I owe my success to my mentors. Mentorship and collaboration can enhance our knowledge, make awareness and skill-building easy, and make the journey enjoyable on different platforms.
I wrote several books and stories like this for writers and readers and linked them to a list titled Writing, Content Development & Marketing Strategies. I will distill them in my newsletter Content Strategy, Development, & Marketing Insights on Substak. You can contact me directly via this portal on my website.
I also interview writers to introduce them to my audience. You can contact me if you want to be interviewed. You can find samples in the attached collection.
Our New Strategy Is to Integrate Medium with Substack
Having served on Medium for years and recently recognizing Substack’s value for writers, I am excited about the synergy between these two powerful platforms. We are now dedicated to empowering our community to leverage both effectively for maximum impact.
Our research reveals that 46% of writers are eager to use the strengths of both platforms for a competitive edge. To support this ambition, we are rolling out new publications and policies tailored to enhance your experience. Stay tuned for how we’re turning this vision into reality.
To kickstart this integration, we have launched a new publication called Substack Mastery. This is a hub for writers to introduce their Substack newsletters, share their progress and experiences, and attract new readers from Medium — or bring their Substack audience over to Medium. These platforms aren’t competitors but collaborators, each empowering writers uniquely.
Another key initiative is the Curated Newsletter publication, which I covered in a previous story. This publication is designed to showcase writers’ newsletters, helping them find new readers and potentially convert these readers into newsletter subscribers.
Our curators will feature the profiles and newsletters of our contributors on both platforms, enabling cross-pollination among writers and creating a more collaborative, enriched community.
Additionally, we are introducing a new blogging environment on my website to enhance the visibility of Medium stories and Substack newsletters. This approach will boost SEO, making it easier for readers to discover content through search engines and increasing the likelihood of converting visitors into newsletter subscribers.
We are also launching a new video and podcasting service on our community YouTube channel, further expanding the reach and visibility of our writers’ work across multiple mediums.
To this end, our hardworking and brilliant team has now created a Substack YouTube channel to leverage the power of videos, audio, storytelling, and blogging. Our media coordinator Aiden (Owner of Illumination Gaming) will be leading this initiative.
Aiden created a short video with some descriptions of the services we will provide. Join our exciting journey to reap the benefits of community spirit. Please subscribe to our Substack Channel to get Cuated Content from Experienced WritersPlease subscribe to our Substack Channel to get Cuated Content from Experienced Writers.
Here’s Aiden’s introduction to this service in a recent story: How to Use the ILLUMINATION Substack Mastery YouTube Channel to Grow Your Audience
Here is how to apply for the guest blogger and writer position on my website.
Empowering Creators Through a Three-Tier Service Offering Giving a Privilege to Freelancer and Content Entrepreneurs
To meet our goals, I developed a three-tier service offering tailored for creators, freelance writers, and entrepreneurs. Our senior editor, Mike Broadly, DHSc, articulated the details in a bulletin titled, The Strategic Move: ILLUMINATION Community’s Commercial Arm for Charitable Success.
I have outlined the value proposition and implementation details in a blog post on my website. This new structure is designed to empower writers at three levels and enhance collaboration.
For instance, funds collected from tiers 2 and 3 will be used to support creators who cannot afford subscription fees, ensuring that financial barriers do not hinder their creative journey.
One of our goals is to give gift vouchers to those writers and readers who cannot afford Medium membership or subscription fee to powerful Substack newsletters for their personal and professional growth.
I identified when promoting Friends of Medium nine months ago from my secondary curation account, i noticed over 8000 writers who are not members of Medium.com and cannot be part of the Medium Partner program. We want to empower these writers through the commercial arm of our organization. We are now pleased that Medium supports 77 new countries for MPP via Stripe.
Here are our draft service definitions for creators, freelance writers, and content entrepreneurs. We will explain the details in our upcoming newsletter. Here’s a high-level illustration of my proposal.
One of our key charitable goals is to assist readers who cannot afford a Medium membership. We plan to gift them paid memberships and help them subscribe to select Substack newsletters, aiding their professional development and growth.
Our administrators have informed me of an exciting milestone. We now have 115 founding members supporting ILLUMINATION’s Substack Mastery Program. I am deeply grateful for their generous contributions, which reflect their belief in our vision and mission.
In return for their unwavering support, I commit to reciprocating their generosity — multiplied many times. This means finding creative and meaningful ways to give back to our community through opportunities, mentorship, and growth.
These funds are a critical asset in helping us expand the ILLUMINATION community, ensuring greater diversity, inclusion, and equality. With this support, we will continue to promote an environment where creators, freelance writers, entrepreneurs, and innovators from all backgrounds can thrive and make their voices heard.
Thank you to each founding member. Your investment empowers us to build a stronger, more vibrant community that champions creativity and excellence for all.
If you are a new reader, you may check out some of my topics, including the brain, mental health, cognitive function, significant health conditions, longevity, nutrition/food, valuable nutrients, ketogenic lifestyle, self-healing, weight management, writing/reading, including 100+ Insightful Life Lessons from My Circles for the Last 50+ Years.
I publish my health and wellness stories on EUPHORIA and share distilled versions on SUBSTACK. My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experiences, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.
If you are a writer, you are welcome to join my publications by sending a request via this link. I support 32K writers who contribute to my publications on this platform. You can contact me via my website. I also have another profile to write and curate tech stories. Friend Links to My Sample Boosted Stories for Non-Members of Medium.
You can read the distilled version of this story on Substack for free.
You are welcome to join the ILLUMINATION Community on Medium and Substack and our education tool, Substack Mastery, curated by ILLUMINATION-Curators. Here is the Importance and Value of Medium Friendship for Writers and Readers
Join me on Substack, where I offer experience-based content on health, content strategy, and technology topics to inform and inspire my readers.
Get an email whenever Dr Mehmet Yildiz publishes. He is a top writer and editor on Medium.
dr-mehmet-yildiz.medium.com
Membership Tiers and Benefits
This story was initially published at DigitalMehmet.com. My blogs and website offer free access to inspiring and educational stories for freelancers and content entrepreneurs. Please use this portal to contact me with inquiries and feedback.
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