Medium Publication

Half a day burned, one story salvaged.

The Brunch Effect

Promoting on YouTube through videos was tedious and no fun, but writing was tedious yet enjoyable.

So It’s been 10 months since I started writing my dev diary on Google Blogger, but I never turned on the “allow search engines” setting — so adding the property to Google Search Console did nothing.
In March 2026 I finally enabled search visibility on Blogger, but Search Console still hasn’t indexed it.
Since Google didn’t seem interested in my Blogger, I became a Brunch writer instead.
Naver’s the same story — no interest in my Naver Blog, and Daum has no interest in my Tistory either.
Anyway, ever since becoming a Brunch writer, searching “Soosooland” on Naver now shows my Brunch post in 3rd place.

Starting to Write on Medium

Soosooland was built from the start with English-speaking users in mind — every game was made in English too — but I still don’t have many overseas users.
So my daughter suggested I try posting on Medium to promote Soosooland. Since posting too often apparently isn’t great either, I currently have two posts up.
On Brunch, a post gets heavy exposure for about the first 10 hours after publishing, but Medium’s exposure works differently, apparently. So far I’ve gotten 4 claps — someone must have read it.

Trying My Hand at Medium Publications

Medium sends me an email every day. I showed today's email to Claude, and as we got to talking, Claude suggested submitting my writing to a publication to get more exposure.

To find a publication to submit to, I searched "startup," and the top publication had 88.8k subscribers. The first article I saw was about someone buying a $200 AI and firing a $60,000 developer (the numbers aren't exact). It didn't feel like a good fit for what I write, so I searched "indie game dev journal" instead.

I looked through several publications, and usually the editor was the only writer, with just a handful of posts and around 10 followers. I checked a few more, and they were all about the same size.

Then I found a publication called Indie Game Devs. It looked active, with multiple contributors. But I couldn't find a way to apply. The About page listed the editor's contact as an X (Twitter) account, so I signed up for X myself — but when I came back after signing up, the editor's account seemed to have vanished. Maybe I'd misread it.

Looking again, the most recent post was from 2014 — the publication had shut down long ago. I'd signed up for X for nothing.

The first post I saw on X was inflammatory content stirring up racial division and misunderstanding, and it seemed bad for my mental health, so I decided to quit. Since I hadn't finished entering the verification info, I just logged out instead — apparently the account gets auto-deleted after six months.

Applying to a Medium Publication

But that evening, I went back to Medium and happened to check the profile of someone who'd given 4 claps to my Omok devlog. He turned out to be a developer with 15 years of experience, regularly publishing on a publication called Level Up Coding. Level Up Coding has 340K followers, and its About page stated plainly: if you want to publish your coding-related writing on the publication, just submit an application by email.

So I sent the Level Up Coding editor an email with a short introduction of myself and a link to my Medium post. In the end, the answer had been sitting with the person who'd clapped for my post all along. I'm curious how he even found my post in the first place.

If I could get published on Level Up Coding, a lot more people could read my work. Since it's a publication with a lot of followers, I'd guess there are plenty of applicants too. The review process is probably strict, so it might take some time. I'm waiting for good news.

A Miraculous Turn of Events

Adding this on August 26th. I was cleaning out my inbox when I happened to wander into my spam folder — and there it was, a reply from Level Up Coding. The date on it: August 15th. For over ten days, that email had just been sitting there quietly in spam.

The truth is, after I sent in my application, so much time passed without a response that I'd already given up hope. I figured a publication that size would obviously pass on someone who isn't a native English speaker. With 340,000 followers, I assumed there'd be plenty of applicants, and that a piece from someone like me wouldn't have much of a shot at getting picked.

But when I opened the email, it was an acceptance. I read it over several times, still not quite believing it. I think what tipped things in my favor was Claude translating my spare, simple writing into something polished enough to read like it came from a native New Yorker.

I've now published all eight of the pieces I'd already posted on Medium to Level Up Coding. There's something strange about finding out, after the fact, that something you'd already given up on had actually happened all along. It's bedtime, but I'm too wound up to sleep.

🪄 Written by Soosoo, translated by Claude