When is The Best Time to Publish for Me on Medium

I have hit that button for myself more than 1,000 times

I think I've got an idea of what is best for me. This article will be set in EST time zone or called Eastern Time (ET) or New York City timeframe.

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Publishing time does matter for the most part.

I started writing online not too long ago, at the end of 2023.

For me, it was a side hustle back then because it provided an attractive income flow that I thought would only grow and scale higher like a normal gig that you make more by doing more.

That’s gone well for about a year, and things have changed to the point where it no longer matters since repetitive work has always been valued less wherever you go.

At the time, I was writing at night around midnight and generally published my article around 2–3 am.

For the first month, it was crickets, just everyone else who thinks they are going to hit viral when they first started.

The shift happened, and viral came a month later

At the time, I had no idea what was going viral. But I know what a lot of engagement and attention look like from other articles.

After going viral for about 2 weeks, I kept the same publishing schedule of posting one article a day at around the same time.

I never really took advantage of the morning or afternoon posting, as that time is when I have to go to work or during my job.

I’m assuming I was being shined by the algorithm back then, but there was a key component for the continuation of the traffic.

When you go viral, there are generally a ton of comments, so I reply to each of them as I publish my new article, and also backlink my older article to the new one.

Both are something I haven’t been doing since I have chosen to use my time on review articles and accounts, or reply to the comments.

I do still read all the comments and try to at least clap.

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Publishing schedule I follow right now in 2025

Since now I’m also cross-posting on Substack, I generally still prefer publishing at night around 12–2 AM.

If I don’t have a new article, I would choose one that I haven’t posted over there, as I want to keep it to one article a day over there.

I have been trying out morning publishing from 7–9 AM, it has worked well, and often the engagement is a lot stronger at this time period.

Yet, that is the time I need to wake up and get ready for work, and if I have extra time, I do try to publish an article from the publication at that time.

I still think that is the best time from the few articles that I have tried; it worked well.

I often publish something in the morning after 10–11 AM, which is not what I prefer, but I just sent it out anyway.

These articles are from my train ride since I do not prewrite my articles or know what I’ll be writing for the next one.

The next best time will be around 12–2 PM

This time period has surprisingly done well, as this is like lunchtime for me. I used to get a few viral articles when hitting publish then.

Like the one that got suspended, or some random breaking news.

Those articles are all based on the short attention span of focus. And are often written in 10–20 minutes.

Sometimes, I think if I just wait for a few hours, everything would be much better, and I don’t have to write that much.

The main reason for that is to have something out there fresh for the reader to read.

Since I know articles have a very short life span.

When some articles are working well, I let them run, but that doesn’t happen that often.

If all this does not fit your time, and we know that when submission to publication, it’s hard to control when it is going to be published.

I try my best to publish articles during this time; if not, then they will go out in the order it was received.

Thanks for Reading

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This story was originally published on [Medium] and is cross-posted here for a wider audience.

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