10 Hard Truths About Making It on Medium

From someone who’s been doing it for two years

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about writing or making money on Medium, and there are reasons for that. For one thing, I’ve been battling an awful case of pneumonia along with some chronic anemia that’s simply left me with little energy to spare on anything that isn’t absolutely essential.

As it turns out, that sort of writing isn’t essential for me. Sure, I like being helpful. I want people to know dreams do come true, and success on Medium may be hard but not impossible.

There are perks to being transparent. But there are some downsides, too.

For instance, it’s never fun to be hated when some folks take your experiences on the platform and paint them into something ugly. It’s not fun to feel some friendships strain when your results aren’t the same or even similar. It doesn’t feel great when I realize that another writer has wordlessly blocked me, unfriended me, or otherwise cut ties.

Writing is a vulnerable thing, and despite my Aspie social awkwardness, I wear my heart on my sleeves.

You can be as transparent as you want to be, but somebody is always going to get you wrong or misinterpret your words. Someone will always be there to decide your work is trash.

This is true for any writer regardless of the platform, their success, or even the topics they write about. However, there seems to be a special sort of hatred reserved for writers who reach a modicum of success, and, suffice it to say, I just haven’t felt like dealing with all of that excess baggage for a while.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should feel sorry for me because writing about success on Medium can lead to drama. Actually, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me at all. What I want you to understand is you have a right (and, really, a responsibility) to protect your mental health as a writer. No one else is going to do it for you.

So if you sometimes find yourself not wanting to write about certain topics because they seem to drain you or perhaps invite some drama, it’s good to listen to your gut. We all deserve to find a way to honor our true selves with our work, rather than getting stressed out over things like going viral or even appealing to the masses. Some of us (that includes me) will never, ever appeal to the masses.

That said, although it’s been a long time since I wrote about success on Medium, today, I finally felt the timing was right to revisit the topic again.

After many discussions with other writers and two years on the platform myself, these are the hard truths I think every Medium writer must face.

1. You’re Not Paid Per View

Why, oh why do veteran Medium writers continue to talk about how much they earn or used to earn per view? I don’t know. I honestly don’t get it and feel it only confuses new or struggling writers.

Recently, I’ve read more than one Medium story where a writer says their earnings have decreased, and they kept talking about “pays per view.” What pays per view?

Medium has never paid writers per view. Seriously, never. Toward the end of October 2019, they moved the payment model from claps over to reading time.

It doesn’t matter if your story has 500,000 views. If most of those viewers aren’t paying members or if they only skim your story for six seconds, you’re not going to make bank. I wish folks were more clear on this because I often hear writers complain Medium pays terribly low per view, but that’s an inaccurate statement when views aren’t a part of the payout at all.

I don’t think this is a bad thing. It’s more like an it is how it is kind of thing. The whole purpose of reading time as the major decider of earnings is obvious. It’s an effort to reward the stories readers spend time on — not just the stories they skim and clap for.

2. You’re Being Paid to Hold a Reader’s Interest.

Writing on Medium is about more than simply writing a good article. I really believe that. You can write a proficient story but have no voice shine through.

In fact, you can do absolutely everything right, but that extremely well-written and carefully detailed 2,000-word article might still only get a minute of average reading time. Sometimes, it’s the topic. Readers simply aren’t into what you cover. Or the right readers haven’t found your story. At other times, it’s the type of piece that lends itself to a shorter reading time.

A listicle, for instance, must be highly entertaining for a reader to stick with it for much more than a minute. Many advice stories also seem to be made for skimming.

Of course, there’s also the obvious issue that people today do tend to skim more than they read, and they often go through enormous amounts of content in short periods of time. Even when you’re offering highly valuable content, that’s not a guarantee your readers are going to slow down and read it carefully.

Lots of readers want to get in, get the information they’re looking for, and get out. In a nutshell, not all readers are truly readers.

Especially online.

Since your earnings are directly related to member reading time, what you’re actually being paid for is holding your reader’s attention.

In such a noisy world, I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind as you write.

3. There’s No Formula for How Much an Hour of Reading Time Is Worth

Based on everything Medium tells us about the partner program, we can be sure there are many moving pieces in the way our earnings get tabulated. Just off the top of my head, some of the variables include how many writers are publishing in the MPP and how often. It very likely matters how many paid members Medium has in a given month and how many stories each user reads.

I see some writers pour over their stats and obsess over how much a minute or hour of reading time is worth. They get frustrated if the number doesn’t match up among each story.

But honestly, that’s to be expected. Different members may read more stories than others. They may skim more or less than others too. Remember, you also get an undisclosed cut of money if a reader becomes a member within 30 days.

So that’s an awful lot of variables, just off the top of my head. I think it’s fruitless to obsess over your stats or worry about what the formula for payment might be.

Whatever it is, it’s subject to change. And it’s far better to accept what we don’t know and then work on the stuff we can actually control.

Like our own work.

4. It Takes Time to Build an Audience, and That Progress Isn’t Always Linear

When I first got started on Medium (April 25, 2018), I spent a lot of time watching certain writers because I wanted to emulate their success.

For a long time, I thought if I could simply reach x amount of followers, I’d be set. Well.

Earlier this month I reached 25,000 followers on Medium. It’s a nice milestone to be done in less than two years, sure. But what I’ve learned is it certainly doesn’t mean I’ve got it made.

The truth is my earnings don’t fluctuate nearly as much as other writers I know on Medium, but I believe that’s partly because I expect those fluctuations to occur and work accordingly. And I don’t let a few bad months bring me down.

Follower counts really don’t seem to mean a lot on Medium because engagement varies. From what I’ve seen, nobody is immune to the ebb and flow, and no one can coast on just a handful of stories for long.

Under the best case scenario, you’ll have periods of growth, some stagnation, and even some failures. Building a following successfully requires you hang tight through all of it and keep writing.

5. Yes, You Have to Keep Writing

Real talk. I have days where it feels just impossible to keep going. I wake up and think, what the heck am I going to write about now, tomorrow, and next week? Normally, I’m a fan of big-picture thinking, but there are days when it all feels like too much.

The good news is I love writing, and when I take it one day at a time, I invariably find my groove again.

In case you missed it, this is all about consistency. Breaking into that small percentage of Medium writers who earn a full-time living requires consistency.

It’s not enough to want it.

You have to do the work, and accept the uncertainty that comes with it, too.

Truthfully? This isn’t unique to writing on Medium. Consistency and uncertainty are natural aspects of being a writer anywhere.

6. You Might Be Fencing Yourself In

One of the best things about Medium is you get to experiment with what works for you. I can tell you that in two years on this platform, I’ve found the topics other writers claim are destined for success on Medium aren’t all that great for me.

In particular, self-help articles and stories about Medium are typically not very lucrative for me. Even sex stories, which have long held a reputation for paying out, are typically not my biggest money makers.

That doesn’t mean other writers’ experiences aren’t valid. Those topics might be extremely lucrative for you. The problem is there’s no way to know unless you do plenty of experimenting.

For a long time, I’ve said success on Medium means finding your sweet spot: that place where the stories you’re good at writing, the stories you like or want to write, and the stories that enough Medium readers want to read all intersect.

You might miss your sweet spot if you don’t experiment enough to hone your voice and figure out what stories work best for you. I hear some folks complain that Medium only wants to hear stories like “Five Ways to dot dot dot.” However, such stories do not work out for a lot of us.

You won’t know, however, until you unbox yourself and seriously experiment. And I don’t mean writing one different sort of story and then getting bummed out when it goes nowhere.

You need to be consistent. Even about your experiments. Trying something once — or even a couple of times — doesn’t count.

What’s that childhood expression … try and try again? That applies on Medium, too. Successful writers find a balance between knowing when to keep up an experiment and when to call it quits.

7. There Will Always Be a Bit of Luck Involved

I’ve had months where virtually every story was curated, but that still couldn’t make every one of those stories soar. Nobody who’s writing on Medium really knows why some curated stories pick up plenty of steam and get widely distributed while other pretty much languish and get seen by very few users.

Things like luck and timing matter in every corner of the writing world, and Medium is no exception. Some of my best-performing stories have been real shockers; they’re not always the pieces that are nearest or dearest to my heart.

Some stories simply resonate with a lot of readers (or become controversial to many), and the timing happens to work.

One thing that seems difficult for a lot of Medium writers to understand is when one person’s story does well that doesn’t mean it’s overrated or unfair. It doesn’t mean other stories by other writers don’t matter either. What happens to catch on online is wildly unpredictable.

You increase your chances of getting lucky when you show up and pay attention to the stories readers want most from you.

P.S. You’re lucky if you can find a place where the money, passion, and engagement all meet, but there will always be certain aspects you can’t control.

8. You’re Going to Fail — A Lot

It doesn’t matter who you are, but if you’re a writer, you’re going to experience your own set of failures. There will be times when you’re positive a certain route is the right one for you, but eventually you’ll discover it simply isn’t working.

Maybe you’ll try things off Medium that don’t pan out the way you hoped they would. Perhaps you’ll overestimate your own ability to consistently perform certain tasks. You might have great ideas for your work on Medium, but those ideas never catch on.

It’s important to quit seeing those failures as negatives. Let your failures guide you and better define your path. If you look around Medium, you’ll see the platform itself has gone through many changes: new collections, new columns, new directions. They don’t all last.

The same thing goes for some of the biggest writers. They take risks that don’t always pan out.

If you fail at one thing, that doesn’t mean you have to fail at all the things. Be courageous enough to keep working even after a setback. Don’t sell yourself short just because you need to shift gears.

The most successful writers on (and off) Medium can change directions when they need to. This is also related to adaptability and not only acceptance.

9. You Can’t Have Anyone’s Success But Your Own

There have been plenty of times when I wished I could be as successful as so and so. It’s been easy to imagine other people’s writing success as simply done or even coasting.

But writing is hard work, and I daresay that nobody ever actually coasts into it. If they did, they wouldn’t be able to stay there for long.

I’ve been writing here for two years now and fairly quickly turned it into a full-time job. There are definitely moments when I wish I had the financial results of writers like Tim Denning or the mass appeal of Kris Gage, John Gorman, or Jessica Wildfire. I wish I could write a story filled with thought-provoking quotes and have it blow up like something from Ryan Holiday or Ayodeji Awosika.

There’s a whole brood of Medium writers succeeding in their own way, and I’d love to recreate their results. But the reality is I’ve got to work with the uniqueness that is in me.

I wish I could convince you to believe in your own journey and quit worrying about what everyone else is doing. This is such an important aspect of success. You have to do what you can do.

10. This Isn’t a Popularity Contest

Hear me out on this one. Success on Medium really isn’t about who’s popular and who’s not. In fact, I’d argue you’ve got to be willing to be unpopular here to truly do well.

Holding a reader’s interest means having something to say, and you’ve got to face the fact that not everyone will like it. Some of my most lucrative posts have inspired the most hate mail. Strangers routinely message me over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and email to tell me how stupid I am for writing a story they didn’t like.

Plenty of people write in to “educate” me.

There are always going to be people who don’t like you, and the better you do on Medium, the worse it may get. Last year, I got into a very uncomfortable and unwanted writer’s war with somebody who felt I was too “pro Medium.” They and their friends went out of their way to criticize and harass me and assure me that my days were numbered here.

A year later, I’m still here. I’ve had my ups and downs, but the overall trajectory has been growth — yet the only way I’ve gotten to this point is by accepting my unpopularity. I can accept being disliked when it means I keep doing what I love and supporting my daughter.

Back in January, when I wrote about my stats being in a depressing free fall, I received plenty of feedback telling me that I was no longer a good writer, that I was boring, choosing the wrong topics, or suffering from my own success.

Something I’ve felt early on as a writer is many people want to see a single mom succeed, but they also don’t want to see her succeed too much. I don’t know if it’s a subconscious effect of the patriarchy, but a surprising amount of people get offended by a single mom earning anywhere near $100,000/year by writing online.

It’s absurd because every freelancer knows that earning so much as a self-employed or contract writer isn’t nearly the same as making that much as a legal employee with benefits. But when it comes to other people making money, it’s very easy to get emotional.

I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t care who thinks my writing sucks or even who finds it overrated. And if I took in all the (often conflicting) criticism I receive, I’d never be able to keep writing.

So please, get over the idea you need to be liked by everybody to be successful here. Claps aren’t paying your bills (or buying that coffee). Popularity comes with claps and comments from people who don’t actually read your stories but are hoping you’ll clap for them too.

Success happens when people read your work because they can glean something from it, not because they’re out looking for a tit for tat.

Conclusion

So there you have it. These are my thoughts and advice after two years of “making it on Medium.” These are also my thoughts after taking my time to finally adjust to the new earnings model.

I absolutely believe great financial success is possible on Medium, but you do have to be quite single-minded about the endeavor. You also have to go your own way as necessary, which means take my advice with a grain of salt. These principles work for me. Some may or may not work for you.

At the end of the day, the best thing you can do for yourself on Medium is to pay attention and learn how to forge your own path. There’s a ton of advice on the platform for writers, but it’s worth noting that some of it may never be right for you.

And that’s perfectly natural. You need to own your path.

Keep writing, and pay attention when you do.