24 Stories and 3 Months on Medium: Earnings, Stats, Reflections

What I learned in three months on Medium and reflections on my three best earning stories so far

I just finished my third month on Medium.

At least, my third month of being an active writer (I became a member over a year ago and published my first story on February 26, 2021).

Throughout these months, I wasn’t exactly consistent in writing and publishing.

My aim was to try and publish at least 2–3 times each week. But I only succeeded in doing this in my first month, in which I published 11 stories.

In my second month, I published 7 stories.

And in my third month, I published a total of 5 stories.

What’s interesting is that I almost tripled my income in my second month, even though I published less. And in May, I managed to earn about the same amount of money as I did in April, despite having only published 4 stories:

My earnings in March, April, and May

So what did I earn exactly?

In March I earned: $29.53 (with 11 stories)

In April I earned: $85.56 (with 7 new stories)

In May I earned: $84.91 (with 4 new stories)

I’m still not earning crazy amounts of money. But I’m happy with it.

And, as I wrote in my story about my first four weeks on Medium, what has been more important to me, is the feedback I got on my stories and the interaction with other readers and writers.

But it’s still interesting to see which stories earn money (and which stories don’t). In its own way, it provides very helpful feedback, as it's often directly related to the amount of time that people spend reading the stories.

And, of course, as a freelance writer who’s just starting out, it’s also nice to be able to make some money on Medium!

My three best earning stories so far

In three months, I’ve now earned a total of:

$200,09

As I think is normal on Medium, most of the money came from my top-earning stories (even though I still didn’t have a story that went viral or one that outperformed the others by a really large margin).

So what were the three stories that earned me the most after three months?

My third best-earning story

My third-best earning story is a story titled My Morning Routine as a Freelance Writer.

In this story, I discuss my freelance morning routine and the four productivity hacks that I use to get more done in the morning.

The story was published on April 30. So far it has made me:

$18,51.

Here’s the story:

And here are the stats:

My second best-earning story

My second-best earning story is a story titled Starting as a Full-Time Freelance Writer With No Financial Safety Net.

This story is about starting out as a full-time freelance writer without having a financial safety net to fall back on.

I discuss the five things I did that helped me become more financially resilient during my first few months as a full-time freelancer.

The story was published in April. So far it has made me:

$23,83.

Here’s the story:

And here are the stats:

My best-earning story

The story that has made me the most money so far is a story titled Atomic Habits: What Happened When I Started These Daily Mini Habits.

It’s a story about how I started two daily mini habits (inspired by the book Atomic Habits).

In the story, I describe the Four Laws of Behavior Change and how I applied them to my daily habits.

The story was published in March, but it was still my best-earning story in April, which proves the point that stories can continue to earn money and that consistency and quantity matter on Medium.

So far, the story has made me:

$37,62

Which is quite a lot more than the rest of my stories, so I was very pleased with it.

Here’s the story:

And the stats:

Some reflections

So what did I learn so far?

• You don’t need viral stories or outliers to make money on Medium. I know that a story with 705 views and 10 hours of reading time hasn’t come even close to going viral, but it still made me almost 40 dollars so far.
• Distribution does seem to have an effect (for me, at least). All my best-earning stories were distributed. Of course, correlation isn’t causation. They might have also performed well because they were published in a large publication (The Writing Cooperative).
• My personal stories about my own freelancing journey seem to be performing well. I’m sure not everyone can relate to these stories, but they’re still being read, and they’ve been getting positive feedback, which is really encouraging.

I’m looking forward to the next months. :)

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