3 Practical Changes That Got Me Into the $100 Club on Medium
What I wish I knew at the start
Ever since childhood, writing has always been a natural way for me to express myself and connect with the world. That’s why when I discovered Medium, it was truly an experience of finding treasure.
To get paid for touching the lives of people through my words was literally a dream come true that the first month I’ve made over $2, I printed out the e-mail, and framed it.
So you may guess how much it aligned with my inner compass to spend my days writing and making a living out of it.
That’s why joining the $100 club on Medium has truly been a source of joy.
Today I’d like to share with you my experience, and the 3 practical changes that got me into the $100 club, and these were:
1-Reading more
2-Working on my titles, as much as I work on the article
3-Pritiosing to write more
1-Reading more
I watched countless hours of interviews of famous writers, and although each writer has their own unique advice, a common theme of them all is to “read more” to write better.
Theoretically, it was not hard to understand why they would keep advice this over and over again, but in practice I found myself preferring to write over reading. One of the reasons why for that was due to me studying engineering and having a very busy schedule, but after I graduated, I finally had time to give reading one more chance.
That’s when I realized, reading did not only broaden my perspective but also it gave me more inspiration than I could ever write about. So after this realization, I decided to make time for reading whether it was when I was doing the dishes, or when I was painting, I put on my audiobook and listened to it.
By doing so, I’ve been improving my own life by the things I’ve learned, and also the content of my own writing has enrichened, and thus I enjoy writing even more.
2-Working on my title, as much as I work on the article
As a new writer, titles used to seem like a simple piece of my articles, but they actually are the door to whatever house you built, and thus it is essential to choose an enterable one.
The title should summarize the value you are promising to give in an interesting way. This way, more readers can find your article interesting and give it a chance.
3-Pritiosing to write more
At the beginning of my Medium journey, as I was getting used to writing often, it was quite hard to decide how many hours I needed to work on an article, and when I should start a new one. Sometimes I would keep editing the same article for days, and days but still not be satisfied with it.
The dilemma was that I wanted to produce quality content for my readers, but this way, the quantity was lower than what I expected. Also, the amount of time put into an article was not the promise of it being a successful article, and thus I knew that something had to change.
This went on like this until one day, I read an article by Katharine Chan, and in her article, she advised: “thinking less, and writing more.”. This sentence shifted my mindset immediately because I realized that only %20 of the time I spent writing an article, I was actually writing. The rest was spent by me thinking and editing unnecessarily.
This made me feel like I was increasing the quality of my writing but it actually was only me procrastinating instead of spending the actual effort on writing.
So after understanding this, I decided to prioritize writing more, and due to this, the number of my articles has increased and with each one, I was able to write better.
This way, I was able to avoid procrastinating, increase the quality of my articles, and enjoy the process of writing more as I didn’t feel stuck with one piece more than needed.
Final thoughts
Everyone’s writing journey is unique, and today I wanted to share with you how mine has been going recently.
Thank you for reading.
-E.K.
