5 Lessons I Learned From My First $500 Medium Month
I made nearly $2000 in three months.
I made my first $100 on Medium this past July.
The compound effect kicked in shortly afterwards — and boy did it kick in hard. I made almost $2000 between the months of September and November, and this, coupled with plenty of beer-fuelled late-night soul searching, prompted me to take the leap; as of a few weeks ago, I am officially a full-time writer. Here are my stats:
I’m not writing this to show off — God knows plenty of writers make much more dough than I do. I’m writing this with the hope to inspire. My idea is that if a newbie Singaporean writer like me can make some neat money off Medium, then you can, too.
Here are 5 lessons I’ve learned from making my first $500 on Medium. If applied, they will help you make some real cash with your words.
Play By Medium’s Rules
Funnily enough, I’m breaking one of them right now — don’t write about Medium. Articles about Medium are automatically excluded from curation.
The catch is I know this. I’m not writing this particular article to make tons of money or to get curated. I’m writing this in a bid to be transparent with my readers, to show them how I’ve gotten from here to there. If you look at my usual work, most of them are articles on self-improvement, writing or entrepreneurship — all popular topics on Medium and online writing in general.
The 3 subjects that are massive on Medium are:
- Money
- Self-Improvement
- Sex
Themes like poetry, fiction and niche sports are much less popular — unless you can spin them into a self-help story, of course. Here’s an example of how I included a poem in one of my articles on writing.
Now, I’m not saying that you’re useless as a fiction writer or a poet. I’m an aspiring novelist myself. I’m saying that if your goal is to make real money on Medium, you’re better off either conforming to the rules or taking your talents elsewhere — I’ve heard Wattpad is great for fiction.
Like all things in life, Medium is nothing but a game, and like all games, there are rules. You’ve got to play by them to win.
Focus On Writing Timeless, High-Quality Articles
I wrote about this in my $100 Medium month article, but this point is so important it bears repeating: The best kind content to write here are evergreen, high-quality articles that people will continue to read, share and love for years to come.
This is how you make a modicum of passive income from this site. This is how you create word-slaves to generate income for you while you eat, sleep and write up even more word-slaves. Let’s take a look at another statistic:
Out of my five best-performing articles last month, only two were written in November itself. In fact, the best-performing one, ‘The 2 Types Of “Friends” You Should Cut All Ties With’ was written all the way back in February.
The magic of writing high-quality, evergreen content lies in the fact that it will never die. These articles are like sticks of dynamite, some slow-burning, some dormant and waiting to blow up, but all working towards helping you hit critical mass. The more of these you write, the more money you will earn over time. These are some signs of a winning article:
- It’s on a topic that will never, ever go out of style. Hence the term “evergreen.” Money, business, entrepreneurship, sex, love, relationships, writing, philosophy and self-improvement are some great topics, but most importantly, you want to make sure that the content isn’t dated towards a specific incident — writing about the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. It’ll bring the eyeballs now, but will anybody still be reading the same 3, 5 or 10 years from now?
- It’s curated. Medium pays less attention to curation now, but curated articles will still be distributed and as a result reach a larger base of fans than non-curated ones. More than that, curation is a sign of quality, a nod towards your penmanship as a writer. As Shannon Ashley wrote, if you want to make real money on Medium, curation should be the standard, not the exception.
- People interact with it. Claps, comments and shares. Keep in mind that at the end of the day, you’re writing to real people with real emotions. Great writing, to me, is nothing more than the ability to convey a clear message while making the reader feel something. To have someone want to share your work with their friends/family is the ultimate compliment.
Focus on writing winning articles, and you’re well on your way to becoming a well-earning wordsmith.
Intersperse Your Professional Articles With Personal Ones
That being said, I believe that when it comes to writing, vulnerability is a superpower.
Readers don’t want to hear the same old tired rags-to-riches story regurgitated over and over again — they want to hear your story. They want to hear how you did it, how you persevered through the pain and the downward spirals and the madness and trauma that comes with life.
Writing is a telepathic connection between reader and writer, and successful writers work hard to build that connection. Take this article, for example. Sharing screenshots of my exact earnings is a deeply personal thing to do. I’m taking a risk. Some people can misconstrue my intentions and claim that I’m trying to brag, others can mock and say that I’m making a big deal out of five measly hundred bucks.
All I can do is shrug and write more. All I can do is wear my heart on my sleeve, bottle these stories up and cast them out to the ocean that is the Universe, in the hope that they will reach the eyes of a kindred spirit, somewhere, someplace down the endless vastness of time.
And besides, these personal articles are easier, quicker, and well, just more fun to write. They require less research and more baring-of-the-heart, which I like.
So intersperse your professional articles with personal stories. This is the exact game-plan I’m utilizing to become a six-figure writer.
Be Consistent, Yes, But Remember To Take Time Off To Recharge
Writer burnout is a very real thing.
This sounds like a wimpy thing to say, but consider the fact that I’m a former MMA fighter with 9 years of martial arts experience, and I still rank writing as one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. In fact, I experienced burnout out last month, which is why I only wrote ten articles.
Writing is more than anything a long game, and to win long games you have to take care of yourself on your climb to the top. To paraphrase Bukowski,
“Writing has to be fun. It’s not supposed to bore the reader, the writer — it’s not supposed to bore anybody!”
You’ll know you’re burning out when writing starts to become less of a pleasure and more of a chore. When you feel that, recognize it for the touch of death it is.
Immediately stop being such a hard-ass and take some time off. Know that this happens to the best of us. Take a week off the typewriter. Shut off your writing godhead. Put your feet up and read a good book. And I promise that when you come back, you’ll be afresh with ideas and raring to go.
This is how you win the long-game of writing.
It’s Not About Hacks— It’s About Actually Being A Good Writer
This last point is also the most brutally honest.
So many people are looking for quick hacks to hard solutions. The problem is there isn’t any. Do you know how much you’re asking for? You want to make good money doing what essentially boils down to telling stories to strangers on the internet.
The only way you can do that is to be a great storyteller. End of. And the only way you can be a great storyteller is by showing up every day, practising in public, and investing time and effort in your craft. I sometimes read the first article I ever wrote and think to myself, “Man, I would eat old me alive for breakfast.” And that’s a good thing. That’s a sign of growth.
The final point I want to make is that there are no quick hacks, nor should there be — why would you want to be a hack than a genuinely good writer, anyway?
The only way you’ll consistently make $500 and up from Medium is by being an actual good writer, one who manages to be professional and vulnerable at the same time, who engages, entertains and educates his fans in equal measure – One that readers actually want to read. Remember that it’s going to take a lot of time to be great, but it’s going to be worth it.
For great writers, much like great writing, always rises to the top.