50 Days with the Medium Partner Program Has Radically Changed My Life

From pinching pennies to more wiggle room than I know what to do with, my business and life are thriving more than ever before.

Yesterday evening, I got out of the shower, threw on my silk housecoat, and went downstairs with a towel wrapped around my head.

My fiancé was on the couch to greet me, finishing off some client work. The sun was setting outside the right-hand window of our living room, and relaxing jazz music filled the air.

My partner made me a latté, and I sipped on it as he completed a tax submission for his tattoo artist.

I curled up next to him, exhaling as the melody of the music and the nutty smell emanating from my mug washed over my senses, sending me into a state of euphoria.

Latté in one hand, phone in the other, I opened Medium in my web browser to check whether or not my payout for the month of April had been posted yet.

It had.

And I almost dropped my entire steaming latté into my lap when I choked on the number at the bottom of my screen.

I’m in a very surreal point in my life.

To explain why, I’m taking a page from Shannon Ashley’s books and trying out being awkwardly transparent about my Medium journey and how it’s changed my life in massive ways.

So here’s a picture to paint for my current lifestyle:

I’m weeks away from turning 26. I live in the house I bought on my own at 24, with my new fiancé and our tiny white rescue dog. I run a business from the comfort of my own home, which makes enough to afford a comfortable lifestyle, while still following a tight, penny-pinching budget.

We have a bizarrely idyllic life, down to the semi in the suburbs with a lush green lawn and a white picket fence.

My partner and I often look at each other and feel thrown off by how “picture-perfect” our life feels together. Then again, we’re both optimists, and tend to focus on the positives in life.

Other realities we live with? Between the two of us, we have a lot of student debt. I have some significant trauma from my past, and suffer from general anxiety and episodes of paranoia because of it. My partner suffers from chronic neck and back pain from a major car accident he just barely survived as a child. Our little rescue pooch has massive behavioural issues, and he’s only just stopped peeing all over the floors of our house. Plus, there’s more drama than is reasonable in our families right now as we plan for our wedding in September.

But when you look at the big picture, we are incredibly blessed.

And there are days I feel really guilty for that fact.

Because success in any form always, always, always makes me feel wildly uncomfortable.

And that feeling has only gotten stranger and more conflicting as I’ve dived into the Medium Partner Program head-first, originally approaching it as an additional business, while also leveraging my passion for writing along the way.

It’s really worked out for me so far, and I feel super weird about that.

Stumbling upon the place I belong.

I attribute my initial growth on Medium to approaching it as a business.

That said, just because you’ve made a business of something, does not mean it’s void of passion or fulfillment. I make a habit of creating businesses which speak to my soul and spirit, so that every day I’m doing what I love to do most.

Medium is the most powerful example of following the integrity of my passion, and being lucky enough to make some money off of it at the same time.

Within a few days of jumping into Medium, I made a beautiful and startling discovery: Medium feels like home to me.

I remember saying this exact thing to my fiancé, when I’d only made $0.60 from my previous payout and was spending 8+ hours per day drafting content and engaging on Medium:

“I feel like this is the platform I’ve been waiting for my entire life. It’s like it was made for writers exactly like me. I have no doubt I’ll succeed — my gut is telling me this is where I belong.”

Medium has become a home for my inner writer — a place for her spirit to rest and recharge and find purpose in her existence.

I never thought I’d find something so fulfilling and incredible for my soul. And yet, here I am today.

Success beyond anything I could have ever dreamed of (and I always dream big).

Disclaimer: “success” is a subjective term. We all have different definitions of what “success” looks like, and I always tend to have fairly humble goals. This paragraph follows my definition of success, and may mean squat to you.

While I became a Medium Partner Program member in September 2018, I published two pieces and then forgot about this platform entirely.

Then I rediscovered Medium in March of this year and really got down to business.

Literally — I created a business strategy to incorporate Medium into my company. It was defined, pointed, and gave me 3 months to see results I was satisfied with.

My strategy and goals were very, very realistic, when considering my previous history of starting a business from the ground up and how long it took to make a real profit.

That said, at the beginning of this 3 month strategy, the results I was looking for to continue on this journey were:

• Write 1 article per day
• Get 1 Top Writer badge
• And make at least $50.00, in total, by the end of the 3 months

These were goals I set out to achieve in 90 days… it’s now 50 days out, and things turned out far different than I anticipated.

• I write 2-3 articles per day
• As of this article being published, I have 10 Top Writer badges
• And I’m bringing in $692.54 from Medium for the month of April

I’m still in shock writing that out. Especially because I’m in Canada and the Canadian dollar is piss poor right now costing $1.34 for every $1 American. It sucks for our economy as a whole, but I actually win on the conversion.

My $692.54 USD becomes $931.25 CAD.

That’s just shy of 1/3 of the income my social media company brings in every month. I’m supplementing my income in a really powerful way.

That blows my f*cking mind.

It took 6 months of 12 hours days in my social media and copywriting business, endless amounts of networking and late nights out the ying-yang to achieve even a part-time income, or anything similar to my current Medium earnings.

How is it even possible that I’m seeing these results in 50 days?

I owe it all to the supportive community which exists on Medium — my home sweet home.

Of course, a lot of this platform is about writing quality content which really resonates with people. Without that foundation, you have nothing to build on. I personally write essays about womanhood, entrepreneurship and professional writing.

Any advice you ever read on this platform from some of Mediums regular and top writers like Shannon Ashley, Michael K. Spencer and Shaunta Grimes will tell you that if you want to succeed and see growth you have to be willing to honestly, sincerely and intimately invest in this community.

I do that in several different ways, which has made my rapid growth possible:

1. I engage on Medium for at least 3 hours per day.

Yup, you read that right. At least 3. But normally, I’m closer to 4 or 5 hours per day. According to my time tracker, I spent 170 hours on Medium during the month of April. And I don’t just draft my own content while I’m on here— I’m spending a majority of my time reading the work of other writers on this platform. I’m commenting, clapping, highlighting, and everything in between. I give just as good as I get, and that sh*t adds up.

2. I am my most authentic self.

I give myself a lot of creative freedom to listen to my inner writer and write what she’s feeling. I let her guide the way and call the shots. That's really worked for me so far.

I don’t write what is trending in pop culture or topics that often get Featured by Medium editors (politics and tech really aren’t my expertise). I write my truths, and write about what I know. That’s where my best writing emerges from, and that seems to be what really resonates with my readers (and with my spirit).

3. I’m active on one particular Facebook group.

Some of you may cringe reading this part, because I know that you need another Facebook group like you need a hole in the head. But Medium Partner Program Friends is a really high-quality one. It’s an intimate and small community of writers who really invest in one another, and care about each other’s work.

It’s in this Facebook group that I get to have amazing conversations with top writers like the ones I mentioned above. And also, I get to grow and engage with up-and-coming writers like myself, such as the amazing Jun Wu and Kat Kou. I’ve recently been made a Moderator, so my enthusiastic engagement and efforts have been noticed and have paid off in a lot of ways already.

I also write for the Facebook group’s co-op publication, 1-One-Infinity (where I’m publishing this piece right now). The support in that group extends even further to our community publication, and I’ve really seen their response through the work I’ve posted on here.

4. I started my own publication with like-minded writers.

In my Twitter DMs, every single day, I am messaging back and forth with Jessica Lovejoy and Maggie Lakis, two incredibly powerful women and phenomenal writers. I jokingly call them my Medium Wives — but to be honest most weekdays I talk to them more than I talk to my own fiancé (our schedules have gotten a lot more complicated since he started studying part-time for his CPA on top of working full-time).

They are the ladies I message when I encounter misogyny online. They empower, uplift and encourage me to speak my truth and shine my light brightly.

We haven’t known each other for long, and haven’t met in person, but they’ve quickly become a beautiful and wonderful reality in my daily life. We like each other so much that we started a publication together — inspired by those very same misogynistic trolls we rant about all too often:

Final word.

You’ll have trouble finding a community online as rich and supportive for writers as Medium.

You can try, but you might find yourself coming up rather disappointed.

This is such a special space — and there is an army of us devoted to keeping it high quality and enriching for writers, along with the Medium team.

We are a family. The further you delve in, the deeper that sense will become.

And the more intimately your writing spirit will intertwine with others on this platform in a beautiful melody.

My success on Medium so far throws me off even more so, because it’s not entirely my own success. It’s also the success of the writers I support and engage with on a daily basis.

Writing on Medium is not a hobby for me, and it’s becoming less and less of a business in my mind — it’s more of a lifestyle, through and through.

If you also feel like this is the place for you, and your inner writer finds peace here — then welcome home.

We’re so happy to have you as a part of our incredible community.