7 Months of Writing on Medium — A Case Study
The details behind how I made $151.33 and how I failed
Yes, I said I failed. I didn’t fail as a writer. In that area, I definitely believe I have grown. I failed in my projections. I failed because of my assumptions that growth is an unswerving upward trajectory toward inevitable Medium superstardom. Boy, was I wrong.
I do, though, continue to learn more and more every month. As always, I will share with you all the details of this month’s Medium journey. I ask that if you have any wisdom and insight, hook me up in your comments. In the meanwhile, here’s what I earned and learned this month.
Earnings overview
I’m sure you have all heard that views are down on Medium over the past few months. I’m definitely one of the people who is feeling that (though, if you want to b!t$h about it, I have an article for you). For clarity’s sake, let’s compare my numbers of views this month to last month:
Now, I promise you that I didn’t write crap-a-doodles articles this month. If anything, I think that the quality of the articles I wrote went up because I was working on getting published in larger publications.
However, as I mentioned before, I had grand plans for this month’s earnings based on my projections. They didn’t come to fruition. I projected I would make $269 in the month of March. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Here’s what did happen:
Sure, this spreadsheet may look grim. I don’t believe it is, though. See, my previous projections assumed that Medium was like a ladder one could climb, rung by rung, until you reach top writer Shannon Ashley status (I love her, by the way).
Now, I believe writing on Medium is more like investing in the stock market. My writing stock goes up and down, but overall, if I keep investing, overall, my readership and earnings will grow over time. I won’t make any projections for next month, but I will tell you that I am confident that my earnings will go up (instead of down) and viewership will go up as well.
So, I can pay for a good deep tissue massage with my Medium earnings this month (or, my phone bill, but a massage is way better). But I’m not going to pull out my Medium 401k dough because it happens to be a bit of a bear market. I’m sticking with it and figuring it out one month at a time. Also? I’m not complaining about it.
Publication overview
This month, I had pieces published in the following publications:
- A Little Bit Better
- Age of Empathy
- Better Humans
- Better Marketing
- Change Your Mind, Change Your Life
- Feedium
- Mind Cafe
- Illumination
- The Ascent
- The Brave Writer
- The Startup
- The Writing Cooperative
I’m pretty proud of this little list. One of my goals this month was to get my work into top publications and I think I did a good job. However, I’m even more convinced now than ever that the publication follower size does not really dictate the number of views you will get on your articles.
Let’s look at how two of my articles in different-sized publications fared:
Now, I mean no shade toward Mind Cafe, but this is simply an example that the number of followers of a publication often makes little to no difference in the number of views of your article (also, Feedium is pretty awesome).
There are two publications, though, who consistently deliver on their bang for the word — Better Humans and The Writing Cooperative. Every article I wrote for these two publications this month had views in the triple digits (which is more than I can say for many other pubs).
So, the moral of the story is that if you have a piece that wasn’t accepted to a top publication, it can still do well. Well, as well as an article can fare in today’s Medium landscape.
Follower overview
My strategy for this month was to let my followers organically grow. Previous to this month, I tried a follow-for-follow strategy. It worked pretty well for me, but I decided to see if my followers would continue to increase if I didn’t force it. They did.
This month, I only followed the fantastic folks who I added as writers to my little publication, A Little Bit Better, and a few more people I enjoy. Otherwise, I’m not unhappy with the rate at which my followers have grown organically. Here are the numbers:
There are people whose follower numbers grow much quicker than mine — I’m very aware of that. You’ll also see a big spike in January when I was an editor of a very large publication that is now no longer in existence. Those were fun times, but I’m really enjoying making it on my own these days. I’m hoping that each one of those folks that clicked the follow button this month will enjoy what I continue to put out there.
Again, though, followers don’t really make the hugest difference in views for your articles. I know writers with less than 1,000 followers who get 3–4K views on just one article.
Sure, the more followers you have, the higher your baseline for people who will see your stuff (and probably the more likely it is to go “viral”), but you should absolutely know that if you don’t have thousands of followers, you still can play the viral article lottery with the best of them. (By the way, I haven’t won it yet and I’m cool with that).
Giving back
I realized a month or so ago that I’m done with socking away all of my writing earnings for myself. It’s time for me to give back to my community. So, I wrote this article and I will be donating the proceeds from its readership every month to World Central Kitchen.
In the article, I created a challenge for writers to create an article whose proceeds will go to a charity of their choice. I’m so excited to say that there have been numerous fantastic writers who have stepped up and will be donating this month. If you want to join, click the link above and include the tag “Writing it Forward.”
As my husband tells me, everything is not always all about me. And, while my article only earned $2.16 this month (which I’ve donated), I believe that it will continue to be passed on as more and more writers choose to make a difference in this world with their thoughts and their words.
Making my own luck
As I mentioned before, I have a little publication called A Little Bit Better that makes me very, very happy. I’ve been working this month on recruiting great writers to add to its team and I am enjoying creating a place where people can come to read positive self-improvement and happiness-based articles.
I’ve been working on creating relationships with the wonderful folks who submit their work. Not only does this make me super happy, but I also hope that the publication’s readership will continue to grow and I can help make Medium…just a little bit better. (Get it? A little bit better?)
One thing I have found is one of the best ways to really build relationships with people here is through publications. As an editor, I get to read people’s work, help them make it better, and even chat with them about their lives and experiences. That is worth the time it takes to comb through articles (which I learn from, anyway).
Moving forward
In the month of April of 2021, I will continue to play the Medium game, whether I continue to be rewarded monetarily for it or not. I believe that eventually, my views and earnings will continue to trend upward. And if it doesn’t, well, you know that I’ll tell you all about it on May 1st.
And, on a personal note, like the obsessive entrepreneur I am, I’m working on building a pretty huge project, so it will be a challenge to continue to write at the pace I’ve been writing. It will be a fun experiment in focus, chasing flow, and optimizing my time. I’m sure I’ll write all about it this month.
Finally, I encourage you to let me know what you have learned in your Medium journey this month or…ask me anything (seriously — anything) in the comments. Ask me about writing for Medium (or News Break or blogging) or, well, anything in general. I don’t promise to know all of the answers, but I do promise to always be completely candid.
If you want to read more, here are the two favorite articles I wrote this month:
Happy writing, friends.