After Three Months With Over $100 I Fell Below The Magic Mark Again In June

Medium won’t give you any guarantees. A good month means nothing, and a good day means even less. There is no linear progression. All you can do is invest the work and trust in time.

From March to May 2020, I was among the minority of authors who earned more than $100 a month on this platform.

March: 104,04$

April: $107.03

May: $134.38

It looked like a steady increase that would continue in the future. But I realized that this had nothing to say. I’ve read too many reports from very experienced authors to believe that there is something like a guaranteed increase in revenue on Medium.

That’s why I was not surprised when I suffered a setback in June. At the end of the month, I had earned $85.67.

While I had published an article every day for the previous months, I had two days without an article in June. But that was not the reason why I earned less.

Overall, I earned a lot less per day in June. My Views and Reads had fallen more and more compared to the previous months. This would not have changed even if I had published something during the two days without an article.

As far as I can judge, the quality of my articles has not decreased. At first sight, there seems to be no comprehensible reason why my success in June was lower than in March, April, and May.

Since I had started writing for the new publication Illumination in March, my numbers had been steadily increasing at first. I attribute much of my success to Illumination.

But the effect is no longer so strong. The visibility I get through Illumination has decreased. Many new writers have joined us since then. We started with a few dozen writers, and now we have over 1900 writers. It’s clear that the individual is not as prominent now, even though Illumination now has over 17,000 readers.

But that’s perfectly okay. Illumination is not there to make individual authors big. Illumination focuses on the readers and therefore has to offer the highest possible diversity.

The more authors write for the publication, the better for the reader and the better for all the authors involved.

A look at the above figures also clearly shows that my earnings between March and May were by no means largely dependent on Illumination. The additional visibility of the first months only lifted me over the magic $100 mark a few times.

In this light, the $85.67 from June is not bad at all. In fact, the best result I’ve had so far is when I calculate Illumination entirely out of it. My best month before Illumination was December 2019, with $80.95.

After that, January and February, I had two very inactive months during which I hardly published on Medium. Against this background, it is not only amazing that I was able to earn more than $100 each in the following three months. Much more surprising is that in June, despite the lack of the effect of Illumination, I was able to return to December 2019 and even earn a little more.

So whenever you have a good month on Medium, you should ask yourself if there were exceptional circumstances that explain this particular success. Most of the time, you will find a reason and realize that this reason might not be there next month.

I did not expect linear progress from the beginning. Especially on Medium, you have to be prepared for uptrends to be reversed out of the blue and not just growth.

For the time being, I do not expect any improvement in July. Summer is traditionally a difficult time for authors because people spend more time outdoors and read less. If I could maintain the June results, that would be a success.

As long as my articles continue to have an average reading rate of 62%, I’m not worried. My problem is not the quality, but still the visibility, but I can work on that with time.

So remember: Don’t let setbacks discourage you. They are normal and to be expected.

Keep writing and trust the process. It’s as simple as that.

René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.

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