Anatomy of a $649 Medium Story

5 components to help your writing have universal appeal

I’ve got a few classics in my toolkit. These are stories that consistently earn me money, every day. Not a lot, but the dollars add-up. When you publish a giant, cumulative pile of writing, many of these stories work hard for you — long-after you write them.

Today I’ll share a story that continues to pay me well.

…and you can write one of these too.

It didn’t ‘go viral’ in a single day. This story slowly made it’s way to Google, was shared hundreds of times on social, and now has a life of its own.

The biggest lesson here, is consistent writing. As much as we’d love to, we can’t engineer our popular content.

Instead, we write each story as if it were viral.

We assume each piece that leaves the shop will be shared by thousands of raving fans all over the world. Tomorrow, we write another one. We do the work no matter what. Sometimes we’re rewarded.

There are, however, a couple things that made this particular story a universal favorite — some baked-in tools that helped it grow.

Keep reading.

I’ll show you how you can help give your stories an extra boost. Maybe they’ll earn you $649 too.

The key takeaway is this story earns money over time. It wasn’t a one-hit wonder. If you want to develop lasting income on Medium, the daily-earners are the long-game.

It’s time to stop chasing the viral one-offs and make our regular stories work harder.

My $649 story

First, if you want to check it out, here’s the story. This way you’ll understand what I’m talking about here. This isn’t the only one. I’ve got a handful of these daily earners.

Although I wrote the story almost a year and a half ago, she continues to earn me a couple bucks a day, with plenty of day earning more.

The thing gets passed-around the internet, occasionally it’s re-tweeted by someone with a ton of followers and I’ll get another income spike.

I’m not writing this to brag.

I want you to know this is totally possible with your stories too. I didn’t write it assuming I’d have a big hit. Instead, I came across this old, successful, simple way of making a great to-do list.

Ironically, I wrote the story for myself, because I wanted to get paid to do a little research project. And paid I did. I spent no more than two hours writing this story.

I’ve done little to promote it, beyond sharing it in other stories, and the occasional re-post on social.

In terms of typing-time versus income, this story earned me neurosurgeon wages.

…and I’m no neurosurgeon.

The five components of a hit

1. The story must have universal appeal. This is a productivity story. Most readers are always willing to learn a new hack to stuff 500 pounds of to-dos in a ten pound sack.
2. The story must get curated. I know I write about non-curation all the time. I’m banned. So I’ll never get curated again. But this story keeps earning because it’s curated. My non-curated stories don’t keep earning a year later. Curation matters a lot.
3. Exposure is on you — the writer. I share this story on social and continue to paste it into my new stories. This helps keep the story alive. Sure, Medium promotes it too, but marketing is on us, the writer. Medium is only a repository for the work. If we don’t promote ourselves we won’t earn money from our stories.
4. Readers were already searching for this story. If you’re the only person writing about a topic, this should be a red flag. Sure, there are some ground-braking stories that are novel, but most of the hits we’ll write, are based on topics readers already love (and want more of). If I want to study intermittent fasting (something I’m obsessed with, but don’t write about) I won’t read one story, I’ll read 300.
5. Don’t be afraid to give-away free reads. My story has a lot of exposure, but many of those reads come from Twitter. Medium has a built-in thing where if you post a story to Twitter, anyone can read it, even if they’re not a paid subscriber. Non-paid subscribers don’t earn you any money, but they earn you exposure… and possibly a new fan.

Don’t lose your readers

The best part of this $649 story isn’t the money. The best part is that this story works very hard to bring more people into my tribe.

I didn’t spend a lot of time writing this, but it continues to work for me, almost a year and a half after I wrote it. Every day this little story gets to work, and attracts new readers to my tribe.

You can do this too.

At the bottom of every story give your readers incentive to join your email list.

Trust me, you don’t want to lose them. The next time Medium changes its payment policy could be the last time the pay you a dime. You have no control of your Medium money.

…but you can control your email.

Email is the best insurance policy a writer can have. It’s our job to make sure our readers don’t forget about us.

The best time to build your email list if before you need one — like today.

I’ve got just the thing for you. I hand-crafted a free, 7-day email masterclass called the Tribe 1K. I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 (or your next 1,000) readers without spending a hot nickel on ads.

It’s time to make your writing work harder for you.

Tap the link.

Join the Tribe.

Guarantee your seat before I change my mind. Past students include New York Times bestselling authors.

We’re waiting for you.

Enroll in my Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches these folks who want to make work that sells and sell work they make. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.

P.S. I wrote this story in 20 minutes. If you want to know my secret for faster Medium content, check out this story.