Don’t Waste Your Time Or Money On Medium
The simple ways and the hows to earning on Medium
When I first decided to sign up for the Medium Partner Program, I had no aim other than to write. I didn’t know anything about the platform at all, how it works, what the best niches are, what’s trending, and so on. This cost me a great deal of both time and money.
Time as in writing something that just wasn’t going to be read and money because I could have been posting an article that was going to earn.
I know all of this sounds rather mercenary and does not keep in with my usual character of being a writer first. Being brutally honest with both you and myself, I am not a writer purely for the love of writing. Although I do love writing, I want to make money from it!
And Medium allows me to do something I love and get paid for!
I thought I would be happy just making a little bit of extra cash, pottering along with some posts that made me $100 a month. But this all changed when I made $116 in my first full month.
However, at that point, I did not have a plan or even a niche or any idea what the hell I was going to write about.
I’ve put this post together to help those of you who are in the position that I was in when I first started.
Find Your Niche
What are you passionate and knowledgeable about? What do you like to read? What is something that you could teach a reader?
Your niche is the main topic you are writing in. For a few reasons, having a niche is easier than not having one.
First, your audience knows what they are getting. This also creates a faithful and committed reader base.
Second, you start to become more of an expert in that area.
Third, it makes it so much easier to write because you only have to think about what you are going to write about in the niche. Rather than what topic, then what to write about.
Craft Captivating Content
High-quality writing is your foundation stone. Whatever you are going to write on a site like Medium has probably already been done! However, this does not mean you can’t give your own unique spin on the topic.
Quality writing will make you stand out from the crowd. I don’t know about you but I’ve read a few posts in the past not just on Medium but on other sites as well, and thought “I could do better than this”
Become a Social Butterfly
Medium is a social networking site for writers! The more you engage and, follow, comment, and clap, the more visible you will become! Engage with your readers! Give fifty claps to responses, reply to those responses, and follow anyone who gives positive feedback even if it is just a thank you for the post.
In general, I follow back every single person that comments. I comment on people’s posts if I enjoyed the post and give the maximum amount of claps. And only in very rare circumstances do I not follow someone back who follows me. Obvious spam accounts are one.
Trend Detective
Explore Medium’s “Explore” section and popular publications to understand current interests. Can you adapt your expertise to fit trending topics?
This is something that I have to work on. I get ideas and I want to write but sometimes nobody is interested in the topic!
Publications
Writers create publications on Medium as shared spaces, similar to a newspaper or magazine. They are created for other writers to post their articles on. Some of the Pubs publish a variety of topics and have thousands of followers and hundreds of writers along with editors, and others are smaller and more specialized.
The advantage of Publications is that they usually have a bigger following than an individual. But remember, due to Medium’s unique way of working, even the smaller publications can give your post traction. My third post was published in a Publication with around 800 followers at the time, and the post performed extremely well! It netted me over $100 in just a week or so.
Publications give your writing a lot more exposure than posting them by yourself.
Thanks for reading
Clap! Follow me and the Publication if you haven’t already!
Paul
