TIPS & WRITING ADVICE

Have You Seen a Spike in Your Earnings Yet?

Here’s how to find out if Medium told you the truth!

For years, frustrated Medium writers have been longing to see things done differently on the Medium.com website.

That’s why, long before the month of August (2023) finally arrived, the entire Medium platform was buzzing with news about upcoming changes.

Since then, I’ve personally shared two stories related to those changes, and particularly, about how writers could hope to start seeing an increase in earnings.

This potential spike in earnings, would be made possible in large part, due to our existing member-followers.

According to the Medium powers that be, writers would be able to earn more on their stories, when existing followers return and read often.

Their exact words were:

“…we’re giving stories that are read by existing followers an extra bonus in earnings.”

This is the second time that I felt the need to post the above quote from the Medium administrators.

I’m trying to emphasize how we’ve been encouraged to focus not merely on acquiring new followers, but on engaging the followers you already have, and keeping them coming back to our stories.

For this, I suggest writers develop some type of plan on how to make it happen.

Gaining new followers is not the only solution

As much as we Medium writers love to see our number of followers grow; gaining new followers is not the only solution to improving our stats.

Medium has provided us with some smart suggestions, including helpful tips and writing advice about the stories we write.

Notice another important statement they made, with regard to the primary objective of the Partner Program:

“We want the incentives of the Partner Program to encourage writers to take that extra bit of time to weave more meaning into their stories, to tune those words, to land that ending, to ultimately make the story better for readers.”

In harmony with the suggestions that were given, I published a long-length story, that I felt successfully ticked off all the boxes contained in the new way of doing things.

My latest AI-related story covers a timely subject. I believe it has a strong title and the content is informative, yet easy to digest.

It contains valid statements and entertaining, if not thought-provoking view points.

In spite of my efforts, the resulting stats for this story has not been what I hoped for.

My August earnings (thus far) have started out low and at a slow pace, with no notable increase in the least.

It makes me wonder why.

Could the reason possibly be related to the new policy? Instead of getting “reads” from new followers, I need to be increasing the “read time” from existing followers.

I’m currently nine followers away from having 4,000 followers (as of this writing).

When you have lots of new followers, it’s hard to stay in touch with those first one or two thousand.

In fact, every writer in the community can probably relate to this issue, even if only on a smaller scale.

My solution is to test and find out whether Medium’s new way of doing things will really be lucrative for us writers.

To do this, in the future, I’ll need to spend some time focusing on the past.

Looking back in the rear view mirror is not something I typically like to do, but in this case, it’s necessary.

I want to take a look back at some of my earliest followers and see if I can give them a little nudge.

Many of them, just like me, have been on and off the platform, again and again; doing different things, and being pulled in different directions.

Even when writers stick around and continue reading and writing religiously; too many new activities prevent keeping up with voices from the past.

Personally, I totally get it.

But, if we’re ever going to start seeing some of those increased earnings that Medium has indicated is possible, we’re going to have to start getting more creative about things.

The answer is rooted in our relationships with longtime, loyal followers — those who don’t mind showing up when you call, and reading a story or two.

Let’s discuss this a little further…

Say hello and reconnect with followers

The notion of getting paid more from our stories is very appealing, but clearly it will take more effort on our part.

I can’t think of a better time, to try and reconnect with existing followers that you haven’t read or heard from in a while.

• We can start reading recent stories from older followers — thereby reminding them that we still exist.
• Lead them to your recent work.
• Do what you can, to rekindle your connections and relationships.

These types of activities can benefit everyone concerned.

REMEMBER: If you return and read stories from followers who may have become inactive, they will more than likely begin to return to your stories as well.

That is why I’m extending my personal invitation for us to get re-acquainted.

👉 Have you been a Justiss Goode follower for awhile, but haven’t read any of my stories more recently?

👉 Has it been a while since you’ve seen my face or had my comments show up on your stories?

I invite you to leave me a Response and say hi, so we can reconnect. I’ll make a point to pop over and read what you’ve been up to.

You can even suggest a specific title for me to check out and give a quick read.

Do you want an example of how to start reconnecting with some of your older friends and followers?

I’ve already started by reading stories from some of the awesome writers I used to love interacting with.

They include the story written by the still very funny Sherry McGuinn, as she talks about things like the need to “interfere with yourself” (Don’t know what that means? You will if you read her story).

Also, there’s the story written by the oh so comical Michael Burg, MD (Satire Sommelier), where he reminds us about the new way of reading Medium stories.

Once I got started reading and checking in on the lives of my old school Medium tribe, I could barely stop for the night.

Getting caught up on these writers helped to bring me up to speed with their recent activities and milestones.

👉 FYI: Congrats to Robin Christine Honigsberg for the release of: Dysfunctional Me: A Collection Of Poems About Trauma, Grieving and Loss.

This writer has been through a lot, and I couldn’t be more proud of her personal accomplishment (now available in the Amazon marketplace).

Here are some more writers who I recently dropped in on. If you read their latest stories, you’ll probably notice the various comments I left for them:

Sally Prag, Susan Wheelock, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Abena Talks, Nicole Dake, Maria Rattray, Deb Fiore, LICSW, Ellen Baker, Lotus Empress, Laura Blackhurst, Marilyn Glover, Cee Arr, Purbita Chakraborty, Janice Eastman, KL Simmons, Linda Kowalchek, Ed-iT, Arthur Keith, Kristina God, and Tom Owens: How I REALLY Feel!.

To see the curated list of stories I put together from the stories by the above writers, just click and visit:

Clearly, this isn’t even a drop in the bucket, when it comes to reaching out to older followers.

I have a long way to go, but at least it’s a start…

Final Thoughts

Are you like the majority of Medium writers who are ready to see an increase in their stats?

If you agree, that it’s time you start earning more money on the stories you write, then you need to think seriously about a plan to reach your inactive followers.

I won’t lie and claim that it’s going to be easy, devising a way to reunite with followers from so long ago.

Many connections and relationships from the past may have once been easy to cultivate, yet now you can barely figure out who to reach out to first.

My method to the madness, has been to simply dive right in, and start visiting member profiles, as the names popped into my head.

But whether you select profiles from memory, or you allow your Medium homepage feed to provide suggestions, take my advice, and figure out a plan to reconnect you to the followers who took time in the past, to actually read your work.

Thanks for reading…

BE SURE TO CLICK & VISIT MY:

BROWSE THRU OVER 1,000 STORIES!