Here’s How I Made $3,427.99 My Very First Month on Medium

20 actually-useful tips for hitting four figures, with screenshots, based on my 30-day experiment

My promise to you

Some of you are probably already rolling your eyes. I get it. Articles like this can easily come across as braggy and prideful and ugly. You don’t care that I made three grand in a month on Medium. And why should you? It’s only helpful if it helps you grow your own marketing business.

Which is my exact goal with this story.

This isn’t one of those “Just pitch to publications! Make sure you use the right tags! Whaddya mean you don’t use Grammarly?!” kinda posts … you already know all that stuff.

In this article, I’m going to show you the exact mindset I adopted towards the work. It’s an approach that anyone can use to contribute value to the lives of readers on this brilliant platform and everywhere else you market.

These ideas and principles also apply to content marketers in other fields, be they entrepreneurs, stay-at-home-parents, startups, scaling businesses, or established companies.

Shall we?

The backstory

Like many people, I joined Medium in early 2018, published half a dozen stories, said “neat!” and went back to writing on WordPress.

Then, two months ago, I noticed something had changed. The weekly emails I was still receiving from Medium suddenly got interesting. I noticed the writing quality had improved, too. As I started to read again, the curation skyrocketed. Pretty soon, I was trying to figure out ways to get around the max-three-premium-articles-per-month paywall because there were dozens I wanted to read every single week.

I logged back into my Medium account and to see what had changed. Sure enough, they’d made a big update to their algorithm, and the new “relational” bent was really working for me.

I also started reading posts about a whole bunch of writers who were making real money from their articles, too. I learned that 55% of all Medium writers who publish will earn something each month and that 6–7% will make over $100.

By comparison, I’ve written for Esquire, Huffington Post, USA Today, Smithsonian, The Guardian, and TIME Magazine, but almost none of them pay as much as many higher-end Medium writers are getting.

So I decided to do an experiment

Instead of writing on WordPress or pitching major newspapers and magazines, I’d focus all my writing efforts on Medium for one month and try to earn a little extra Christmas cash. So I joined the Medium Partner Program and got to work.

I had two goals:

1. Hit at least $100 and land in the top 5% of all Medium writers.
2. Earn at least $20 per hour to justify the experiment’s time investment.

I’m grateful to say that, with a little luck and a metric ton of work, I not only hit both goals but wildly exceeded them:

The stats

• 27 stories written
• 24 publication rejections (still hurts)
• 17 stories published across 10 publications
• 46,000+ words written (that’s half a book…)
• 24,000+ words published
• 131,000+ views
• 48,000+ reads
• 2,800+ fans
• 1,100+ new Medium followers
• ~80 hours invested in writing+editing+submitting+promoting
• $3,427.99 revenue earned in 30 days

My experiment ran from Nov 17-Dec 16. In hindsight, I should’ve started earlier so the payout screenshots wouldn’t look so ugly, but here you go:

1. Forget about what’s popular and commercial and write what makes you PHYSICALLY excited

When deciding what to write about, you need to feel something.

Rather than trying to be like everyone else, try to be a self-individuated human. We don’t need another Tim Denning because he’s ridiculously helpful in a way that only he can be. You can’t out-Tim Tim, so don’t try. Be you. No one can out-you you.

Also: forget about curation. (I still don’t know if I’ve been curated, and I don’t care — you need to write for yourself and your audience, not to please Medium’s editorial board. Plus, I’m certain they’re very smart people who can sense when someone’s just trying to game them.)

Here’s what to do instead:

• Turn off your phone, grab a pen and a notepad, and write a list of 50 story ideas.
• Go for a long walk, ideally under the stars.
• Come back and re-read the list out loud.
• Circle the ten that make you feel something in your heart/stomach/loins.
• Ask your spouse/partner/bestie, which one you should right first. Don’t take their advice, though… they, too, are probably thinking in “what-the-market-wants” terms. Instead, watch how their body reacts. I know I have a winner if my wife yells, “Oh, that idea is SO YOU!”

When it comes to what to write, it’s either “hell yes” or “hell no.”

This is what I did when I wrote Facebook Is Dead (It Just Doesn’t Know It Yet). I think Facebook is an incredibly dangerous addiction algorithm that is wasting vast amounts of human potential and that it’s only a matter of time before it’s the next Myspace. I also knew some people would disagree and absolutely hate it. I hit PUBLISH anyway.

It ended up trending to the #2 most popular post on Medium’s homepage two weeks after I published it. (See if you can spot it, hiding at the bottom.)

2. Craft a must-read title

Do you know what I want to see every day when I log into Medium? A dozen titles in a row that make me say, “I HAVE to read this article!”

Seriously, who’s not going to read a story like A Trillion-Dollar Bank With Nazi Ties Wants to Tax You for Working From Home During a Pandemic?

Make your titles surprising without being click-baity. Humor is ideal, IE: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Your Bum.

Just make sure that the title is also truthful and reflective of the content, IE: Billionaire Mark Cuban Just Invested in a Game-Changing Startup.

Last thing: The title needs to make a promise. The article needs to deliver. For my article How to Take Back Control of Your Life from Addictive Internet Algorithms, the promise is that I’ll show readers how to reclaim their attention and privacy. I then over-delivered with a 4,300-word monster post that averaged nearly ten claps per fan.

3. Use a relevant, surprising, beautiful photo

I honestly can’t believe how many millions of people on Medium never stray beyond Pexels and Unsplash. Both sites are amazing but chronically overused. Here are 22 free stock photo sites that don’t suck.

4. Start strong

Your opening sentence needs to grab readers by the throat and never let go. Here’s my opening salvo in Mailchimp Is Dead (It Just Doesn’t Know It Yet):

Until now, Mailchimp may have been the 800-pound gorilla in the newsletter-delivery ecosystem, but there’s a new silverback Alpha that’s about to chop down the whole rainforest.

It’s one of the most-highlighted lines in the whole article.

5. Surprise people (or be mildly controversial)

One article that was both surprising and mildly controversial was People Will Barely Remember the Coronavirus in 30 Years: They’ll Have Far Bigger Problems.

Another was Firebound: The History and Future of America’s Forced Firefighting Force, which gets people thinking long and hard about slavery in the USA.

I knew I had a winner in Facebook Is Dead (It Just Doesn’t Know It Yet), and I didn’t pull any punches. I immediately opened the article with a controversial statement that also was somehow surprising and funny:

I have the privilege of teaching Sunday school every week (via Zoom) to a bunch of fantastic teenagers aged 14–16. They’re all digital natives with a high degree of cultural savvy, a strong distaste for anything that violates their personal privacy, and a nose for political bullshit.

So naturally, none of them have Facebook.

I asked if any of their friends have it. They laughed. Not a single one could think of any friends who still had Facebook. One of the boys filled me in: “Dude…Facebook is for moms and grandparents.”

6. Be oddly specific

Mailchimp Is Dead (It Just Doesn’t Know It Yet) isn’t for everyone. Half the reading public has probably never even heard of Mailchimp. This article is for a very specific group of readers — content marketers — but the response from that community has been overwhelmingly positive.

The takeaway: Write to exclude. Some people should be mildly-but-not-too-lost — and ideally, want to catch up on the conversation.

7. Be stupidly helpful

I want my books to be unputdownable. I want my films to keep people glued to their seats. I want people to finish reading my articles and say:

“Dang, I’m so glad I gave Jared ten minutes of my day! That was worth every second and will deliver value for years!”

I want them to clap it up, email it to dozens of friends and colleagues, and share it widely on social media. Most importantly, I want to build enough personal trust with readers, so they subscribe and keep coming back for more.

How do you do that? Quality writing.

Quality is the ultimate form of marketing.

Before I publish a post, I stop and ask myself:

“If my readers do X, how will it improve their lives?”

Example: How to Take Back Control of Your Life from Addictive Internet Algorithms has been seen by 3,800+ people so far. If just 10% follow my advice, the article will help them avoid at least 380 million ad exposures in the next year and save them thousands of hours of time over the next decade.

If 10% of the readers of Mailchimp Is Dead (It Just Doesn’t Know It Yet) switch to Sendy, I’ll have saved my readers $1.5+ million over the next five years.

As you can see from these examples, being stupidly helpful is incredibly valuable. Never ever publish a post without having a stated helpful goal.

8. Finish with a bang

Just like a movie, every article needs an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

Readers should walk away from your article feeling satiated. They should want to clap it up and share it with others and bookmark it for re-reading.

Check out my last line of If Sleep Isn’t One of Your Top Three Life Priorities, You’re Doing It Wrong:

Unfortunately, this let’s-all-get-nine-hours-and-love-our-lives proposal is undoubtedly “radical” to most modern people… in the same way that our great-great-grandparents would look at our stressed-out, hectic, busy, indebted, stressed, medicated, over-stimulated, sleep-deprived world and think we are all absolutely bat$#!t insane.

Maybe we are.

For many readers who are sleep-deprived and constantly exhausted and have a sense that something is deeply broken with our modern world, this is an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

9. Write quickly

I’m lucky to say that I’m an extremely fast writer. For articles, I average 800+ words per hour. (I wrote my first published book, a 113,000-word humorous travelogue, in just 3.5 weeks.)

The secret? Neocortex disablement.

“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” — Thomas Edison

Lucid dreaming is incredibly helpful for my job as a writer. I’ve rewound entire scripts and worked out busted plot points by replaying specific sequences. I’ve come up with book ideas and fleshed out entire outlines by sunrise. (The only downside is that the sheets on my half of the bed are covered in pen ink!)

The good news is that you don’t have to be asleep to turn off your brain and access all that raw inner creativity. Why do you think so many famous writers were alcoholics or took amphetamines? ;)

There will come a time where you’ll need to fully engage that highly-critical, rational, forward-thinking editor-censor part of your brain, but for now, that bossy librarian needs to sit down and shut up so you can get your blue sky thoughts on paper, canvas, or code. Find whatever (safely) works for you.

Jack Kerouac, the ultimate stream-of-consciousness writer, put it well:

“Remove literary, grammatical, and syntactical inhibition.”

Give yourself permission to create extra-ugly first drafts.

10. Edit sllllllooooowly

Once you’ve crushed out your creative 1.0 draft, now it’s time to polish that ugly duckling into a readable piece.

Leave zero fluff

If you or your test readers find themselves skipping sentences or scanning through certain sections, re-write or cut them. Never waste a reader’s time. Never publish an extra word.

Craft arresting sentences

The power of a well-crafted sentence is hugely underappreciated. As a writer, there’s nothing more gratifying than when a bunch of people highlight the same sentence in your article. A few examples:

“Sadly, for most of us, the internet has become a highly-toxic, anxiety-inducing, privacy-eroding, sleep-robbing, work-distracting, ad-blitzing, time-devouring wormhole to nowhere. (Or, you know, believing the earth is flat.)” (From this article.)

“The reality is that all tools use us. A hammer literally cannot hit a nail without using a human. A saw cannot cut through a board without using a human. A phone cannot deliver ads without using a human.” (From this article.)

“If you make the choice to keep your word, and your friend is willing to extend grace, it’s only a matter of time before things are not only back on track, but are actually stronger than before. Rather than coasting through life on the assumption of trust, you journey together on the intention to trust.” (From this article.)

Kill the passive voice

Until you have a knack for avoiding passive sentences, the Hemingway App is great for catching them.

Then:

But then: read it out loud

Or better, because your brain sometimes skips over mistakes even when you read it back: let your computer read it to you in a sophisticated British accent.

Apple logo > Systems Preferences > Accessibility > Speech > Change the key to Command-R for “read.”

Then all you need to do is highlight a block of text, hit Command-R, and your digital butler will read it back to you in the Queen’s English. If you’ve run your piece through Hemingway, Grammarly, and Text-to-Speech, you should be 99% of the way there. Then:

Get someone else to read it

My wife reads and comments — and therefore improves — nearly all of my articles. She’ll occasionally catch a typo or two, but usually, it’s more substantive on the editorial level.

I never submit to publications until I’ve re-read my story seven times.

11. Yes, pitch to highly-relevant publications

It’s a no-brainer. If you’re starting out and your potential readership is a few hundred friends, it only makes sense to land your story on a platform with 10–100,000.

The key to getting accepted by publications is to make your stories super-valuable to the editors. Medium editors put in a lot of hours and have to wade through a ton of crap. Before it adds value to the lives of readers, it needs to connect with your editor. This way, you’ll have won over a champion for your piece.

That said, don’t expect too much from publications anymore. A few still do a killer job of distributing and marketing your stories, but the hard reality is that I’ve self-published pieces that have performed 350% better than ones published in publications with 150,000+ followers.

12. Be patient… and keep writing!

My first story got published by a highly-relevant publication pretty quickly, but most posts took weeks, which feels like an eternity when you’re working with a 30-day experiment window.

The bigger the publication, the longer the wait time. Some pubs take as long as three weeks to get back to you — and even then, sometimes just ignore or reject you, which is extremely frustrating.

In the meantime, I kept writing. At one point I had twenty-two stories out on submission.

Try not to refresh your inbox waiting for approvals.

I know it’s hard.

Just keep writing.

13. Pitch a story a day

Most people watch streamers and scroll on social media for like 4 hours per day, right? Why not devote that time to creating instead of consuming?

I wrote most of my posts in under two hours apiece, including submission and marketing time. It’s easy to find an hour or two each day — ditch Netflix, social media, news, politics, and porn.

Consistency is key. As a full-time author, I already write six days a week anyway, so I just carved out an extra few hours in the evenings to write and submit one story, six days per week.

That said, even a story a day isn’t enough to truly “make it” on Medium. According to the partner program stats, the top money-makers publish an average of twice per day. If all writers could reliably earn $100,000/year writing part-time, everyone would do it.

Here’s a hard fact: Most people don’t have the work ethic to earn huge amounts of money online. They’re looking for the silver bullet, the get-rich-quick scheme, the easiest way to easy street. They think a few mediocre posts per week should earn them a hundred grand per year.

That’s just silly.

Think about what it takes to earn a six-figure income in the real world: You go to university for 4–6 years and load yourself up with six-figure debt… You take a job as an unpaid intern… Work your way up to second assistant… Then junior trainee… Then associate… Eventually partner… And if you’re one of the very lucky few, you eventually get a seat at the executive’s table several decades on.

Realistically, getting to a six-figure salary by writing online should look something like this:

• Internship: Publish 100+ stories
• Associate: Publish 365+ stories
• Partner: Publish 500+ stories
• Executive: Publish 1000+ stories

Every single post should test and improve some category of your business: writing style, topic choice, headline, publication, tags, marketing.

Chaim Topol played Tevye in Fiddler of the Roof for 3,500+ Broadway performances over more than 40 years. Every single night he tested and improved a tiny piece of his performance, always edging closer to transcendence.

I have a friend who’s on track to reach 4+ million views on Medium this year. Guess how many posts he’s published?

Almost 20,000.

14. Don’t accept discouragement

Oh, the rejections. One publication — its name rhymes with “The Descent” — added me as a writer and then rejected seven straight stories, all of which went on to be published elsewhere and reached tens of thousands of readers.

Such is life.

You’ve really got to tickle the taste buds of certain editors.

The key is to not accept discouragement. If your story is legitimately great, you’ll eventually get it published. Every time.

15a. Only ever publish on a publication

If a story gets rejected by 5+ publications in a row, let’s face it: it’s probably not ready to go to print. (The best curators leave hints or feedback, which can help you improve your work before re-submitting elsewhere.)

That said, people have different tastes, and sometimes you’ll write an article that a.) you simply adore, and b.) you’re certain will help other people. Don’t just toss it in the waste bin.

I decided that I wouldn’t ever just post a story on its own. Either I would keep pitching relevant publications until it got accepted, or I would start my own publication — at least that way, there’s twice the chance of gaining a subscriber.

I’ve started four new publications, all of which are open for submission:

• Improving Together (personal development)
• Common Faith (Christian spirituality)
• Lovely Travel (Travel. Will be more relevant after quarantine!)
• Moving Pictures (for film fans, by film fans)

My plan is to take everything I’ve learned this month (and in the past eight years as a vocational author) and not only help writers distribute their stories a bit further, but be a strong editorial hand in crafting the perfect title and subtitle, picking the best accompanying image, and honing strong starts and finishes. (Msg me through my website and if you’d like me to add you as a writer.)

15b. When you finally get published… celebrate!

This one felt good:

15c. Don’t die of a heart attack when two of your greatest ideas get published within 35 minutes of each other… on a Friday night… two weeks in a row.

When posts come out at the same time, you’re competing with yourself.

It’s harder to juggle your marketing efforts.

And who’s reading and sharing articles on Friday night?

I won’t lie, it was devastating. Four posts that should have been huge just sat there, getting no traction, never seeing the light of day.

All you can do is: a.) breathe b.) enjoy your Friday night c.) start marketing in the morning d.) trust that you put in the hard work and that what you’ve created will be valuable regardless of schedule

16. Market everywhere, spam nowhere

Every time an article gets accepted, I see it as my mission to help the story perform as best as possible. When publication curators take a chance on my work by giving me one of their limited daily slots, I owe it to them to give my best effort in driving people to their publication.

I want every single post to be a win-win. Obviously, this doesn’t happen every time, and it’s extremely disappointing when stories don’t take off, but curators always appreciate it when you give it your all.

Quantity:

I limit myself to max three shares on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn over a five-day window. I also limit myself to max one email to my list.

Quality:

Obviously, the cover image, title, and subtitle do a huge amount of the heavy lifting, so when marketing I try to add a note that conveys the reader benefit. My article isn’t about me — it’s about my audience.

It’s never, “Hey, read my story.”

It’s always, “Here’s how this free article will add real value to your life.”

17. Check your stats constantly

I decided from day one that I would check my notifications and traffic levels at least ten times a day, six days a week, and that I’d check my income update first thing every single morning except Sundays.

The hope was to lean into this 30-day experiment and really try to gamify it. I started calling them “money points,” and pretty soon my wife started asking me how many money points we’d earned while we slept.

Why? To get that little hit of dopamine working for you.

Have you ever noticed that when you log into Facebook, the little red notification button is the very first thing to load? That’s engineered on purpose — to hook you. (Medium, to its eternal credit, does the exact opposite and loads content first.)

But seeing that little green notification circle should still give you the warm fuzzies — it means your work is connecting with real people.

Green notifications and green money points are the exact kinda crack this typing monkey likes, because it’s an instant source of validation. This, of course, can be an incredibly dangerous double-edged sword — there are many writers who just write what’s popular and not what’s true — but if you can keep your head and feel the buzz, you’re in the sweet spot.

Pro-tip: Install the Enhanced Medium Stats plugin for even more metric juice:

18. Re-write in real-time

“If it’s a mist in the pulpit, it’s a fog in the pews.” — Charles Spurgeon

Your fans are your best editors.

They always point out where you’ve nailed it and where you’ve shanked it.

I end up editing every post between 5–15 times:

• If ten different people have highlighted the same sentence, I bold or italicize it so it stands out for more readers.
• If someone points out a failure in my logic, I do an immediate re-think and re-write.
• If something is confusing to multiple people, I clear it up.
• If a commenter or newsletter subscriber takes the time to reply with a thoughtful new perspective or an additional resource, I try to work it into the piece.

I literally tweaked one article over twenty times, gradually improving the experience for the thousands of visitors that followed.

19. For posts that you adore that simply never get read, just cry your eyes out and get back to work.

That was the case for How to Never Betray a Secret Again. I wrote my guts out. I pitched it to the right publication. The editor, Dan, loved the piece and saw its merit and soul. We published and marketed it hard. And it just sat there, gaining zero traction. We even commiserated about it afterward.

Same goes for The Monk Who Saved a River. (An insanely inspiring story.)

And 150+ Famous Authors In Their Writing Spaces. (This was a huge labor of love.)

And How to Take Back Control of Your Life from Addictive Internet Algorithms.

And especially Want to Be Happier? Repeat This Ancient Four-Word Phrase Every Single Day. (It’s the best thing I’ve ever written.)

There’s only one thing to do when your writing doesn’t find a home:

Bleed on the page just one more time.

20. As soon as you start making money: subscribe to Medium Pro, give 10+% to the poor, and re-invest the rest in your writing career.

Because this was just a 30-day experiment for me, and any money earned was just gravy, I decided ahead of time how I’d re-allocate all revenue.

Get Medium Pro

Not only for personal growth. Not only to support great ad-free writing. Not only for self-improvement tips on a binge-worthy scale.

Get a Medium subscription so you can see what’s already out there, get inspired by new ideas, and figure out what niches and needs you can fill.

Also: you can write it off on your taxes as market research!

Help the poor

It’s an incredible privilege to: a.) be literate b.) have access to a computer and the Internet c.) live in a country that doesn’t overly-censor our opinions d.) have the health and time to share our words with the world

The fact that we can get paid to write gives me giddy pleasure, but it also puts a big weight of responsibility on our shoulders, to care for our global brothers and sisters who will literally never have the opportunities we take for granted every day.

Being grateful isn’t enough.

We need to give back.

We are blessed to be a blessing.

My allocation of choice is KIVA. For those who haven’t discovered this amazing platform yet, it’s like a GoFundMe for developing-world entrepreneurs. You loan in $25 increments along with a whole bunch of other people, and the overseas entrepreneur — often groups of enterprising women in rural villages — uses the money to build their business and pay you back interest-free.

Michelle and I have made over 300 loans in 36 countries, continually re-cycling our money to help more people. It’s a hand up instead of a handout, and it’s a sustainable way to lift people out of poverty with my writing.

Invest in your writing career

Blogging is just the start. If you’re a good writer and can find a way to connect with readers on an emotional level, Medium is a great way to earn some side income and grow your readership, but it’s not the end-game. Writing on Medium can lead to all sorts of new opportunities to contribute value: creating courses, publishing books, doing speaking tours, etc.

I’ve invested more than $20,000 in my writing career —in editors, writing coaches, publishing mentors, and training courses. It’s paid back more than 1,100% in the past decade, and hopefully, we can add another few zeroes in the years to come. Then, instead of increasing our standard of living, we can increase our standard of giving.

In conclusion

I will be honest: I waffled back and forth about even publishing this article. I thought: Am I just helping the competition?

I eventually realized that, NO, there’s room enough for all of us on Medium. We’re barely even competing against each other. Think about it:

• Users spend an average of 58 minutes per day on Facebook.
• Americans spend over 8 years of life watching TV.
• People spend an average of 40 minutes per visit on Youtube.

That’s the equivalent of billions of people each reading 1,000+ seven-minute Medium articles per month.

We have the opportunity to help people rescue their time — to transition to more mindful modes of consumption.

We need more and better stories. We need more and better publications.

There’s still plenty of room for great writers on Medium — at the end of the day, if you’re helpful and kind, you’ll probably find a welcome audience on Medium and beyond.

Signing off

I hope this article was tactical, practical, and highly-useable. If this post helps you write more life-giving, time-saving, health-improving, heart-tugging, mindset-altering stories that draw people away from passive consumption and into active growth and contribution, if it improves your ability to be a marketer with integrity, then I’d say we’re all the better for it, and instead of competing, we’re actually growing together.

And we’re only just getting started.

Follow Jared on Medium for more legitimately life-improving content.

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