Here’s How I Made $54,570.96 My Very First Year on Medium

20 actually-useful tips for hitting five figures, with screenshots

Am I crazy for telling everyone how much I made on Medium this year?

No one else seems to be doing it, but surely it will prove helpful for new writers, no? And aren’t we here to help each other grow?

I’m grateful to say it’s been a good first year for me on Medium:

• 159 articles published (plus 324 drafts)
• 222,000 words published (3 books worth)
• 3 publications started
• 11,900 Medium followers
• 1.7 million views
• 500,000 reads
• 200,000 claps
• 2,500 newsletter+podcast subscribers (subscribe here for free)
• $54,570.96 in revenue (but WAY down since the horrid algorithm+affiliate update.)

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.

But as my long-time readers know, I just try to create ridiculously high-value content that’s well-researched and brutally honest, containing legitimately unique perspectives and original insights you won’t see anywhere else on the Internet.

This article is no different.

So here are 20 things I’ve learned this year that will help boost your writing income:

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

Rather than trying to be like everyone else, try to be a self-individuated human. We don’t need another Tony Yiu because he’s ridiculously insightful in a way that only he can be. No one can out-you you.

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

Don’t ask what’s popular, what’s trendy, or what could make you money.

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 write 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.

2. Title is king

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!”

Don’t you?

Avoid being click-baity, but make sure your title is so strong that people simply HAVE to click on. (Take a quick scroll through Tim Denning’s article titles, compare them to the average writer, and you’ll see exactly why he’s earned 500+ million views.)

Your title needs to make a promise. The article needs to deliver.

Make sure your title makes a bold statement and establishes your premise/thesis. Don’t be abstract, be real and concrete and clear.

Don’t overpromise or underdeliver. Your article is simply an extension of your title premise. You’ll infuriate readers if you pull a bait-and-switch. I clicked on an article a few months ago that was something like “Here’s The Average Net Worth Of People By Age,” and the weaksauce article just advertised a company that wanted people to visit their website instead.

I reported it as spam.

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.

When it comes to titles, remember: If your article gets curated, the first five words of your title are the only thing readers will see in their inbox. Those first five words have to compel them to open the email and click through to your article. Make them count.

Don’t forget to use Title Case Converter to make sure your title is written correctly.

3. Your subtitle is the knockout punch

Professional boxers always use combo punches when they’re going for the knockout.

Title-subtitle is your one-two blow.

A good subtitle reinforces your title, and builds on it.

Remember: Your subtitle should be so good that you agonize over whether or not it should be the title itself.

4. Structure is queen

No one wants to read a giant block of text that runs on forever, filled with long sentences but without any breaks, paragraphs, bullet points, or any of the other design tools in the Medium arsenal. Use them all! No one wants to read a giant block of text that runs on forever, filled with long sentences but without any breaks, paragraphs, bullet points, or any of the other design tools in the Medium arsenal. Use them all! No one wants to read a giant block of text that runs on forever, filled with long sentences but without any breaks, paragraphs, bullet…

Take a quick scan through my articles on Surviving Tomorrow.

Notice anything?

They all have a shape that’s easily readable. And they all read lightning fast. That’s 100% purposeful. It’s the same with my books — they’re all blazing reads, and they’re designed that way.

How you structure your articles is half the battle.

Make them readable.

“Use all the tools in your arsenal: bullets, numbers, quotes, headers, sub-headers, images, videos, and more.” — Jared A. Brock

5. Concept is the Lord God Almighty

Title, subtitle, and cover image all matter, but nothing comes close to the actual article concept.

Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Workweek was a great title, but the concept made it a guaranteed bestseller.

An Open Letter to Airbnb isn’t my best title, but the concept is why it’s my best-performing article of all time:

Ask yourself: What’s my article about?

Don’t hit publish until you can tell others what your article’s about in less than seven words.

My article is about ______________________________________________.

6. Be Somewhat Controversial, Oddly Specific, Stupidly Helpful, and Utterly Unique

The best articles contain all four:

a.) Mildly controversial

Write with high conviction about something deeply controversial. I am 100% confident that Bitcoin is currently being treated as a giant Ponzi scheme and that it will be the death of non-governmental crypto if we don’t reform coin speculation immediately. Or that Tesla is the worst investment in history.

If you’re going to make yourself hugely unpopular with a good chunk of the reading population, you better bring your big guns and write a highly reasoned article. You’ve simply got to back up your thesis with real ammo. (Interestingly, to this day, my Bitcoin-Ponzi article has received hundreds of angry personal attacks, but no one has yet provided a convincing rebuttal that my underlying premise is wrong.)

b) Oddly specific

Mailchimp Is Dead (It Just Doesn’t Know It Yet) certainly 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 take away: Write to exclude. Some people should be mildly-but-not-too lost — and ideally, want to catch up on the conversation. Isaiah McCall does a great job with this.

c.) Stupidly helpful

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 that they subscribe to my free newsletter 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: If 10% of the people who read Mailchimp Is Dead switch to Sendy, I’ll have saved my readers $1.5 million over the next five years.

Being stupidly helpful is incredibly valuable. Never ever publish a post without having a stated reader-helping goal.

d.) Utterly unique

Be original.

You absolutely cannot out-Jessica Jessica Wildfire. So don’t try. Be you.

Several people have tried to copy my “[Horrible Company] Is Dead” series and it hasn’t worked. That’s my thing. Do your thing.

7. Come in hot

Like frying an egg on the hood of a car on a blazing summer day, I want readers to feel heat coming off my articles.

Bring all your passion to bear on every article you publish.

No filler.

No time-wasting.

Cut every single sentence that isn’t wildly helpful, wildly interesting, or wildly thought-provoking. Your readers deserve your very best, so cut to the bone.

8. 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. 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 write extra-ugly first drafts.

9. 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 skimming 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.)

“As most of my long-time readers know, I’m not a fan of the highly-addictive, extremist-breeding, time-devouring, money-gobbling, democracy-smashing, depression-inducing, hatred-boosting sludgefest that is Facebook.” (From this article.)

Kill the passive voice

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

Make your writing active.

Then get Grammarly for free:

And 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 edited my story seven times.

(And yet @Jurgen Lottermoser seems to find a mistake in every post and I love him for it!)

Quick trick for the whole Medium community: If you find a spelling mistake in anyone’s article, just highlight it, click the padlock icon, and leave a private note.

10. Forget publications (sort of)

Everyone always says “only publish on publications,” but honestly, they’re a huge pain in the ar$e.

Unless the publication has a killer boss who publishes fast — hat tip to Making of a Millionaire and Feedium and Better Marketing — it can take weeks before you find out if they’re running or passing on your piece.*

[*Or, in the case of The Ascent, they can just reject a dozen straight articles with nary an explanation, but then you smile when the pub goes belly-up.]

Plus, some hyper-posh publication editors think they’re the New York Times and try to edit what you’re trying to say.

My honest advice?

Start your own publication.

Ben did. Tony did. Concoda did. Jessica did. umair did. J.J. did.

I started three publications this year:

• SurvivingTomorrow.org (3,200+ followers)
• Personal Finance
• Improving Together

Starting a publication doubles your opportunities to gain a follower.

Each of your publications needs to have an extremely specific theme. The titles alone should give you a good idea about what each publication is about.

One great thing about creating your own publication is that you can then look back on your body of work and see it all in one place. (And print it so your grandkids can get to know you long after you’re gone.)

It also acts as a great calling card if you set it up on a custom domain.

11. 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/etc over a five-day window, plus an email to my list.

And if people take the time to kindly share my article on Twitter, I heart or re-tweet it as a thank you, which exposes their profile to my audience and can help them grow their follower count, too.

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.”

12. Be patient

If a post gets curated — and curation ain’t what it used to be, friends — it still takes a few days for Medium’s system to email it to tons of people.

For my biggest income-producing article ever, the post did okay until day four… and then it had 60,000 views in a single day:

(Not only did the post enjoy nice traffic for a few days afterward, but the influx of new readers and subscribers meant that all my other articles did quite well that week, too.)

Be patient. Keep writing in the meantime.

13. Once published, 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.

Unlike many of the other places I’ve published (Esquire, Huff Post, The Guardian, TIME Magazine, etc) on Medium, you can continue to improve your work even after it’s been published.

I re-edit all of my published articles at least 5–15 times:

• If someone makes a killer comment, add it to your article and tag them so they gain more readers.
• If someone points out a weakness or fault in your logic, strengthen it.
• If someone thinks you’re contradicting yourself and you’re not, clarify.
• If a kind reader adds a private note that you’ve made a spelling mistake, fix the error and go clap up one of their posts. (I always do this and it sends them a bit more traffic as a thank-you.)
• If a ton of people highlight the same thing, make it stand out by highlighting it yourself.

Let your readers help you improve your work. Often, my posts become twice as strong as when they started.

In the case of my top income-producing article, I’ve edited it at least two dozen times, gradually improving the experience for the tens of thousands of visitors that followed.

14. Check your stats constantly

“What gets measured gets managed.” — Peter Drucker

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.

Really try to gamify your writing.

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 in to 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 kind of 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 still feel the buzz, you’re in the sweet spot.

Install the Enhanced Medium Stats plugin for extra metric juice:

15. Don’t mess with the sauce

For several weeks after the initial traffic insanity, one of my articles was still making a massive $160–180 per day off of <2 hours of member reading time:

I stupidly thought to myself, “If I can boost traffic to 4 hours/day sustainably, that’s a hundred grand in a year!”

So what did I do?

I tried to boost traffic and messed with the sauce.

What an idiot.

For the next three weeks, I continued to average 1–2 hours of member reading time per day…

…

…

…

But it only paid me a few bucks:

As soon as I toyed with the system, the algorithm simply tanked the earnings.

Take a guess what day I started to tweak traffic:

There’s a lesson to be learned here:

Trust the process and don’t try to game the system — just keep writing.

16. Love the haters, adore the core

One thing I really love about my long-time readers is that they know they don’t have to agree with everything I write. That’s not why they read my stuff. They read my stuff because they’ll:

a.) always learn something new b.) be confronted with a perspective they’ve never heard before c.) be forced to think up solutions to real-world problems.

I want to attract thinking readers, not head-nodding sheep. Some of my favorite followers started off as extremely furious commenters who eventually realized I wasn’t a communist/socialist/republican/democrat/conservative/liberal/libertarian/boxable guy and just learned to roll with the subject at hand.

And that’s a skill I’ve purposefully cultivated because of a traumatic experience:

I was once on a major radio show (300+ stations, hundreds of thousands of listeners) and the host absolutely tore my book to shreds for a full hour.

My wife could barely sleep for a week. When my next book came out, I asked to go back on the show. And the host absolutely loved my book; ranted and raved (in a good way) and ended up publishing two articles about it.

It’s just two sides of a useless coin: Fear of man/love of praise.

Write for an audience of One.

And when little people start chirping when they hate your work, make it a game and try to win them over without giving an inch.

That said, never suffer fools. Delete all comments without response if they include a personal attack instead of discussing the issue at hand. And obviously, block trolls because life is too precious and short.

17. 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 write 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 pornography. Even if you never make a dollar from writing, you’ll be a happier human.

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, 4–6 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 fourteen times per week.)

Here’s a hard fact: Most people don’t have the work ethic to earn huge amounts of money online. If all writers could reliably earn $100,000/year writing part-time, everyone would do it. 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.

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 table several decades on.

Writing and pitching a story a day for ten years is how you get there.

18. Treat your writing business like an actual business

I’m baffled that people hop on Medium and are surprised when the article they banged out in an hour didn’t pay them enough to quit their day job.

That’s just silly.

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

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

I’ve just started my associateship.

Chaim Topol played Tevye in Fiddler on 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. Many people went to see him once each decade because the performance was entirely different, and better, each time.

Every single article you write should test and improve some facet of your writing: style, topic choice, headline, publication, tags, marketing.

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

Over 20,000.

Get serious about writing if you want writing to get serious about you.

19. Invest in your writing career

In total, I’ve invested well over $20,000 in my writing career so far — in editors, writing coaches, publishing mentors, and training courses.

It’s paid itself back many many many many many multiples over.

Here are some ways you can invest in your writing career:

a.) Get a Medium Pro Subscription

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, become inspired by new ideas, and figure out what niches and needs you can fill.

All for the cost of one nice meal out.

Plus, you can write it off on your taxes as market research. (Seriously.)

b.) Hire an editor

A great editor can make or break an article or book. I once hired an editor (for $7,000) who’d edited several Pulitzer winners to help me edit a book proposal.

Paid off massively.

c.) Intern for one of your favorite authors

This is how I broke in and got my first literary agent and book deal.

I gave him 20 hours of volunteering per week for six months in exchange for a one-hour weekly sit-down to talk about writing.

I’d do it again tomorrow.

d.) Take writing courses

I’m slowly working on one. (Get on the notification list.)

Tim Denning has a good one with my arch-nemisis Todd Brison.

e.) Get content coaching

Nothing beats talking with someone who is where you want to be.

(If you want me, click here.)

20. It’s not about the money (but you need to eat)

“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.” — Oscar Wilde

Writing on Medium has, of course, opened up all sorts of other income-paying writing opportunities for me this year, including ghostwriting, social media marketing, and content coaching. And I’ve been blessed to meet hundreds of really interesting people, and make a verified impact on more than one million lives.

My goal for the coming year is to get a book deal for my blog. (→If you know a literary agent and think my writing could be a benefit to the wider world, please send them the link to SurvivingTomorrow.org?)

Remember: 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 for you to contribute value: creating courses, publishing books, doing speaking tours.

Money doesn’t necessarily equal quality (or truth), but Medium’s algorithm does a pretty great job of rewarding articles that are at least extremely interesting.

And I want to read extremely interesting articles.

There’s room for you here

I’ll be honest: I waffled back and forth about even publishing this article and revealing my total income. After all, no one else is doing it.

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 writers need to rip eyeballs away from inane, time-devouring clickholes like Youtube and Tiktok and Snapchat, the eye-blurring binge streamers like Netflix, the extremist-brewing sites like Facebook, and the toxic and addictive sites like Instagram.

We need to write more and better articles.

We need to write wildly interesting, wildly helpful, wildly thoughtful articles.

Hopefully, this article will help you do just that.

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.

(Feel free to share your best-performing article in the comments below, so I can add it to my ever-growing list of wildly interesting articles to read.)

Signing off

I hope this article was tactical, practical, and highly-useable. (Sorry it was so long.) 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 market with integrity, then I’d say we’re all the better for it, and instead of competing, we’re actually growing together.

Oh, and one more thing:

Thanks for reading.

And subscribing, listening to the podcast, getting a paid subscription on Substack, buying me Scotch, and all the other nice things you’ve done.

My goal is to add as much value to your life as possible.

I promise I’ll keep bashing keys on my seven-year-old laptop.

And you should too.

Because we’re only just getting started.

Join thousands who get Jared A. Brock’s free newsletter+podcast. You’ll love it.