Here’s How Much Medium Paid Me for an Article with 500,000 Views
and 3734 hours of reading time.
Views are not in our control.
And it sucks.
No matter how catchy your title is and how great a writer you are, you cannot guarantee that your next article will be a hit.
If anyone tells you something different, trust me — they are lying or trying to sell their Medium courses to you in five minutes.
You research day and night, write your heart out, hit the publish button, and then move on to the next article. And you repeat the same process. Because if you wait for one article to go viral (in other words, actually meet its readers), you’ll have to wait for an eternity.
That’s the plain truth.
I have written 380 stories in the last two and a half years. And do you know how many of them went viral? The number is probably less than 20. Only two of them actually crossed the three-figure mark.
Earning money by writing is that hard.
You already know it.
But by some stroke of luck or whatever you want to call it, one of my articles went crazy in November 2021. So far, it has gotten more than 552K views, 3734 hours of reading time, and, of course, some haters.
On October 25, 2021, I published an article titled “Why Elon Musk Fired His Long-Term Assistant Who Asked for A Raise.”
It was about the firing of Elon’s assistant, Mary Beth Brown, who had worked for him for around 12 years, the reason behind her firing, and some comments about it.
It was just another article and certainly not one of my best writings, but it’s not bad either.
If I find any topic interesting, I explore it and often write an article about it. There are no high expectations involved, and I think most of you do the same.
In that same month, I wrote a total of 28 stories (I was very productive at that time as I gave myself the challenge to write one article a day). And things were going normally until November 01 — the day when I saw a huge spike in my stats.
Soon, I realized that most of the views were coming from the Elon Musk story, and it was getting crazier with each passing day.
All I know is that for the next three or four months, this single story made me a lot of money that I never imagined possible from writing.
How much?
Let’s see.
The story has received over 552K views and 3734 hours of reading time, which eventually earned me $19,578.
For a single story, it’s like a dream come true.
Not only that, as the story got a huge amount of external views, it got me more than 80 referred members.
Before this story, I had only two of them.
Below you can see the external traffic this story received.
There can be many reasons why this particular story went viral and others didn’t.
The fact is that the story is about Elon Musk (whom everybody knows unless they live in caves) and the title is too catchy. It gets readers emotionally attached from beginning to end and leaves them thinking about their own professional life and insecurity.
Probably that’s why people shared this story across different platforms which resulted in its favor.
Or, maybe it’s just pure luck and nothing else. Who knows!
“It is weird but more than that, it’s random. The internet is a random phenomenon. I had one article that made $400 and that was great. But when I tried to replicate with a similar idea, it didn’t happen. I’ve got close but it started to just fade away,” a fellow writer wrote in response to my article’s great reach.
Another writer said, “I think it reflects our insecurities ‘why can’t I ask for a raise,’ and confirms a bias ‘Elon Musk is an asshole,’ or ‘I knew it — billionaires are evil!’ People are always interested in topics about money, especially if it affects them.”
Well, I think both of them are right.
It’s really hard to predict which story will go viral and which one will hit the dust as soon as we hit the publish button.
Now, if you ask me, “Can you write a similar story and guarantee that it will be a hit?”
The simple answer is — No.
I saw a couple of writers copying the title and writing the same story, but none of them got 1% of the views this story got.
As I’ve told you earlier, nobody really knows what the peculiar algorithm of this platform would pick and spread like wildfire, and what our readers would adore or ignore.
It’s a mystery I guess. And it’s not always bad.
You never know what’s going to happen next. So, there is still hope.
You might be wondering, what can we do to increase our chances to meet our readers?
Well, we can do what we do best: write better articles.
And for better reach, we should always —
- Craft engaging and click-worthy headlines
- Be honest with our stories
- Try to engage our readers emotionally or add some value to their life
- Write and publish frequently
Most importantly, we must stop overthinking about the money our stories are getting. Instead, we should focus on telling interesting stories and hope for the best.
If you’re a conscious reader (which I think you are), don’t forget to unlock thousands of AWESOME stories only for $5/mo and OUTSHINE others — Click Me.
Want to read more of my writings? Do check out the following articles: