Here’s How Much Money You Can Really Make on Medium

And what you need to take care of

First things first: If you think writing on Medium is a get-rich-quick scheme and expect being rewarded for publishing a few pieces here, don’t bother reading this article.

Making money through your writing can be simple, but Medium is not the goldmine many people dream of. Unless you’re willing to write a lot, study the proven strategies, and take it seriously, you won’t enjoy your time here.

As someone who’s been here for two years, has published more than 300 posts, and is helping new writers to succeed on Medium, I’ll share an honest overview of how much money you can expect to make.

I didn’t expect much when I published my first post on Medium in 2018. I had never written professionally, neither did I ever consider starting a blog.

However, I’ve been a personal growth coach hosting seminars, creating online courses, and helping people to level up their game. So, I had lots of content and ideas to share, and Medium seemed to be the perfect place to do so.

Yet, I had no idea about how much money one could make here. I published my first post a few hours after signing up and was thrilled about making a few pennies doing something I loved.

Over the next 1.5 years, I published more than 200 posts. Some of them attracted a few hundred views, some others didn’t get any recognition at all.

In total, I made around $1,500 in those 1.5 years.

Right now, $1,500 is what I averagely make in 7–10 days on Medium.

Here’s how I made the jump from $1,500 in 1.5 years to making the same amount in around a week:

• I decided to take Medium seriously and write every single day starting in January 2020.
• I dived deep into understanding how the platform works.

Besides my own success, I’m also hosting an extremely positive Facebook group with hundreds of dedicated writers, and helping writers to achieve the same results.

Thus, I get lots of messages from members in the group and from people who’re interested in joining my program asking:

“How much money can I expect to make on Medium?”

Unfortunately, there’s not a short answer to that question.

How much money you make on Medium depends on so many things:

• How good is your writing?
• What are you writing about?
• How much are you writing?
• How long will you keep going without making thousands of dollars?

But here’s a brief overview of what’s possible:

Let’s break that down:

• Apparently, you can make a 5-digit income by writing on Medium. Writers like Ayodeji Awosika are hitting that mark all the time.
• You can obviously hit the jackpot and make more than $10,000 per story.
• And most importantly: The odds are big that you’ll be stuck where 95% of all Medium writers are and barely make $100 per month.

Recently, one of the members in our group posted the following question:

Admittedly, I can understand her concern. Many beginners ask themselves if it’s worth trying if only 5% of all writers make good money here.

Here’s my take on it:

• A considerable part of the 95% that don’t earn well don’t deserve it: They either don’t write frequently or publish crap.
• Yet, there are also writers who want to succeed and write more than one or two posts per month but have no idea what they’re doing.

They either don’t accept that they need to follow specific rules, or they just don’t want to follow them. It’s sad, but in both cases, they’ll end up not making significant money here.

If you’re writing for fun, that’s okay. But if you want to build an audience, leverage the massive traffic on the platform, or even make money, you might be disappointed quite soon by applying that approach.

Medium is a free platform, and you can use it to the fullest to build an income and audience if you play to the rules. If not, you’re still welcome to publish your work, but you can’t expect to grow your profile significantly.

That’s similar to wanting to grow an Instagram account without nice pictures — it just won’t work.

• Another considerable part of the 95 % doesn’t persevere for long enough.

They write a few posts and get angry because they don’t make thousands of dollars. And admittedly, this frustrates me.

As a newbie, your writing probably sucks. You need to practice, you need to learn, you need to keep going for long enough before expecting rewards.

And even if you’re not “a new writer”, you’re a new writer on Medium, and here, you need to play to the rules of Medium. What you’ve achieved elsewhere doesn’t matter.

Just look at the most prominent and successful writers here: They all started years ago, are making a bunch of money through their writing, and they are still publishing almost every day.

If these people with massive audiences are still putting in the work every freaking day, how can you, as a newbie, expect significant results without doing the work?

• The 95% of failing writers includes tons of people who’re using Medium like a personal journal.

Successful Medium writers are writing for their readers. Those who fail are writing for themselves. They believe they have something to say while they don’t. Plus, certain topics just work better on Medium than others.

So, before you start publishing, you might want to check out whether there’s an audience for your topics or not.

• Last but certainly not least: Most people have the wrong attitude.

As a mindset coach, I pay close attention to the attitude people have towards writing, and particularly towards Medium, and what I see often shocks me.

If that’s what you believe about Medium and yourself, you’ll keep attracting these results.

You’ll be as successful as you believe.

The universe will always present you with the results you believe in. If you’re convinced that making money is hard, that’s what you’ll experience.

If you, however, believe in the abundance of the universe and that your work is worth big rewards, that becomes your reality.

As Tony Robbins states:

“Success is made up of 80% mindset and 20% mechanics.”

And seriously, why would you not believe that achieving significant results is possible for you?!

There’s no difference between you and a successful Medium writer other than the fact that he or she is putting in the work for several years.

By believing in yourself, you have nothing to lose but everything to gain.

I started my writing journey on Medium as a 21-year old with no prior writing experience and as a non-native English speaker. I wrote crappy posts for more than a year until I realized I need to change something, and now I’m making +$5,000 per month.

One of the fantastic writers who’ve gone through my Medium Writing Academy is Kathrine Meraki: She started her writing journey on Medium a few months ago and hit almost $3,500 last month. But guess what? She’s writing a lot of good stuff. She’s learning from different sources, analyzing the best writers, and writing every freaking day. Her paycheck is well deserved because she’s doing what 95% are failing to do: Writing lots of great articles, following the strategies that are proven to work, and persevering.

Then there are also writers like Amardeep Parmar: He started writing on Medium at the end of 2019 after having spent a lot of time as a reader here. Amardeep says he was lucky because he hit a viral article that made several thousand dollars quite shortly after starting his writing journey. But guess what? He’s still determined and publishing fantastic pieces almost every day.

Now, obviously, breaking free from the 95% who’ll never make money on Medium and being one of the 5% who do make a significant income through their writing here is possible.

Kathrine and Amardeep both have day jobs and are creating a significant amount of content besides a 9-to-5.

What differentiates them from the 95% is that they don’t come up with excuses but with results.

Yes, luck plays a role if we’re talking about virality because with Medium, we’re all exposed to an algorithm that nobody truly understands. But the harder you work, and the more you put into your writing, the luckier you suddenly get.

You’ll never hit a viral piece out of nowhere. Success is always well deserved, and even if Amardeep Parmar says that he was lucky in publishing a viral article, I’m convinced that all the research he did by reading tons of pieces of successful writers made a huge difference and was the reason why his article went viral. Bad pieces don’t go viral, so he apparently made some excellent decisions while writing that post.

If it’s possible for Kathrine, Amardeep, or me to be rewarded for our writing, why shouldn’t it be possible for you?

Why should you be stuck in the 95% of writers who barely make money here instead of making hundreds or even thousands of dollars in exchange for creating great pieces?

Medium is full of passionate readers and growing even further every month.

Everyone who’s telling you that the platform is already saturated is lying.

But so is everyone who’s telling you that it’s an easy way to make money.

I’ll be honest with you: I’m not one of these writers saying, “I’d be writing even if I didn’t get paid for it.”

I’m an entrepreneur, and I need to spend my time wisely. I genuinely enjoy writing, and I love writing on Medium, but if writing here wasn’t paying off for my business, I probably wouldn’t do it. At least, I wouldn’t be writing every single day.

We all have bills to pay, and it’s a blessing to make money by doing something we love, but we probably wouldn’t be doing it without the rewards.

Giving you an exact breakdown of how much money you can make on Medium is not really possible.

Your success (or failure) here depends on so many factors, including the quality of your work, your perseverance, but also luck.

And if you’re stuck in the 95% of writers who’re not making money here, the odds are big that you’re either:

• writing for yourself
• not following (or knowing) the rules
• writing about the “wrong” topics
• or not believing that you can make it big here

Making a 4-digit income through your writing here is possible, even if you’re a beginner. Medium is continuously growing, and the readers are excited about new, fresh ideas and perspectives. So many people are sick of reading the work of the prominent writers but are thrilled about fresh vibes.

By writing on Medium, you’re dependent on an algorithm that you’ll never truly understand. The good news, however, is that nobody does. The person making $20,000 per month probably doesn’t know more than the one making $1,000.

Once you’ve figured out the rules, you need to keep creating, believing in yourself, and allowing the algorithm to work in your favor.

Yes, virality plays a significant role on Medium. Just look at the profiles of highly successful writers: Nobody has thousands of claps on each piece. They all succeed and make good money because they hit viral pieces every now and then — some more frequently, others less often.

Writing on Medium is a long term game. The more you write, the more pieces will make money every month and accumulate to a big paycheck. If you’re here for the long run and if you’re willing to work your ass off, you might see rewards.

If you’re, however, trying to be rewarded without putting in the work — good luck.

Want to succeed on Medium? Join my free 5-Day Medium Writing Course.