How Can You Make More Money Blogging?
I’ve been studying the monetization of blogging — this is what I learned
If you’re here, I am going to assume you want to learn about making money through your writing. I was in the same boat a few months ago. I started writing on Medium as a way to supplement my income. I had one article go viral and make about $100 over 2 months. I felt like I was well on my way to making thousands of dollars a month, no problem.
And then the viral article stopped making money. Because I took it down. Or rather, replaced the text of the article with a link to two articles explaining how I made my article go viral and why I shouldn’t have. And I was left with my non-viral articles.
Watching this effect made me curious about how and why things go viral and how that relates to making money. I did some research and some experimentation. Then I decided to launch my own startup centered around how people make money online through content creation and specifically blogging. This is what I learned.
How Do You Make Money on Medium?
As you probably already know, Medium pays you based on the amount of time Medium members spend reading your article. If you want to increase your income, you need to have people spend more time reading your articles.
How can you do this?
Two ways:
- You can write longer pieces that take people longer to read
- You can get more people looking at your shorter pieces.
There has been a ton of writing around how to increase your income on Medium. And most of it is wrong.
The authors who write the pieces tend to write a lot about how to make money because that is what people are reading. If they write about how to make money on Medium, they make more money on Medium. See that interesting feedback cycle? It has nothing to do with them being correct.
There’s your shortcut to making money on Medium. Just write about making money on Medium. See? Even I am doing it!
What If Medium Didn’t Exist?
This is a question that I find interesting. Would you be able to make money from your writing if Medium didn’t exist? Until recently, the answer for me was no. That is something that Medium has helped me with. In addition to Medium, I have been exploring alternate income streams.
Personal Blog
If I didn’t have the company that I was starting, I would probably launch my own personal blog and figure out how to monetize that. The problem is that if you want to make money from a personal blog, you are likely going to have to rely on income from advertising. But to do well with advertising, you again need to get your numbers up. You need to get eyeballs on the ads.
Paid Newsletter
This is one of the ideas I have explored. I actually run one for my company as one of my revenue streams. I initially used Substack but ended up transitioning to Ghost because it gave me more control over what I was building. With Substack, I got the newsletter and payment functionality. What is the problem for me? I haven’t been able to get people to see the actual value of the newsletter. I haven’t positioned myself as an authority on subjects yet according to the world. So nobody wants to pay for something they don’t trust. I am still working on building up my audience’s trust in me. So a personally paid newsletter isn’t going to work for me until I can build up that audience.
Other Writing Platforms
I don’t have a ton of experience with these. I did apply for News Break and was rejected. I know that some people also write on platforms like Vocal. I would suggest finding writers who do write on those platforms if this is something you would be interested in.
Knowledge Products
This is probably the most profitable way to write. Figure out what you know and build products around that knowledge. Things like writing books (physical or ebooks), creating courses, and consulting services can all be built around your writing.
So What’s The Problem?
There are actually two main problems that I see. Medium does a great job of offering a super-easy way to get started. They have built-in distribution channels and they offer a simple way to sign up to receive payments. They also offer a way for fans to connect to you.
The problems are that:
- They own the distribution channels. They control who gets their work viewed. They did outsource this a bit to publications and this does help a bit. But then you are at the mercy of the publication and what marketing avenues they utilize. And that is if you can even get published in the biggest ones. You are still relying on others to distribute your work. As you grow your personal audience, this becomes less of an issue, but they still control it. Your work can be shut off from views at any time. This prevents Medium from being a place in which you can make a career from your writing.
- They own the connection to your audience. If you are relying on Medium to keep you connected to your audience, you give them way too much control over future outcomes. Most writers get around this by maintaining their own email lists. This gives them ownership of their audience. If you ask them, this is where they get their highest engagement numbers. This is where they can connect their audience to their writing and most commonly their products as well.
The Solution
It wouldn’t be great for me to explain the problems without talking about how to solve them. This is how I am solving the problem for myself and hopefully others.
Step one: own the connection to your audience. Build up your email list. Send them regular updates on your work.
Step two: build out your own distribution channels. This actually goes hand in hand with your email list but is a little more extensive than that. In addition to your email list, work on marketing your work in any way you like. Different types of writing work better with varying channels. For example, I like Twitter. I am active there and am building up a following around my content related to tech and building out my startup. Since a lot of my writing relates to those topics, this is one distribution channel for me. Another is to build out collections of your work. Give people a place to go to explore your work on various topics. At the minimum, give people somewhere to go where they can connect with you and your writing. Dr Mehmet Yildiz has a great resource on building collections:
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