HOW I DID IT
How I Earned $10,000 on Medium in 2019
Three things that contributed to my success
This year, I’ve earned a little over $10,000 on Medium. The year started off slow, with monthly Partner Program payments between $100 and $200, but took off in April when I earned $1,500 on a single story.
Since then, my monthly payments were between $700 and $1,000 — Until this month. A story of mine published at the end of December earned me $1,300 in just five days, bringing my December Partner Program payment to nearly $2,500. (EDIT: Final count, $2949 — nearly $3000).
I’m ecstatic! This is plenty of money for me, making it possible for me to give up major freelancing clients and focus more on Medium.
As much as everyone loves a get-rich-quick scheme, this was not quick nor a scheme. I’ve been writing on Medium since March 2018 and most of the articles I’ve written since then have been duds. In fact, I’ve pulled over 100 articles off the website simply for the crime of being underperforming, underwhelming, and not worth the megabytes it takes to host them.
What has contributed to my success (other than the temerity to keep writing even when most of what I write sucks) has not been building a personal website, social media marketing, or joining writer Facebook groups, it’s been these three things:
1. Maintain a Mailing List
The single most important thing an independent writer can do is maintain a mailing list. A mailing list connects you to your readers sans a middleman who could control your access. If Medium were to decide to pivot to a revenue-free model or changed the algorithm in such a way that your articles now tank (like it did recently for fiction and poetry writers), a mailing list would keep you connected to your readers.
In addition, a mailing list serves as a valuable bargaining chip. If you’re trying to get a publishing deal, a mailing list will help you get an advance — the larger the mailing list, the larger the advance. If you’re trying to convince a magazine to pick up an article of yours, promising to advertise your article with your mailing list will make you more attractive to potential editors.
The best part is starting and growing a mailing list is easy. All you have to do is create one and link to it at the bottom of every article you write. People who like your writing will sign up.
By doing just that, I was able to grow my mailing list this year from 50 people to 1045 people, surpassing my goal of 1000 subscribers.
If you're starting a newsletter, I recommend signing up with Substack.
2. Learn How to Use Medium as a Platform
It doesn’t matter how good your writing is — if you don’t know how to optimize your articles for Medium, your articles won’t do well.
It should come as a relief to hear that optimizing articles for Medium is pretty easy. All you have to do is learn how to …
- Pick the best tags
- Pick the best photos
- Format articles the way Medium readers love
- Get your articles into publications
The best resource I’ve found for this is Dave Schools’ Medium Writing Course. It’s $49, but it’s an extra-thick and extra-detailed guide on how to write Medium articles that perform. If you’ve earned at least $50 from writing on Medium so far, go ahead and invest it in his book.
If the idea of paying for a book rankles you, you don’t have to. There are plenty of articles all over this website about how to succeed on Medium. Here’s two I’ve written:
3. Write Good Headlines and Subtitles
At the beginning of 2019, my headlines and subtitles were, well, there’s no polite way to put it, terrible. My headlines included vague entries like Self-Help For Spoonies and Life’s Greatest Gifts Are Unexpected.
Not only did I give articles vague headlines, but I made poor use of the subtitles. I didn’t display the subtitle in the body of my articles and I Camel Cased all my subtitles instead of making them sentence case, which is what Medium (and all other major publishers) prefer.
As a result, articles that weren’t particularly bad ended up tanking. They may have been fine articles, but nobody was willing to click on them to find out.
Learning to write good headlines over 2019 has been a matter of trial and error. After writing around 150 articles this year, I’ve developed a much better sense of which headlines work and which ones don’t. This doesn’t mean I’m always able to pick a winner, but I pick winners more often than I used to.
I’d love to link to some resources on writing good headlines, but I don't know of any. All I have to offer are these brief guidelines:
- Don’t try to be mysterious. Be specific.
- Camel Case headlines and sentence case subtitles.
- Come up with five or six headlines for each article before picking one.
Just because I was able to do these things right on Medium doesn’t mean all my writing decisions in 2019 were good ones. For every minute I spent doing something right (i.e., writing), I spent at least one minute on something that was a total waste of my time. The path to success is not linear. But if you can spend more of your time doing what matters and less of your time doing what doesn’t, you’re on the right track.
Want to make money writing for Medium? Get my Make Your First $100 on Medium email course.