How I Earned a $100 on Medium and Got Curated by Roz Warren All In One Month

Excuse me while I humblebrag until 2021

Don’t ask me how it happened. Well, do ask. No, I mean don’t.

Actually, you don’t have to ask. I’m going to tell you about my glamorous rags-to-riches Medium earnings journey either way, like it or not, want it or not.

I don’t know how lowly old me joined the elites of Medium by casually writing a handful of articles this month but I did. I would have never imagined that six months after taking Medium seriously that I would break the 3-figure mark.

It must be the universe or the divine spirits who are blessing me. It must be the blue moon, change in the planetary shifts or some of the changes Medium implemented last month. I don’t know what helped but I’m just grateful that I broke the 3-figure income barrier and joined the top 6 percent of writers on Medium.

I’m just going to spend the rest of the month telling you how I humbly crushed it on Medium. My purpose here will be threefold. I’d like to offer you something of value to “help” you on your writing journey. I’d like to humblebrag that I hit the $100 mark and have successfully joined the elites of Medium. And thirdly, I’d like to show you “that if I can do it, you can do it.”

Nothing that I’m going to share here is simply for the purpose of selling you a course I’m putting together, intentionally done to make you feel terrible about yourself and how much your earned last month, or going to extract the maximum amount of read time out of you to generate even more income this month with this article.

How did I win so much on Medium

So, now the intros are out of the way and you know my intentions clearly, let’s get to the bottom of this.

How did I, a third-rate writer with no writing experience, (forget about the fact that I’ve been writing online for 10 years and written more than 500 blog posts previously or that I was a practicing attorney before who spent all my time writing briefs in court) manage to land a coveted 3-figure ($110) income on Medium this month?

How did I, a relative nobody, get mentioned by Roz Warren, humor writer extraordinaire with a guest appearance on the Today Show and who has appeared in the New York Times, and ended up on one of her top 3 funniest stories of the week? How did a story that I wrote get curated by the official Medium humor curator and make it into her weekly humor roundup? (Well she claims she’s the unofficial Medium humor curator but who’s really keep track? If Medium is, I hope they put her on payroll)

How did I, after just taking Medium seriously for a few months, suddenly get dozens of comments, thousands of claps, hundreds of followers in such a short period of time? How did I double my earnings, get 35,000 views, hit the 3-figure mark, and continue to inspire and pave the way for so many other writers out there on their Medium journeys?

11 ways to earn more and 15 tips for new writers

Ahhh…before I get into all of that, let me post my screenshots of monthly earning for the past 6 months. Then, I’ll post an Excel file with the increase of my follower count. Then, I’ll post a pie chart of which articles got the most claps. Then, I’ll post a VENN diagram of which of my topics intersected with the other topics that got the most reads, most views, and claps.

You’ll be so happy for me that you’ll want to keep reading another 8 articles on how I broke the 3-figure mark. You’ll feel so inspired that you’ll wake up at 4 am for the rest of the month and continue writing an article a day. You’ll be so taken aback and believe in yourself so much that you too will amp up your Medium game and take your earnings to the next level.

Before I get into all those details, I feel like I need to get the proper rest so I can really delve into what has worked for me. I don’t want to give you some lame advice that any three-figure earning Medium writer could give you. I want you to be so blown away by the words of wisdom and not simply skim past my brilliant listicle on 11 ways to earn more or 15 tips for new writers.

I want to start writing this post for you with a fresh mind after I spend my new Medium earnings, invest in a laptop so I can continue producing even better content for you, and after much reflection and gratitude for my best month yet. I really want to get to the bottom of my brilliance and how it manifested into a 3-figure income so that I can share it with you.

Quit the make money on Medium game

All right, people, let’s cut the crap here. I’m so sick and tired of all the humble-bragging on Medium where people know that “how to make money writing on Medium articles” will be read with great interest by lots of people.

The monetary breakdown, the follower count, the viral article humblebrag, the screenshots and the tips for you to increase your earnings…the inspiration for you to write better…the “if I can do it, you can do it” garbage. The four-figure and five-figure month earners constantly beating the drum of increased earnings and trying to get the rest of us to dumb down our writing, follow the formula and earn more money too.

Could we hold off or reduce the number of articles that we’re writing like this and stop trying so hard to sell people our Medium courses? By the way, here’s how to make it on Medium without a course.

Could we lessen the number of “make money on Medium” articles” and actually provide some content that could improve people’s lives in a tangible way?

Are you with me? If you've had enough of the humble-bragging, earn more on Medium article-writing, post your screen-shots to “inspire other” marketing crap, please holler at me in the comments.

The rest of you, please wait for part 2 of this post where I will breakdown for you step-by-step how I broke the 3 figure-income barrier last month and got an honorable mention for humor by Roz Warren herself. You won’t want to miss it.

Do you laugh, cry, or cancel your Medium account and pretend this whole episode of your Medium-writing life never happened? Let me know in the comments :)