How I Made $135.00 My First Month On Medium

It wasn’t hard, but it did take some work and a bit of luck.

I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t have a monetary goal in mind for this first month on Medium.

I assumed with all the stats showing less than eight percent of active Medium writers earn less than $100 a month there was no reason to beleive I’d clear $100 my first month.

Ultimately my goal was to see if I could reach $500 to $1000 in 90 days but figured the first month would be all about learning the lay of the land and if I made $50 that would be a good start.

Yet here I am, sitting at $135 on the month, (well 33 days as my 30th day was in the middle of a pay week) so not only crossing the $100 dollar barrier but smashing through it.

I wish I could say I was excited about the future and my chances of hitting my $500 goal, but recent changes with Medium’s algorithm give me pause.

However, this post isn’t about bad news, we’ll save that for another day. Instead, let’s get into what I did to cross $100 on Medium and how you can apply it to your own Medium journey if you have yet to hit the monetary milestone.

1. I did my research

Before I started writing on Medium I spent quite of time reading up on the Medium Partner Program (MPP) and how to make money on the platform. I looked up popular authors, popular niches and the style heavily clapped articles were written in as well as other tips and tricks to have success on Medium.

I quickly realized any advice written before summer 2019 was pretty useless as Medium had changed a lot since MPP was originally created.

Medium is now deep behind a paywall, curation is the law of the land and loads of views may be nice but without fans, those well-viewed posts will make you nothing.

Adjusting to the paywall and writing to be curated were musts if I wanted to have success here and that brings me to point number two…

2. I wrote for curation

If you’re new here, then getting curated is important in helping to get those initial eyeballs to your article as well as helping you get your first fans and followers.

Now I had a bit of an advantage because I begin migrating one of my old blogs over to Medium. They were posts that had proven to be popular in the past and they continued to be popular on Medium as well.

However, even though I had older content I was updating and posting on Medium, my initial curations came from content I wrote exclusively for Medium.

Ultimately, When it comes to getting curated there is no secret sauce to making it happen.

Outside of following Medium’s (very opaque) curation guidelines and making sure you’re not making these common curation mistakes, it often comes down to writing in a style specific to the category you’re writing for.

Look at what is successful in your niche, and while you don’t want to copy that your content should have a similar feel.

Medium has a tendency to like factual stories with a personal element or stories that cover popular topics at a different angle. The best way to know what works or what doesn’t work in a particular topic is to do your research.

Here are a few more curation tips I learned along the way:

1. If at first you don’t succeed, delete repost and try again: Curators are human. They miss things. They have different tastes. If you have an article that you think should be curated, but wasn’t, just delete it and repost it. Sometimes an article just needs a new set of eyes.
2. Pay close attention to titles: Medium’s curators like their titles. A bad title can mean no curation for you. I’ve literally removed one word from a title or completely changed a title and nothing else and had articles that were previously rejected for curation, curated on the second (and sometimes third) attempt.
3. If all else fails email Medium: The [email protected] email is very friendly. Sometimes if you shoot them an email with the articles you think should have been curated, explain why you think they should be curated and ask nicely, you might be pleasantly surprised by their response. I ended up with an extra article curated this way. Shout out to Leo Serafico for the tip.

3. I followed 125 people a day

This one is a bit more controversial, but the truth is if I hadn’t done it I wouldn’t have hit the $100 mark.

Fans are what matters when you’re trying to make money Medium; member fans to be exact.

If people read your work and don’t clap — no money.

If they clap but aren’t paying members — no money.

The only way to ensure you have a base of paying members who may be interested in your work is to cultivate a following of paying members.

I only follow people who are Medium members. About 5 to 10% will follow you back. You can double that percentage by commenting and clapping for the work of those you follow.

Medium allows you to follow 125 people a day — do it.

4. I wrote a lot

I left this one last because it should be obvious, but I’ll say it again if you want to make money on Medium you’re going to have to write — -a lot. I”m not a viral writer.

I made $100 by having one post get to 50 fans and until recently didn’t have another cross 20. I have a bunch of articles that did okayish and one that did okay — and that’s it.

At the 30 day mark, I’d written 45 posts which was less than the minimum of 60 articles I was aiming for, but there were five days during the month I wasn’t able to write at all, and I feel comfortable that had I been able to write I would have hit or surpassed my 60 article mark.

You’ve got to write consistently if you want to have success on Medium.

Some things I didn’t do that you should probably do:

1. Submit your work to publications: I didn’t do much of this. However, if you’re new you need eyeballs and a way to cultivate followers and fans. Publications have the eyeballs, and with the way Medium is trending you’re going to need to publish in pubs if you want to get curated.
2. Start an email list: The money is in the list as they say. I have one in my offsite life, I didn’t feel the need to start one here on Medium
3. Start a publication: Having your own publication is a great way to begin to build a following on Medium. I started and deleted two because I didn’t have a plan for them, though I plan to revisit this once I figure out what I want to do with one.
4. Be active in offsite Medium communities: I did do this, but not enough. I’m apart of several Facebook groups and a Medium subreddit. I’m not as active as I should be, however. They aren’t good for traffic but they are good for networking with other writers and finding new people to follow which can benefit you in the long run.

My first 30 Days Recap

Here is each recap of each week of my first four weeks on Medium. They include the articles I write, my earnings and the lessons I learned along the way.

Final Thoughts

Alright, that’s it.

That’s how I managed to make $135 dollars my first month on Medium.

Nothing fancy, just a little research, some work and a bit of luck. I truly beleive anyone who puts their mind and time to it can crack that $100 barrier. I’m not particularly special here.

The bigger dollar amounts might be a little more difficult to crack, but the goal is to start small and grow. So aim for your first $100 if you haven’t made it yet and see where you can go from there.

And as always, happy writing!