How I Made 4 Cents on Medium

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Abstract

entries, as part of the Next 90 Days Challenge, says, “I made money on Medium.” (Shoutout to Rachel Hollis!)When I told my partner that I had finally made money on Medium, she was genuinely happy for me.“I made 4 cents!” I cried. “One cent for every hour I spent on that article.”I wrote every day, but only published every 2–3 days, fearing that my topics were boring and my voice too candid. I’ve published 11 articles so far. I wrote about being in the emergency room treating COVID-19 patients; I wrote a series on butt health; I promoted these articles on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Of the dozen people who read each article, I’m pretty sure six of them were family members wondering what the heck I’m up to, two of them were my former high school English teachers wondering what the heck I’m up to, and the remainder were a random assortment of people who were sitting at home, not doing anything anyway, so why not click on this crazy person’s link? But of all the posts that I wrote, the one that

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made the most money, to date, was the one that was hardest to write.It was the hardest to write, and the hardest to publish, because it had a lot of my feelings in it.I wrote “A Surgeon and a Transporter” while sitting outside of an emergency room, dressed in full protective regalia, at 0200 in the morning. I had committed to not taking off my mask for the full 8 hour shift, but it was getting stiflingly hot inside. I wrote it because I wanted to have a record of those nights.My advice for people wanting to make 4 cents on Medium is: write every day but publish only every 2–3 days so people will be waiting to read your inspirational piece. Write whatever is hardest and makes you want to cry. And write in the delirious hours of the morning, while suffocating inside an N95 mask and sweating your face off. It doesn’t matter how many friends or followers you have, and it certainly doesn’t matter how much you think your topic is relevant — your readers will be the judge of that.</article></body>

Through pure grit and charm

Everyone knows how to make $20,000 in one month, or $650 a day. We’ve all read those articles. If you’re impressed by that, get this: you can make $0.04 in three weeks, and I will show you how.

I am a surgeon. Let’s get that out of the way. That is my day job. But I also fancy myself a writer, and I’d rather pretend that I make a living writing than surgeon-ing. So for the past four weeks, while we have been on quarantine, I’ve been carving a niche for myself as a writer of Medium posts, scientific journal articles, poetry, comics, mopey diary entries and refund request letters. You name it, I’ve written it. (See my post, A Surgeon and a Writer, to see how I fit all this into my weekly schedule.) But I really wanted to make an impact on Medium, so one of my diary entries, as part of the Next 90 Days Challenge, says, “I made money on Medium.” (Shoutout to Rachel Hollis!)

When I told my partner that I had finally made money on Medium, she was genuinely happy for me.

“I made 4 cents!” I cried. “One cent for every hour I spent on that article.”

I wrote every day, but only published every 2–3 days, fearing that my topics were boring and my voice too candid. I’ve published 11 articles so far. I wrote about being in the emergency room treating COVID-19 patients; I wrote a series on butt health; I promoted these articles on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Of the dozen people who read each article, I’m pretty sure six of them were family members wondering what the heck I’m up to, two of them were my former high school English teachers wondering what the heck I’m up to, and the remainder were a random assortment of people who were sitting at home, not doing anything anyway, so why not click on this crazy person’s link? But of all the posts that I wrote, the one that made the most money, to date, was the one that was hardest to write.

It was the hardest to write, and the hardest to publish, because it had a lot of my feelings in it.

I wrote “A Surgeon and a Transporter” while sitting outside of an emergency room, dressed in full protective regalia, at 0200 in the morning. I had committed to not taking off my mask for the full 8 hour shift, but it was getting stiflingly hot inside. I wrote it because I wanted to have a record of those nights.

My advice for people wanting to make 4 cents on Medium is: write every day but publish only every 2–3 days so people will be waiting to read your inspirational piece. Write whatever is hardest and makes you want to cry. And write in the delirious hours of the morning, while suffocating inside an N95 mask and sweating your face off. It doesn’t matter how many friends or followers you have, and it certainly doesn’t matter how much you think your topic is relevant — your readers will be the judge of that.