How I Made $500 on Medium in a Day Without Going Viral

How I made $500 from five hours of work and zero promotion without my article going viral.

I recently sold a commissioned piece to Better Humans that cleared my earning goal by 178% and added a nice publication to my list of credits.

This is the article in question:

In one day, I earned $500 without sharing or boosting or even going viral. How’d I do it? How’d I trick the Medium Gods into offering me pure hard cash?

Simply by asking them to.

Commissioned Work on Medium

So, commissioned work means you get paid up front for your work. You don’t have to worry about counting stats or anything like that. You get your $$$ for what you’ve written, not for how much you were read or how long members spend on your piece.

Pretty much, the way Medium does commissioned work is how the rest of the traditional publishing world goes about paying authors for their work. There’s no get rich quick scheme. No betting on trends or viral topics. You just write your quality piece and are paid for it.

That’s it.

Not only that, but all of the commissioned publications on Medium are considered professional pubs that will shine bright on your resume or CV. While P.S. I Love You and The Startup are great and stellar top publications on Medium, they don’t mean as much off of the platform.

If your main goals on Medium are to build your writing career, grow your audience, and earn money while doing it, then I suggest you start looking at commissioned work on Medium. There are non-Medium owned publications that pay as well, this list has a pretty solid roundup.

I will say some of the publications listed like PSILY are not commissioned based. So keep an eye out for where it says Partner Program Earnings. Those are not commissioned base, but the basic way of earning.

For fiction writers, The Arcanist is a Medium publication for speculative flash fiction. They are a well-known name in the spec fic field and pay. There’s a podcast branch of their publication, too. So, there’s a chance an accepted story will get a second life. They also publish nonfiction around speculative fiction and pay for that as well.

Curious on how to break into these types of publications that have an astronomically high standard? Below I’ll outline everything I did.

How I Landed Commissioned Work

Here’s the email that I got the first week of February:

The way commissioned things on Medium work is that you are paid upfront for your work and that is it. So if the article happens to go viral and earn thousands of dollars, I won’t get paid for that reading time. It is a downside, but not one that I am mad about.

While I won’t be getting earnings for the read time, I have already earned more from this one article than I have from any of the other stories I’ve written on Medium. It has also increased my email signups and followers. Though my wallet won’t increase, my reach and brand will.

If you’ve been following this mad journey of mine to $100/day on Medium in passive earnings, then you have read this:

The same steps I used in the above article, I used for Better Humans. I stuck to my niche so that I didn’t have to do any extra work. Editing is something that I write about extensively, making it an easy article to come up with and write.

I only had submitted one article to them before, and to be honest, it wasn’t even an article. It was only a pitch. The Complete Self-Editing Guide was my first full article sent in to Better Humans, and they bought it because I made sure to research my topic within the publication first.

The main outline of the article was complete before I started to dig around in Better Humans back catalog for writing and editing articles. I saw that there were two similar to my article that had done well in the past. So, using those articles as a jumping off point, I included more information and resources than either.

By doing this I was ensuring that my article would be a more comprehensive guide than the two before it. Not only would the editors love it, but the readers who had read the previous articles would find a better more updated edition.

I also decided to treat Better Humans like I treat the professional publications that I write for. Using my pitching strategy and mindset, I added a private note and more of my writing expertise into the article.

According to my time tracker, the article that netted me $500 only took 5 hours and 23 minutes to write and that time was spent:

• Studying the past articles on my topic that Better Humans had published(~1 hour)
• Writing the piece (~2 hours)
• Editing the piece (~2 hours)

I split the work over two days during my writing weekend. I did the studying and writing portion one day and the editing portion the other. I’m a fast writer due to time spent as a ghost writer and because I practiced when I first started out as a writer to meet quick turnarounds.

Another huge advantage is that I’ve written about this topic before, so I had all the available resources handy. In previous posts, I’ve advised writers to use past article ideas to create new article ideas. This is one of the reasons.

When you write an article that is based off of an old article, most of the article is already written in your mind and on paper.

I’ve known for sometime now that February was going to be a busy month for me off of Medium. I have some books, games, and courses coming out that I am in the process of offering a speciality pre-order run to my subscribers. So, all of my focus during February is going to be on that.

So back in January, I planned to aim for commissioned work to reach my earning goal quick. You see, instead of spending a huge portion of my time writing tons of articles, submitting them to multiple publications, marketing them, and the like, I targeted commission paying markets that would give me money AND a platform all up front.

By focusing on one article and one publication that pays for its pieces, I was able to complete my earnings goal and check a dream publication off my list. I’ve been loosely marketing my stuff since the beginning of February, but I’ve been making a steady daily earning of around $7 on top of the $500 I already made.

Since this month is going to be heavy in work off of this site, doing pre-orders for my games, books, and courses, having this upfront earning and widespread is essential to continuing making a passive income on this site. Potentially, I could stop writing and rely solely on my backlist and the scheduled pieces I have coming out throughout the rest of the month.

I’d easily end my month making over $700. Of course, I won’t do that. I’m not that writer. I have some more pieces and pitches out at commissioned places. If I land those, I’ll be ending my third month on Medium pulling in over $1,000.

Not to bad for a newbie.

Previous Week Earnings Report

If you want to go through the back catalog of earning reports I have, I’ve listed them below from the most recent to the oldest. Each is packed with insight and clear takeaways to use in your own writing and strategy.

Week Eight: An outlined guide to making money on Medium

Week Six: How to earn quick through publications that don’t pay

Week Five: Being Intrinsically Successful on Medium

Week Four: Benefit of reading other writer’s work

Week Three: How I plan my month’s on Medium

Week Two: All about curation and making your backlist earn for you

Week One: Where it all began

Pro tip #192: Publish less but earn more by aiming for big publications that pay in your niche and becoming a known brand and figure.

Takeaways on How to Land Commissioned Work on Medium

• Read the publication’s most recent articles to learn voice, format, and what the readers engage with before submitting
• Make sure the title and subtitle of your article are clear and tell the reader what they will learn
• Treat commissioned work on Medium like paid assignments off the site
• Blend the researched with the personal
• Aim for longer reads (+2,000-words)
• Go in-depth on every aspect

Aigner Loren Wilson is a 5X Top Writer in Fiction, Writing, Art, Books, and Poetry. Her work has appeared in Better Humans, Better Marketing, The Writing Cooperative, and more. Subscribe for access to masterclass courses in writing, editing, and making a living as a writer.