How I Maximized My Medium Stories to Make $1,607.80 Last Month

Key strategic takeaways from generating income with the Medium Partnership Program

Like many people who will read this article, I've dreamt long and hard about a life where I am the architect of my own destiny. I've envisioned "going out on my own" and creating a living for myself — as opposed to working as an employee for a business I don't care about.

That reality has settled in.

This journey to be an entrepreneur and writer started a few years ago and has blossomed into something that I never could have imagined.

Now, I want to be clear with this article. I made $1,607.80 with Medium's Partner Program in the month of November. I also generate revenue through my blog and other means, and it has allowed me to be enterprising on my own.

I truly believe that Medium's Partner Program is the quickest way to start generating entrepreneurial and enterprising revenue for any individual.

Once you've been able to generate $.01 through your own efforts — you've won. Anything that comes later is just gravy.

And to many of you reading this, you might be impressed or motivated by making just $.01. Medium has shown that if you were to make $.01, then you are in the minority of writers producing eligible content on the platform (59% of writers or publications who wrote at least one story earned money in November). This should motivate you.

Furthermore, less than 10% of active writers are earning over $100. Seeing as I made over $1,500, I can confidently say that I am perhaps in the top 1% of earners and I have tested various strategies and formulation of the articles in order to achieve as such.

In this article, we're going to go over the various strategies I've used in creating content that goes viral, actionable insight on how to get your stories curated, and how to supplement much of your income through the Medium Partner Program.

What Is the Partner Program and What Do They Look For?

Many of you reading this article are already familiar with the Medium Partner Program, so I won't go into the details ad infinitum; however, I will uncover some of the biggest foundational aspects of being successful with the Partnership Program.

Taken directly from the site, Medium is looking for:

1. The story is yours and is quality
2. The story is free of ads
3. The story is something that "raises the bar"

Considering these three (very important) elements of your content, we'll go further into how you can maximize the output of these variables within your stories.

Let's unpack these three crucial elements.

1. The Story Is Yours and Is Quality

Medium is the YouTube of bloggers.

Great content always rises to the top. Furthermore, it's important that the content is yours.

This is the easiest part of the section to address — the story is yours.

• You didn't plagiarize anything
• You write about what you care about
• You are creating something from within
• You are creating something in line with your own expertise

This is important to consider when crafting content that is going to generate hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars with the Partnership program.

The second part of the element goes into the idea of your content being quality.

This is a bit more subjective but we will dive into this in more detail.

1.1 The quality of a story, getting curated, etc.

If we take a moment and consider the definition of "quality", we have a great starting point for the quality of your story:

qual·i·ty

/ˈkwälədē/

noun

the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.

The second part of the definition is the more important part here — the degree of excellence of something.

To what degree of excellence is your work?

According to Hostingtribunal.com, roughly 70 million blog posts appear on WordPress blogs alone. This doesn't account for the posts that appear on Medium. In an interview with Cheddar.com, Medium CEO Ev Williams noted that the platform has surpassed 100 million monthly users, many of them posting regular content.

So many people are writing content that isn't quality. They are hammering out stories with the mindset that the quantity of content will make more money than the quality of content.

When it comes to Medium, this idea cannot be further from the truth.

Plain and simple — your story has to be of quality in order to:

• Be received well by your audience
• Be curated by Medium's editorial team (thus be placed in digests, tops of pages, etc.)
• Generate higher reading engagement

All of the above-mentioned elements of a quality story result in a higher payout.

Again, let's go further into each one of these characteristics of a quality story and how to use each characteristic into generating more money from the Partnership Program.

1.1.1 Creating well-received stories

What do readers first think when they read a story?

Generally, the reader is thinking, "What's in it for me?"

Think about anything that you read or watch (especially on YouTube).

• You want to learn a new skill
• You want to be entertained
• You want to be enraged (if you're reading CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc.)

In order to create quality content, it is your primary job to consider the viewpoint of the reader first.

What can you teach them? How can you entertain them? How can you move them emotionally?

You are making a promise to your reader — and you better deliver on it.

The promise is made through the headline and then the promise is delivered through the content of the article.

The headline is often the more important element of a story. Why? Because if you cannot grab the attention of the millions of readers using the platform in which you're publishing your content, the valuable work inside the story won't get consumed.

"On average, 5 times as many people read the headline as read the body copy."

— David Ogilvy

The two most powerful headlines formulas are:

• “How to” headlines
• Listicle “[Number] of ways to achieve [objective]”

Many people (myself included) like to get artsy with their headlines because they see themselves as artists (yes — writers are artists and I consider good marketers artists, too). That's okay; just don't be surprised when no one reads your article and you don't make any money through the partnership program.

After you attract someone with the headline, it's important to deliver on that promise. This is where the quality content comes into play, and by proxy, it helps in getting your story curated.

1.1.2 Getting your story curated

The Medium editorial team isn't stupid.

They are also good at what they do.

They can recognize straightaway from the headline of an article if it's worth the pursuit of reading for judgment for curation. So everything in getting curated starts with a good title.

A tool that I use for generating optimal headlines is the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer. It’s free to use and you can workshop different combinations of your headline in order to get a metric score you're proud of and worthy of use for your story.

After you create your headline, your story won't get curated unless it's backed up with corroborating evidence of your claims.

Think about your audience again — they aren't stupid; they need tangible evidence to the claims you're making with your work.

• Do you have economic evidence for the market fluctuation claims you're making?
• Do you have empirical evidence to the claims you're making about physiological health?
• Do you have credible testimony regarding the marketing strategy you're promoting?
• Do you have statistical evidence to support that claim regarding an industry's growth?

All of these things matter to your reader — especially with the intelligent readers you'll find on Medium. Your opinion alone won't convince anyone that you have the expertise to help them solve the problem they are looking to remedy.

If you're stuck in terms of how to do this, take a look at the popular blogs/websites within your niche and look at how the professional writers are backing up their claims with corroborating evidence.

In fact, take for example what I've done in this piece!

Luckily for me, I have a few years of experience with ghostwriting for companies and having my work featured on Forbes. With Forbes, your evidence has to be peer-evaluated, or they won't accept it.

For many, practice will make you better. When you make a claim in your story, think to yourself:

"Is there a way I can prove this claim?"

If not, then it's just opinion — if so, find the evidence that supports it and include it in your story.

This will help your chances of creating curated work, and driving more traffic to the story thus driving higher reader engagement.

1.1.3. Generate higher reader engagement

When you have a compelling headline and deliver on that promise, you will ultimately generate higher reader engagement with your posts.

Why is this important?

Considering that Medium changed their payout structure in November 2019 from viewership to time reading articles — this is one of the most important facets of your strategy.

The most important element of this update is point 1. "[…] calculate earnings based on the reading time of Medium members."

Medium and their genius understand that people were using headlines in a malicious way — people were just working on getting the "clicks" and then underdelivering in this article.

In order to counter this plague — Medium switched to reading time as opposed to viewership.

In order to make great money with the Medium Program, you needed to first grab the attention of the potential viewer, and (more importantly) deliver on the claim being made in the headline.

This is through quality content, and that quality content is created by following everything we've discussed up until this point.

When you can hammer down into the details of what your readers should know, you keep them compelled to travel down the page and keep absorbing the valuable information, insight, and strategy you've provided.

Everything noted culminates into creating quality stories that are read, shared, curated, and engaged with. Take note of the figure below — this figure points out earning from one day on only one story. You can see how the time of reading of the story is taken into account when calculating earnings:

Bonus Strategies to Get a Higher Partner Payout

All of these facets to a quality story culminate in generating more payout for your account.

The way Medium redistributes the earnings are through a timeshare. So for easy numbers, consider that there are 100 members contributing $10 each ($1,000 total). Furthermore, through all the content there were 1,000 hours of content read. Your account received 500 hours of read content (50% of the whole). Therefore, your payout would be $500 for the month.

Now there are a few more strategies that I use in order to generate a higher payout:

1. Show up

All too often, are there cynics and pessimists that will give excuses about why they cannot achieve the same amount or more than what other writers receive.

• They don't have the time
• They aren't "good writers"
• The advice they read is "bunk"

The list never ends with excuses.

But then I go to their profile and don't see much of any work (or quality work for that matter).

Show up and practice the craft — you won't make $1,000 in one day, but again if we consider the opening section of this article:

Once you’ve been able to generate $.01 through your own efforts — you’ve won. Anything that comes later is just gravy.

2. Pitch to publications

I tend to get in my own way sometimes.

I think that I can achieve anything on my own and I don't need help.

If you're going to become enterprising with Medium's Partnership Program, you're going to need help.

One of the best ways to get help is through publications. Publications can expose your stories to a wider audience (both internally — through Medium and externally — through SEO, and other social site promotion).

If you don't know where to pitch your work, consider this updated list of the Top 10 publications (in terms of audience size) on Medium.

3. Utilize other media

Pictures have a unique pull on a reader's emotional response.

It's important to use headline photos that spark an emotional response.

Are you writing about health and wellness? What type of headline picture can help evoke a positive emotional response to further convince the reader to "click" and read your article.

There are so many free-for-use photo websites to get compelling picture content for your piece. I personally use Unsplash, as I feel their catalog is diverse and vast.

Conclusion

Generating a higher payout with Medium's Partner Program doesn't have to be an elusive rabbit that you cannot catch.

There are manageable and actionable strategies you can employ with your writing practices right now that can help you start supplementing you income so you can progress towards the dream of leaving your 9–5.

The actionable strategies are as follows:

1. Make sure the story is yours and quality

Make content that is unique and true to your voice.

Make quality content. Quality content is made with consideration of the following elements:

1. A story that has a captivating promise (headline)

2. A story that delivers on that promise (the content)

Both of these elements drive a story into it being well received by your audience.

Within those elements, it's important to properly structure your story in order to get it spread amongst the most readers possible.

You want to create well-received stories for your readers

Your readers are always thinking, "what's in it for me?" so it's your job to illustrate what's in it for them to keep them actively engaged with the content

You want to get curated

Many think that getting a curated story happens through a "stroke-of-luck" but it doesn't. Quality stories are curated. Quality stories also have opinions and claims that are backed up by corroborating evidence. Act as if you're a paid freelance writer and you need supporting evidence for every story you create

You want high reader engagement

This element goes hand in hand with the curation element: when you support your stories with well-formed arguments, you are further creating stories of quality and value that will keep readers engaged. This is one of the most important elements in generating income for the story — to keep readers reading!

On top of the aforementioned strategies, it's important that you:

2. Show up

You do the work on a consistent basis — no one is going to do the work for you

3. Utilize the help of publications

Starting off, you won't have a lot of exposure to readers looking for your content — this is where publications will help out!

4. Use other attractive media

Pictures that draw on an emotional response will help people click the article so they can absorb the valuable information you provided. Get pictures that offer an emotional appeal and also striking colors in pictures.

So many people are pursuing the dream of using their writing as a means to escape their unfulfilling 9–5.

And if this describes you — you should follow this intuition. We're living in an age where people are more depressed than ever and are feeling more unfulfilled by the work they’re doing than ever before.

If there is a tool that can help you get one step closer to being a full-time entrepreneur, supplementing your income through Medium's Partnership Program is one such step.

Utilization of the information will get you one step closer to that so you can get one step closer to sharing your thoughtful and valuable perspective with the audience looking for it.