How I quadrupled my Medium earnings in a month
A review of top and flop posts, and lessons learned.
Happy August!
I must have just blinked on July 1st, because here we are, somehow on August 1, 2020. Am I the only one feeling this way?
Somehow, in this month that went by in a blink of an eye, I quadrupled my earnings on Medium. I also still fell short of my goal. Here’s what I mean:
I earned $1.70 in my first month, and $6.69 this month.
$6.69/$1.70 = 3.93
Okay, so maybe I rounded up a bit there. In addition to being an attention-grabbing title that I’ll never achieve again (we’ll see), $6 might not seem like a lot, but I’ve learned a lot simply by falling forward. Other than a few articles in the high school newspaper and a few scientific articles, I have never officially written. So for readers to have spent $6 worth of time to read what I’m writing is such an honour, no matter how small of a number it might seem to other bigger, more experienced writers.
I still fell short of my goal: to earn $7.15. This seems arbitrary a number, yes. When the 30% withheld amount is taken into account, that amounts to $5.00. Five dollars is how much the Medium subscription costs. My goal was to cover this subscription cost through my writing, and I fell a few cents short.
That’s okay, because relative to my first month, I also learned quite a lot!
Top 5 posts
- Why I ended my Talkspace online therapy subscription ($1.79)
- What I learned from earning $1.70 on Medium in my first month ($0.97)
- 4 Reasons Why I Like BetterHelp Online Therapy So Far ($0.28)
- Criticized ($0.27)
- Oyster sauce and XO sauce: a dive into umami ($0.27)
Some of these were popular and well-liked for predictable reasons. Others were not.
It won’t come as a surprise that my two pieces on online therapy subscriptions, both curated, earned me the most. There are 10118273 articles out there about how curation and publications are the go-to ways of getting eyeballs on to your words, and here I’ve verified this hypothesis.
I also wasn’t surprised that writing about writing and/or earnings on Medium was popular. I admit that I wrote it in poetry format as a satirical jab at the numerous “I earned X in my Xth month” articles out there. Ironically I am here writing my own — for real this time. I’m hoping that my perspective as a novice writer encourages others to try out writing and storytelling here on Medium. I was admittedly discouraged by articles where writers immediately earned $100+ (honestly, even $10), so here I am, showing my authentic tiny steps forward.
I was so intimidated by popular writers with years of blogging, writing and marketing experience, I really felt that imposter syndrome settling in. In fact, I am an imposter. An imposter who is camouflaging and faking ‘til she makes it. I’m learning a lot of important things about storytelling and writing as I go, and that is the most valuable part of writing so far.
I was quite surprised that a poem made it on to the list. This poem did garner some attention via Twitter, with lots of kind feedback on how common that experience of feeling burnt out, criticized, and like an imposter truly is.
The million-dollar question, though, has to be how the Oyster and XO sauce article became so popular. I have no idea. It seems like an unrelatable niche topic and I truly only wrote it for fun. Any thoughts?
Flop 5 posts
- Top 5 Scenes in The King: Eternal Monarch ($0.00)
- College Hacks: 3 easy upcycled household item swaps ($0.00)
- How do you deal with manuscript rejection? ($0.00)
- I’m not a good writer, but I write anyways (poem) ($0.00)
- Anger (poem) ($0.01)
Some of these were also quite expected, yet others surprising. I’m not alarmed at the slightest that I had poems that no one wanted to read — especially the one about being a badwriter (the polar opposite of what Medium audience wants). In fact, not writing with the Medium audience in mind is the biggest commonality across these articles.
College Hacks and manuscript rejection were written for a more niche set of readers in university or graduate school. I’ve realized after doing some reading myself that not many Medium writers fall in this boat — it’s curious but hopefully through the tags I’ll find others who are still students or in academia so I can find more articles and writers for this topic, so I have something to read.
The Korean Drama review is targeted towards individuals who have already watched the show (i.e., spoilers included). Although The King: Eternal Monarch is one of this year’s most popular kdramas of year, especially since it is available on Netflix, few Medium readers were captured by this topic. This was just the wrong place to advertise this review.
But the poetry and the kdrama reviews were also written for me, and I don’t regret the time spent on this writing. Part of what motivates me to write is to take my experiences (whether it was a tv show, or something deeper, more traumatizing) and to create something out of these experiences — art or writing — instead of just letting them pass me by.
All of this unpopular writing still counts towards my goal of “writing all the bad words so that we can get to the good words”.
Three lessons learned
Curation gets you places. This is tried and true by yours truly. I also learned that my most likely curated topic is mental health, which I am super excited about. I am excited to share my lived experiences as BIPOC writer navigating the bumpy road of accessing mental healthcare that isn’t filled with microaggressions and racist stereotypes. I hope it encourages more people to talk about this, and to make mental healthcare more accessible for BIPOC individuals.
The weird Medium titling glitch. If you name a draft something in the interim and it sits in your drafts for a long time, it has a chance of permanently having a certain title regardless of what you try to change it to. I wrote the article below and labelled it as “draft” so I would remember to come back and edit it later. Now the final and published copy forever holds “(draft)” as part of the title. I hate it. If you have solutions please tell me!
I need a balance of writing for myself and others. Some days, I need to write to focus on the craft of being able to present a story to a target audience and to continually engage them. Other days, I need to write to yeet the experiences I’ve had into the Medium ether regardless of whether anyone will read it. Both are crucial aspects of my writing habit so articles advocating extremely for one or the other don’t fit with me — I fall in the Goldilocks “just right” middle.
Three goals for next month
- Build a routine for writing. This is also, in part, a life goal to just build a better life routine. I’ve been trying writing at different spots in my schedule and none of them have felt entirely correct and thus have not been sustainable. My next step is to break things down into steps (outlining vs. writing vs. editing) and having designated times or days for these so I can do uninterrupted work. Measurement of this goal is to have a built routine that helps me publish one article per day in a comfortable manner.
- Monetary goal. Simple goal — $7.14 — because with the 30% withheld, the remaining deposited amount covers my Medium subscription). Reach goal — $10.00 — reaching my next “count by 5s” goal.
- Submit one article to a publication. I’ve been curated but I haven’t yet been accepted into a publication. This is entirely because I haven’t tried, and that is entirely because I haven’t looked into it. So my next bite-sized step forward is to find a publication seems doable, learn about what I need to do to submit an article, and submit it. 2 minute madness focusses on short articles which seems like a good bite-sized first step — they’re even specifically asking for bite-sized articles!
So, what were your goals this past month and how did those go? What are you looking forward to happening in August? Feel free to tweet me, I love meeting other writers!
Hop on these if you want more!
