MONEY|WRITING

How Much I Earned In My First Month With The Medium Partner Program

It’s much more than I expected with insights that might help others earn money and increase followers as well

I first joined Medium in November of 2020. My first story was written and published on November 27th.

My goal was to improve my writing skills in general. I also wanted to challenge myself to write more fictional work, which is not easy for me.

I planned to post 2 stories a week, but fell off pretty quickly. By February, I stopped altogether until I received an email about the MWC (Medium Writing Challenge) contest. I wrote and submitted 3 stories for it. My favorite happens to be a fictional tale that I entered for the prompt “death”.

Since the contest, I have edited it and published it again because I thought that it would earn more if I did and it has. Once a person joins the MPP (Medium Partner Program), any previously published story is eligible to earn money.

La Petit Mort had earned $0.07 over the course of 17 days. Since publishing it the second time it has earned $1.78 within the same period of time.

The above photo is what my stats looked like in July.

Note that the “5” is for 5 views in a day.

I was a member and would read stories, but never commented nor clapped. At the time, I didn’t even notice those features.

The above photo is of my stats for August.

My views went up due to the 3 stories that I submitted for the contest. I had never looked at my stats page before. I actually didn’t until a month later, which is when I also found out that all 3 of those stories had been distributed. I have since edited and published each of them again to help them earn more, which they are.

The above photo is of my stats from September.

After I submitted my stories for the MWC contest, I continued to read stories occasionally on Medium and was always a member so I could read more than 3 in a month.

However, it wasn’t until I read the following story that I became inspired to write on a regular basis again.

I felt up to the challenge of writing and publishing SOMETHING every day for one year. That’s when I finally looked into and learned about the MPP. I had around 35 followers and needed to get to 100 before I could start earning money. I thought that it would take at least a month for that to happen. It took me about a week.

I started posting daily on September 22nd. As shown by the photo on the left, I ended the month of August with 34 followers and ended September with 133.

On September 29th I joined the Medium Partner Program hoping that I’d make at least $20 or so my first month since I’d read that the first month’s earnings are usually low.

The above photo is of my stats from October.

One of my stories did extremely well.

It was “chosen for further distribution”, but I will say, this status does not mean that the story will then get many views or earn a lot of money.

I’ve had a few do very well that weren’t curated (or distributed). There are also plenty that were distributed that didn’t receive much attention.

Here is the grand total that I made for the month of October:

I managed to earn more than $100, and several more dollars from those who signed up via my referral link (thank you!).

I’m pleasantly surprised considering all the stories I’ve seen as of late about people’s decrease in views and earnings on Medium.

The 3 days I spent in Amsterdam, when I posted a normal length story and 2 relatively shorts poems (and didn’t read nor comment on stories), are the days that my views and earnings were lowest.

I’ve read countless stories about Medium’s seemingly ever-changing algorithm and those who try to understand it.

The number of Medium member reads, read ratio, number of fans and the time spent reading and commenting on other people’s stories seem to matter the most as far as earnings.

I like reading these kinds of personal stories as to how writers are doing with the Medium Partner Program. I wanted to contribute my own story in this regard to relay my own experiences and statistics.

I hope to encourage others and shed some light on this journey.

My favorite part of all is that I’m enjoying the process and am a part of this writing community of people whom I’ve come to appreciate more with each passing day.

WRITE ON…!

To put a smile on my face, if you haven’t already done so:

• CLICK HERE to sign up for a membership on Medium.