How My Medium Marketing Changed Since I Started Out + Yearly Income
I started out on Medium in 2014.
About three months after officially starting out as an online freelance writer. I guess I heard about Medium and how this might be a great tool to build your portfolio to show prospects you can write.
But for the next year all I used Medium for was to republish my content from my own blog at Elna Cain.
All of these posts are on my blog and do well there, so I thought they would do well on Medium too, but not really.
I wasn’t really invested in Medium at that time and many people weren’t either.
Some of my freelance writing clients were doing the exact thing I was doing — republishing their content as a way to grow an audience.
While it’s much better to do this strategy on LinkedIn, Medium was a new content platform for writers and, since I recently started a few months prior, I thought I would check it out.
Well, I stopped checking it out for four years. It was in 2019 that I started again and am still continuing my writing on Medium.
What happened during those four years?
Well I was landing amazing clients, writing on my own blog and started other projects like creating digital products, creating different income streams and started other blogs, including contributor sites like FreelancerFAQs.
Essentially, I was making money and at that time and I didn’t know you could make money on Medium. I just knew it as a content platform to repurpose content you already have.
It wasn’t until I learned of popular Medium writers and seeing how much money they made that I thought it could be a cool side income strategy for me. Much like Youtube is for me currently.
So I started writing on Medium again.
From the stats above you can see two pieces of content “took off” and got many views:
How to Identify Your Target Market as a New Freelancer — published in The Startup
Your Complete Digital Marketing Strategy for 2020 — published on Better Marketing
In 2019 I signed up to the Medium Partner Program, got onto some publications and started making money with my writing on Medium as a new income strategy.
What I found was the type of content that created followers and income were more personal and more lifestyle based.
Writing about business on Medium can make you money but I found the writers like Shannon Ashley were writing things I would never write about.
I decided to open my writing a tiny bit to more things about mindset, productivity and being a mom as well as continue on my digital marketing content and freelance content.
In 2019 I generated $94.78 from my first two months monetizing on Medium.
Not shabby since it was only two months in that year!
In 2020 my mindset for Medium writing was to grow my followers and see if I could land a client from my writing on Medium.
So, the things I did for this was:
- post every month — I missed two months out of the year so creating consistent content ten months of the year.
- get onto more publications with bigger readership
- grow my followers
- follow other course students and poplar Medium writers
In 2020 two cool things happened:
- A publication reached out to me to write for them. This was the first time this has happened to me. I did “market” myself as a paid writer to see if they would take me on but they didn’t! In any case, I still wrote some content for them for a few months but then stopped as the content wasn’t totally aligned with my niche.
- Tom Kuegler of the Post-Grad Survival Guide reached out to me to be part of a summit Medium was hosting after reading some of my content I published on his publication.
One of the best types of marketing strategies any business owner or freelancer can do is implicit marketing. This is when you are associated with top tier writers in your industry. When you are seen with other popular or notable entrepreneurs, people will remember you and associate you as a popular writer or entrepreneur.
In 2020 I generated $756.75 from my first full year of monetizing on Medium.
I know that popular writers make thousands in one month, but I’m still happy with what I did generate from my love of writing.
However, after all that time I spent on creating content on Medium, I was finding that I wasn’t creating much content on my sites and I generate substantially more income writing on my own blog than on Medium.
So, for 2021, I slowed down on publishing on Medium. But, I think I will change this and focus more on Medium now and until the end of the year.
I’m going to be more intentional with what I write on this platform. I am also going to write more on MY platform than submitting my content to publications. And I am thinking of a Medium challenge for my course students and myself to do as a way to make money on Medium, improve our writing and just have fun with this creative outlet.
One cool thing has has happened this year was I got a $50 bonus from Medium because of high engagement on one of my pieces. Medium started handing out bonuses for engagement with your writing and I was surprised I received any bonus money!
As it stands I’ve made $289.02 with my Medium writing in 2021.
While my average monthly income in 2020 was around $40, for 2021 it’s more like $20. But this is not discouraging me. I love to write and if I have a free block of time I will write on Medium.
I hope you found this helpful in your Medium journey!
If you are interested in writing on Medium, you can sign up here! Once you sign up you can read all my articles and thousands on Medium!
