How to Earn Minimum Wage (or Less) While Writing for Medium

Whether you make a little or a lot, there’s more money in your own list

We all want to make a little more money. Whether it’s to dig ourselves out of a horrible day job, to pay off debt, or to change our family’s situation — money is the tool to get us there.

The Medium partnership model is a great place to earn a side-income, but as tempting as it looks, most writers earn less than minimum wage (especially starting-out).

But if you’re willing to get paid a few bucks (for a few months) you can make more bucks (in later months).

The clap-money is nice, but if you’d rather stay away from a minimum hourly wage, there’s much more money to be made on the back-end. You need a reader’s list.

Writers can do their best earning with a passive business model (where you write a single piece of content and it pays you repeatedly). Medium a slightly passive, but each story has a shelf life.

I’ve got over 500+ stories in my account. At least half of them earn zero dollars every month.

We can do better.

Write only a few stories per month

The earners on Medium treat this writing like a full-time job. Their stories are thought-provoking, well-written, and have great titles.

If you only write a few stories per month you’ll earn well-under the minimum wage line. You won’t gain the daily traction required to dominate your particular niche.

Medium rewards consistent writers.

Whether you write daily, a few times per week, or three times per day — keep a publishing schedule your readers can count-on.

This is no joke. It’s a lot of work — hours per day. Like any vocation. If you’re not willing to put in the hours behind the keyboard (and you’re not a famous personality), you’ll earn minimum wage, or less.

Readers have too many choices. They will forget about you fast if you don’t remind them every day with new content.

Dominate your niche, so your writing gets their attention every morning. Most writers on Medium make less than $100. If you want your readers’ attention you’ve got to write consistently or your reads will drop like like a hot rock.

Write whatever you want

If you don’t research the trending stories, and you want to write about any topic that tickles your nickels — go for it. But you’ll be stuck with burger-flipping wages.

Readers follow you for a particular voice and topic.

If we can’t tell where you stand, or what topics you write about, we won’t follow your writing.

You don’t have to choose your niche right away. Many Medium writers discover their voice in the process — writing more of what sticks and less of what doesn’t. I did this too.

And you don’t have to choose a niche so narrow that you’re stuck writing the same article with a different title every day. I have a fairly broad range of topics, but they’re all deliberate.

I choose a group of people I want to serve and provide them content that attracts them to my reader’s list.

But if you want to stick with minimum wage, keep writing everywhere.

Write stories that go nowhere

Medium is chock-full of train-of-thought pieces that start in the middle and have no end. If you want to earn minimum wage (or less) on Medium, this is the way to write.

Readers come to your writing for answers.

If there’s no answer, we move to the writers who provide one.

Fiction is hard to earn money writing on Medium. This isn’t much of a platform for fiction. There are plenty of writers who share poems and short stories, but if that’s your only source of content, you’ll have a hard time earning much money.

Medium is more a non-fiction playground.

Have a deliberate purpose for your story. Don’t ramble and rant. We literally have millions of options for our reading. Give us a great reason to choose your content.

However, the real money is not on Medium at all

If you want to earn more money as a writer, the real money is built inside your reader’s list. This is a list you own. A list that runs automatically, so you can earn more money from your writing, while you’re not writing.

Use your Medium stories as a lead-generation tool to siphon your fans off the platform and onto your own list.

Whether it means selling more books, courses, articles, or training — your email list is a business you own, not a list of followers in someone else’s sandbox.

If you build your reader’s list now, you’ll have a pre-built, rabid audience when you launch your next book. This should be a list you own (instead of relying on social media or some other big-business platform). Tap the link below. Enroll in my Tribe 1K indie email masterclass. I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 subscribers (and your next 1,000) without spending one hot nickel on ads.

We’re waiting for you.

Enroll in my Free Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.