How to Get Medium to Pay Your $500/Month Student Loan Bill

…it’s like an on-demand cash machine

Instead of looking at your Medium stories as a way to earn side-income, I like to look at them as opportunities to become debt-free. Now, I have no idea about the size of of your student loan (or if you’ve got one), but in this story we’ll re-frame your Medium goals, earning you more money, and getting you closer to paying-off your debt.

When we repay debt, it’s like giving yourself a raise.

Not only do you pay-down the principle amount of the loan, but you’re also getting rid of all that ugly interest that acquires every month ($50 per month or much-more, literally flying out the window)

For this story we’ll assume you’ve got a $500 per month loan payment.

I’ll show you how to earn enough money, so Medium will cover your school loan. You’ll have a direct win from all your writing efforts.

Not only will you have a new income stream to cover your bills, but you’ll also have an insurance policy for your future.

I now operate an international publishing business in 84 countries (and counting). I do 90+ percent of the work from my pocket. I have Medium to thank for this opportunity and you can too.

Not only will we get you earning more from the Medium partner program, we’ll also set you up with a tribe that will support you off the Medium platform.

This will take a lot of work, but only an hour (maybe two) per day. You can always do more to earn more, but for this example, we’ll get you $500 for the month.

Keep reading and I’ll show you how it’s done.

We start with a story

To accomplish what we’re about to accomplish you need to accept this will take some hard work on your part. You need to publish. And you’ll need to publish daily.

Don’t worry about what you’ll write tomorrow.

Don’t worry about what you’ll write the rest of the week.

The accumulated effort will take care of itself. Right now, focus your effort on the story before you.

Here are five steps to building a story your readers will read:

1. You’ve got to choose a popular topic your readers will want to read — Look at the trending stories. Look at popular topics in your niche. See what the top writers are up to. If you want a lot people to read your stories (so you’ll earn enough money to get paid), you need to write stories people want to read. Success leaves crumbs. Go find the crumbs. They exist in every niche.
2. You’ve got to write a title that entices your reader to open your story — If you can’t get your story opened, the story doesn’t exist. If you don’t get your story opened you won’t get paid a penny for reads. Your school loan will stay where it is. You won’t have extra money for that trip to the Bahamas. Spend an inordinate amount of time on your titles — more than you feel is necessary.
3. Tag your story with popular, relevant keywords — Don’t try to be clever and create your own tags. No one is searching for those. Go to the places where you readers already hang-out. It’s hard enough to get people to open your story. Don’t make it harder by hiding it behind invisible tags. Every tag has a number of stories next to it. The bigger, the better. But don’t use irrelevant tags.
4. Link to a couple of your older stories — this keeps your older work alive and earning for you as well. Try to add stories that relate to the current one. To make the sexy story boxes, it’s easy. Go to the story you want to link, copy the entire web address from the search bar, find the spot in your new story where you want it to go, hit ‘paste,’ then hit ‘enter.’ Medium will make the little box for you, but you’ve got to hit ‘enter’ or you’ll end up with a big, stupid link in your story.
5. Encourage your reader to consumer the entire story — I use a three-act structure. You’ll find your own. Don’t give away the entire story in the first paragraph, or worse — the title. Put a question in our minds and get us to keep reading. This is how you earn money on Medium — through read-time. Not by tricking your reader, but by giving her an in-depth experience. Everyone skims, but you can slow it down by unrolling the story from beginning to end.

Publish another story tomorrow.

…and another the day after.

You need to earn an average of $17 per story to hit our goal of $500 per month. I’ve found a typical, non-curated (and most of yours will fit in this category) story lives about 5 days. This means you need to earn around $3.40 per day, per story.

That’s not too hard to do, even with a small number of followers.

If those numbers don’t match your current earnings per story, double your production. Write two stories per day. Then you only need to earn $1.70 per day per story to hit your goal of $500/month.

It doesn’t take many reads to earn $1.70

…and remember, by linking to a couple of older stories (don’t overdo this, because you also want your reader to finish the current story), not only will you earn from the current story, you’ll keep your old work alive and working hard for you.

Write the story once.

Keep them alive as long as you can.

Look at your stats. Your audience will tell you what kind of stories they like. Stop writing the ones they don’t read. I know this is hard. Maybe these are your favorite ones. But if you want to pay that school loan, you’ve got to serve your customer first.

…but the partner program is just the beginning.

In the next section I’ll show you how to use the same stories to build yourself a tribe that will earn you automated income while you sleep.

Build your tribe to earn legacy income

The partner program is only a small piece of the beauty of Medium. In this section I’ll show you how to build a tribe around your writing — a legacy business that will keep feeding you long-after Medium is replaced by a different platform.

The main drawback of Medium is you’re trading typing time for money.

If you don’t keep writing, you won’t earn money here.

There are 30,000+ active writers on Medium. This is 30,000 new stories flooding the site every day or so. That’s a donkey-ton of content. Most readers won’t read most of the published stories.

Only ~7% of the active Medium writers make $100.

Which is why we need to get you in that top category by building a tribe of people who love your work, and writing stories they want to read.

But Medium owns your followers on Medium. They can take away your income and your account any time they wish. It’s part of the game. Medium owns the site. They can change the way we’re paid any time. They have already. Many times. I used to earn twice as much as I do now, and I’m publishing more than I ever have.

But the partner program isn’t my best source of my income.

I’m building a tribe. A group of my best readers, in a place where I control the message and the delivery. I serve my tribe well, and they help me earn automated income while I sleep (and while I’m awake, but sleep sounds so much better). We can’t get that level of passive-income from Medium.

We’re talking about email.

So, here’s the final tip:

At the bottom of every story, include a valuable call-to-action for your reader to join your email list. Give them something irresistible and related to your work. You want to attract the right people and repel all the others.

…by the way, I’ve got something that might help.

I hand-crafted a free, 7-day, email masterclass called the Tribe 1K. Past students include New York Times bestselling authors.

I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 (or your next 1,000) readers without spending a hot nickel on advertising.

Tap the link.

Guarantee your seat before I close the doors.

We’re waiting for you.

Enroll in my 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.