How To Keep Old Articles Alive and Earning Month After Month

A big key to success on Medium is to make sure your older articles are earning your money months after you’ve originally published them.

I once read that the lifespan of a Medium article is ten days.

After ten days the most articles are essentially dead as a doornail never to be viewed again. There are exceptions to this rule of course, but who wants their Medium income to depend on the exceptions?

Success on Medium means finding ways to keep your older articles alive and earning. There are some very simple yet effective ways to make this happen and require minimal effort on your part to make it work.

1. Regularly Change Your Featured Article

A simple trick to get more views and fans on an older article is to change the featured image at the top of your profile.

As you gain new followers and more people find your work, the featured article is the first one they see. While many people will keep either their most popular or more recent article as their featured image, I like to switch it up with older articles that need extra attention or have gone stale.

For example, if you’re a few fans away from a milestone, say 10 or 50 fans, making that article your featured article is a good way to get those extra views.

2. Link to Older Articles In Popular Articles

The easiest way to keep older articles alive and kicking is to interlink them.

Adding a link or links to an older post in your newer more popular articles will keep your articles earning months after you initially published them and requires little effort on your part.

How you choose to link them is up to you. There are a few ways you can choose to link your articles:

1. A standard hyperlink — This is the type of link you do when you link out to other articles as resources, however, instead of someone else’s articles you’d just link yo your own
2. A link box placed within the content — In my opinion, this is the best way to link to older articles. The link box looks great and is enticing without being too in your face. I like three or four articles this way throughout my content depending on the length of the article
3. A link box placed at the end of the article — Probably the most common way to link articles. You add two or three links at the end of your articles usually under an “If you like this here are more articles for your read” type of heading.

Example of a link within the content of an article:

If you’re new to Medium and don’t know how to add a link box to your article, just follow these simple steps:

1. Go to your article and find the link you want and cop it
2. Paste the link where you want it placed in your article
3. Hit enter and the link box should appear

It’s as simple as that. Use your links liberally. I’ve had people message me and say they started reading one article, then went on a reading spree and ended up reading three or four articles in a row.

That only happens because I generously link my articles together.

3. Use Medium Facebook Groups

The go-to offsite promotional tools of serious Medium writers, the Facebook (FB) groups give you the perfect opportunity to promote older articles and introduce new readers to your work. Each group has its own rules regarding when, where and how much your post, so be sure you read each.

While many writers post their most recent work to these FB groups, they work just as well on your older posts too. Because I’m determined to make sure everyone who might possibly be interested in my articles gets a chance to access them, I belong to every FB group that I could find except for the Gen Z one, since I’m definitely not Gen Z.

While on the surface that may seem reductive, the truth is, while there is a lot of cross over between groups, you regularly find new writers and new articles in one group that you won’t find in another.

Outside of promoting your work, they are a great way to meet fellow writers, build community and increase your followers to your profile and your publications.

Sof if you aren’t a member of any Facebook groups go join one now and if you are already a member of one go join another.

Here is an exhaustive list of FB groups as well as best practices for using them:

4. Republish Old Articles

If you’ve been on Medium for a while and have built up a large back catalog of articles, it may be time to think about publishing those that are no longer getting any traffic or were published when you had little to no following.

I’ve republished older posts from my early days on Medium to great success. Articles that received 3 to 5 fans are not getting 30 to 50 fans because I have a large audience for Medium to distribute my articles too.

If you choose to go the republish route be sure to unlist or delete the older version of your article.

To unlist an article:

1. Click on the gear at the top right of your article
2. Click on “Edit story”
3. Next, click on the (…) and click on “Manage unlisted setting”
4. And finally, check “yes”

Final Thoughts

Shannon Ashley wrote in an article that her Medium income for the month was made up of 474 articles and Brian Rowe has routinely mentioned how old articles making $1 to $3 a month make up a significant portion of the $800 to $1000 he earns each month.

To recap:

1. Regularly change your featured article
2. Link to your older articles in your popular articles
3. Use Medium Facebook groups
4. Republish older articles and delete or unlist the original

Keeping old posts alive is key if you’re going to consistently earn $100 or more each month. The only alternative is to constantly churn out new work as the old ones die off, and no one is going to be able to keep up with that level of production.

This is How I Made $135 Dollars in My First 30 Days On Medium

Only seven to nine percent of writers make at least $100 each month on Medium. I did it in my first month. Here is what I did each week to achieve my goal, hopefully, you can use my journey to $100 a month to achieve yours.

If you enjoyed this case study check out my latest case study: How to make $100 a week on Medium.