How to Make $1743.74 on Medium in One Month

I’ve been writing on Medium for less than a year.

I know these how-I-made-x-amount-of-dollars-on-Medium stories are attention-grabbing, that is why everyone who has made money on Medium has written at least one. But I have my take, my experience, my words. All different from anyone else’s take, experience, words.

I think I totally get Medium now, it took less than a year.

I’m consistently making money, and more importantly, I’ve figured out the site, how it all works, and improved my Medium writing skills — which are different from my blogging skills — I run two websites that take up a lot of my time. The writing I do for Medium is different from writing for a blog. I may write a post about that someday. See, that is how I come up with ideas to write on Medium.

Be aware of your thoughts, when you have a good one, write it down.

Any idea you have that you think is interesting, write about that. When something does well, write more of that.

Simple.

My April earnings

I had a good month in April, below are my earnings.

This is a good chunk of income for any new writer.

I didn’t have much professional writing experience when I joined Medium as a writer less than a year ago. I didn’t have an email list or an audience outside of Medium when I joined. I just had an imagination, persistence, and a laptop that was on its last legs (I had to slam down the ‘t’ to make it work — do you know how often the letter ‘t’ is used when writing — a lot). That’s it. Really. That is all I had.

I have a new laptop now, thanks to my Medium earnings.

Check out your stats, when you have some

I usually tell readers not to look at stats in the beginning.

It won’t help to look at measly stats when you are unsure of yourself and your writing chops. And it could stop you from going forward.

Writing every day isn’t easy, especially after you’ve been doing it for a few months, writer’s fatigue can set it. If you want Medium to be a revenue stream for you, you may want to ignore stats until you have a content rhythm firmly established. One that can’t be affected by changes in Medium’s algorithm. You want to develop a writing habit by writing daily, so when you do start looking at your stats, they don’t discourage you from writing some more.

I recommend not looking at your stats in the beginning and instead put 100% of your focus into writing.

But for this article, I looked at my stats. For the first time in ten months, I looked at which stories earned me the most for April, see below.

If you want to check out the stories that did well, see below. I wrote them a while ago, and they continue to earn money each month — passive income.

The One Book That Will Change Your Life

You Have a Better Chance of Staying Together Long Term If You Practice Allyship with Your Partner

Five Books and One Website That Will Teach You How to Write Better

The One Book That Will Get You Through Difficult Times

I thought my earnings would go down in April for several reasons.

First, my home life is more crowded, second, I’ve read that earnings have decreased significantly for many of the bigger earners on Medium, I have not experienced this, however, I’m not a $10,000 per month earner — yet.

My earnings are staying steady or going up each month.

So, I was relieved when I saw my gains for April. I actually wrote less in April.

I decided to dig my heels in and make April a good month (focusing on quality rather than quantity) despite a noisier household. Still, I was determined to stay on my established publishing schedule of four to five times per week. And I did.

For the last ten months, my writing schedule has consisted of writing five days a week. With my first published post in June 2019,

I published every day. Saturday and Sundays included.

But since I have decreased my writing schedule for Medium since January, now I write between four and five posts a week, my earnings have increased.

For me, and you may be different, I cannot commit to writing more than one article a day. I don’t think I could produce the kind of quality work I want to write along with my other responsibilities, like raising a child, my other revenue streams, and living the life I want to live.

So, I’m sticking to posting no more than five stories a week.

Other Medium writers who do much better than me financially write more than once a day.

You can try posting two or three times per day if you’re up to the task, but be ready for burnout, which is inevitable if you are producing that amount of content.

What I did to increase income each month, while not increasing content volume

Interestingly, my highest earning story for April I wrote a while ago, November of 2019, in the publication Publishous.

This is the beauty of Medium and curation.

This article was curated in the topics of books and self. Curation gives a story longer legs — a wider audience and a longer shelf life.

I try to publish the highest quality content I can manage on any given day. I aim for curation.

From the beginning, I focused on publishing in larger publications like The Startup. The Startup came to me first, when I was a newbie, and asked if they could publish one of my articles on writing.

I submitted to both P.S. I love You and Publishous and was accepted.

Now I’m a frequent contributor to P.S. I Love You and The Startup.

I’m now publishing a series for Publishous that spring up from the article The One Book That Will Change Your Life.

Each week, I dissect one agreement from the book. It has been a fun series to write because the book did change the way I live my life in small ways that have added significant value to the way I live.

Here is a list of what I did to earn 1743.74 in my tenth month on Medium

Simple advice for beginners

• Write every day.
• Publish at least five times a week (you can do that!).
• Submit to more significant publications — when you are rejected (Forge doesn’t even get back to me) keep submitting and try different ones.
• Start a publication— while submitting to larger publications, start your own. It’s fun, and you will gain followers over time — niche down with your publication in the beginning. When larger pubs are backed up and taking too long to accept an article, I submit it to my publication.
• Focus on the format — formatting your stories to Medium’s high standards will increase your chances of curation.
• Have a call to action at the bottom of your stories to build your email list in case Medium changes and stops paying their writers. If you create an email list, you can take them with you and sell them your book when you write one.
• Be persistent — like Pinterest, success on Medium is the long game. You might not have a big month until six months in. But you can have a big earning month from a story you wrote six months ago, just keep going. Medium is a slow burn.
• Enjoy the journey. I was getting sick of writing on Medium about two months ago. I had a heart to heart with myself and asked myself what it would feel like to give up now, just when I was starting to see success. I decided to stick with it. I’m glad I did because I keep seeing more and more success.

Success doesn’t happen overnight. It is the result of months, years, and sometimes decades of work.

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” — Thomas Jefferson

Write on.

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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.