How to Make Money on Medium Without Showing Up Every Day
You don’t need to be ON all the time
I only wrote three articles for Medium in January, and though I tried to log in every day to read what others were writing and interact with the community, that didn’t happen.
Family things have been firmly in the way of late.
But that hasn’t made this month a bad one for me and Medium.
Ignore the common advice
I read so many articles back in October, when I was starting out here, about how, if you want to do well on Medium, you need to show up — post two or more stories every week and read and respond to six or more articles every day.
There’s a lucrative market for content that tries to teach us how to make the most out of side hustles. But the techniques are often exhausting, especially in January when it’s cold and dark and everyone has the flu.
Take a breath
I’m not going to say that the alternative I prefer is easier than “grind out content non-stop”, but it’s at least less frantic, and it’s advice you already know.
This will be my forty-ninth article on Medium. I posted 16 in October, 21 in November, 7 in December, and 3 in January.
Compared to a lot of writers on this platform, that output is tiny. Yet here are the results:
698 new followers in January and 23 new email subscribers (thank you all, by the way).
And I made $395.78 in January, which is $11.09 more than I made in November — the month I wrote 21 articles.
The old “quality over quantity” argument
There’s no secret recipe to success — and believe me, I’m as disappointed by that as you are.
Yes, you can post articles daily. You can even max out the 100 responses per day limit Medium has, but the chances of that effort paying off in a way that is fair to you and your time are slim.
The best way to earn on this platform is to make sure your stories are good enough that they don’t stop earning a day or a week after you post them.
You don’t want to be surviving article to article. Unless you do, in which case carry on, but if you’re hoping for some passive income, it’s quality over quantity every time.
Quality means a higher chance of articles getting boosted, it means readers who’ll keep coming back because they know they can trust you, and it means people sharing your stuff on their social media.
How to write quality articles?
Study.
“The more you write, the better you get at it” isn’t necessarily true. At least it’s not efficient. I wrote loads as a teenager and improved at a snail’s crawl because I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
The best way to get better at writing is to 1) read good stories and study how the authors write, and 2) read articles, watch videos, or whatever works for you on how to write better.
Make your titles and subtitles shine, figure out SEO descriptions, and write things that people want to read. That’s how to do well on this platform.
But also just enjoy your time here. If you love posting loads of articles, I’m happy for you. I only don’t want you feeling as if it’s something you have to do.
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