How to Make Sleeping Money on Medium

Something that gets exciting once you produce enough content for Medium is making money while you sleep!

When you write for Medium a long time, there’s an excitement to waking up in the morning.

I’ve talked before about the excitement of waking up when you already have written your Medium stories to be published today the night or day before. I absolutely believe writing your stories a day in advance is one of the key things you can do to be successful on this site.

Not only does this practice make for better content in general, because you’re letting your first drafts rest long enough so you can come back and take your Medium stories from good to great, but also there’s more peace when you wake up because you don’t have to hurry and write your stories fast early in the morning.

You can instead take your time. You already have your pieces pretty much ready to go, so any actual writing of new Medium stories can come later. Maybe even that night if you have things to do throughout the day.

I actually schedule my stories to be published early in the morning.

Since March 1, 2019, I’ve been publishing at least one new story to Medium every day, and one thing I’ve been doing since last summer I’ve really enjoyed is scheduling my stories to be published early the following morning. Like, super early. I’m talking 3am or 4am or 5am. I experiment with the times every day, and the time that seems to work best is 4:30am, since readers on the east coast are up to see it then.

The problem with posting your latest Medium story on the west coast at, say, 2pm, is that it’s already 5pm on the east coast. You want to publish your work at the optimal time to get the most amount of readers, and I’ve been a big believer the past few months in getting your work published earlier in the morning. Getting your work published early gives it the whole day for readers to find it, and it also helps you get curated faster, at least from my experience.

I also just think when it comes to any of the writing that you do, morning is the best time to do it. It’s when I’m at my most productive and most creative. Between about 9am and 1pm is when I do my best work. I can keep writing in the afternoon, but I begin to fade, and certainly by 5pm or so, I’m checked out for the day. I get tired and need a break.

One more beauty of the morning? All that sleeping money!

Now, of course, you’re not literally making money on Medium throughout the night. You don’t have dollars actually entering your bank account as you sleep.

But when you produce enough content on Medium month after month, a neat thing that starts happening is that while you’re sleeping, many people will be reading your Medium stories! And not just the brand new pieces you published yesterday. Sometimes it’s pieces from months ago. Sometimes it’s from pieces I don’t even remember writing.

Just yesterday, for example, I woke up to discover I already had about 750 reads so far that day. I was asleep from midnight to 7:30am, so that’s nearly eight hours of time when people were reading my Medium stories while I was fast asleep!

A few months ago I was ecstatic to hit 100 reads in a whole day, so to be at multiple times that number before even waking up, before I had even done any writing or marketing work on Medium, is kind of amazing. Honestly even making it to 400 reads or 500 reads upon waking up is pretty incredible.

And once you produce enough content, you will start hitting these numbers, too!

Keep this in mind — I have more than 1,500 articles on Medium, and most of those pieces don’t get read at all. That’s right. Most of the stories I’ve published have long been forgotten. But having so many articles on the site has allowed for the best of the best to rise to the top, and so there are always new pieces of mine for my readers to discover day after day.

Remember that income from Medium doesn’t come from the amount of followers you have, or how many claps your stories get, or how many responses. The income is a result of the number of reads you accumulate from paying Medium members, so you want to produce enough content to get lots and lots of reads happening for your work as the weeks and months go by.

And if you wake up in the morning with a high number of reads already, then yes, in a sense, you just made some sleeping money. Woo hoo!

Just keep at it no matter what, even if you’re struggling right now. Keep writing and publishing great content on this site. If you write at least one new story a day, you’ll be shocked to discover how many articles you can publish to the site after a long while. And if you’re doing good work, and you’re getting curated, and you’re growing your number of followers, you’ll get to the place you want to be eventually.

You might even at some point be making a good amount of sleeping money, which is some of the best money you’ll ever make on Medium, I guarantee it!

Here’s how to make 2020 your best writing year ever.

Brian Rowe is a writer, teacher, and constant dreamer. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his BA in Film from Loyola Marymount University. He’s on Facebook and Twitter, and you can read more of his work at brianrowebooks.com.