How to Write Articles That Earn $10 or More

A recap of the best articles I wrote in the past 152 days

Over the past five months, I have written several articles that made over $10 a month. One article made repeat appearances each month after I published the article. The article was “I Left Quora After Painfully Making $1,000”. The article continues to get views from new readers.

In writing, there is an art as well as a science. There is art you produce as a writer and science you use to analyze your results. If I knew the secret to earning three figures or more, I would tell you. To date, I haven’t written an article that cracked the three-figure mark in one month.

From what I have read from other writers, it’s a combination of writing the right article at the perfect time. For others, it’s also having a large list of subscribers. The more you write, the more followers will subscribe to your writing.

I don’t agree with the follow me and I’ll follow you back idea. When you do this, you could gain followers who don’t care about your writing at all. I encourage you not to follow this practice to inflate your numbers.

Your true fans will find you and follow you and your work. It’s the same as writers in general. You either like them or you don’t like them.

• You like J.R. Rowling or you don’t.
• You like Stephan King or you don’t.
• You like John Grisham or you don’t.

Each of these writers has a different style and write on different topics. You like the work of a writer or you don’t. I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent but you get the point.

My thought on why I think these articles did well

I look at my stats daily to see how they are performing. After I wrote for a few months, I noticed a trend. If you look at the articles, they all have one thing in common. Can you guess? I’ll leave the answer below.

October

I Left Quora After Painfully Making $1,000 $11.97

September

I Left Quora After Painfully Making $1,000 $13.61

Confessions After Writing for 92 Days Straight $10.75

August

Make Your Millions in the Next Cryptocurrency Bullrun $22.99

I Left Quora After Painfully Making $1,000 $18.51

How to Make $100 on Medium Consistently $13.02

July

I Left Quora After Painfully Making $1,000 $27.66

The Top 10 Habits Of Millionaires You Need To Know $18.58

You Need to Know How Did I Double My Earnings 4 Months in a Row $10.74

June

How Did I Turn $166 into Six Figures in Less than 10 Years? $39.16

I Left Quora After Painfully Making $1,000 $14.00

Five Steps To Become a Millionaire $12.31

How to Make Your Millions in the Cryptocurrency Market 10.21

Answer: All of these articles that made over $10 a month were about making money in one form or fashion. Most likely the readers are curious how can they make money. I don’t encourage you to do the same unless you can really walk the walk and talk the talk.

You see, I have invested for years, 23 to be exact. For me to talk about money, I have no problem doing that. I make a lot of decisions based on the price of something. I made decisions where I wanted to live years ago based on the numbers.

• how much can I earn if I invest in this stock?
• how much can I earn if I invest in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency?
• what coupon do I have to eat at a restaurant?

That’s how my mind works.

Action steps for you

In writing, you need to figure out what does your reader like compared to what they don’t like. This means you need to look at your analytics. Yes, some writers think there isn’t a point to this but they’re wrong.

Your numbers talk.

1. Topic of your article. You may be focused on what you write about today or tomorrow. In fact, you need to step back and look at your numbers. See what articles are doing well. What type of articles are keeping your reader on your page longer? Are some articles getting less attention than others?

2. Day of the week. Once you do that, you also need to look at when your articles were published. Do you normally get lower reads on a Monday compared to a Saturday? You need to put a little bit of thought into your writing. Some analysis is required as a writer. I bet you didn’t know that.

3. Repeat the articles that do well. Once you figure out what articles do well for you, you need to keep pumping those articles out. Try not to overdo it because you’ll run out of ideas some days or you will turn your reader off. A reader thinks your work is good but not when you say the same thing day after day.

You will have to mix it up occasionally. Some of your articles will be flops. You have to experiment occasionally as a writer. Maybe you want to write about the elections. Maybe you want to write about sports. There are so many topics you can choose from as a writer.

Summary

Take the time to analyze your writing statistics. When you’re not writing, you need to sit back and see why one article did better than another article that didn’t do well. This is not that hard because you are looking at basic math.

• 100 views is better than 50 views
• Article A made $5.00 and Article B made $0.20
• Your read time is higher for Article A over Article B

Don’t make this harder than it looks. You are looking at basic numbers. Just make sure you set aside time to do this work so you don’t frustrate yourself. This is your time to do some deep thinking.

How do you decide what to write about?

Follow my publication Life is Like a Game where I talk about how to make money.

Tom Handy is a top writer on Medium, former Quora writer, and father of two kids. He retired from the Army and sits on several non-profit boards. You can find him on Twitter @tomhandy1 and his publication Life is Like a Game.