How to Write Medium Stories Faster, so You Can Earn More Money

How a single email sparked a story

I got an email yesterday from a fellow writer. He told me he wanted to ramp-up his Medium game and wanted to know how I was able to create so much content on a regular basis.

At first, I wanted to reply with a snarky answer.

Elves in my pocket.

Maybe I’ve got a team of people writing books for me, like James Patterson.

…but, nope.

I’m a one-writer show by choice. So, I shared my ‘formula’ with him. Then I told him I’d share it with you. I’m never one to let a good Medium story slip through the business.

Today is about writing (and more-important, publishing) Medium stories faster. So you can get on with your day, whilst you keep tickling the algorithm for more traffic.

But before we get to my formula, we need to talk about followers. If you don’t have a following you won’t get read. And you won’t earn much from your stories.

Sure, there are unicorns. But we have not uni-horns, nor rainbow tails.

You and I will have to do this the hard way. We’ve got to earn each reader — one by one. A small percentage of those readers will see our writing when we launch it. This will get the story rolling and seen by others.

If you are in curation jail (as I am) you must rely 100% on your followers to find and read your content. Medium will do very little to help.

So, step one is do everything you can to grow your following.

But this isn’t a story about growing your following. This is about writing more so you get more reads. Because reads are the only way we’ll get paid moving-forward.

My formula for writing faster

I’m writing this one paragraph last. To illustrate my point. I timed how long it took me to write this story. I finished it in 28 minutes. I’m not saying my Medium stories are the next Huck Finn (or anything close to the well-researched, long-form pieces here on Medium). But we all have 28 minutes to ourselves each day.

Here’s what I do. Maybe it will work for you two.

If you’ve read my stories for awhile, you’ll see most of them are divided into three acts. Not all. I do wander. But most.

• The first act is the set-up.
• The second act is the delivery of the lesson.
• The third act is the call-to-action to join my list.

If you’re keeping track, we’re now in the second act. The structure I describe here is the promise of my story.

I like the three-part structure, because it gives me two opportunities to promote an older story at the end of each section.

At the end of the entire story I have a call to join my tribe.

Knowing this structure in advance helps me bundle my thoughts as I write. I know I won’t give away the kids and kitchen in the first section. That’s for act two.

In act two I better deliver on the headline of the story, or the whole piece flops.

In act three, I make a little summary of what happened in act two and I tie the entire story into a good reason why my tribe should build their own email list (as this is the purpose of my stories).

You will have a different purpose for your stories. If you know that purpose in advance, you shoot an azimuth for the direction of your work. This method will help you write your next story much faster.

Pro tip: Keep a running record in your phone. Not only do I write on my phone, but I keep an endless story list in my phone too. When I’m ready to sit and write, I choose a topic that I know I can write fast. I never sit down to write without knowing what to write in advance.

That’s it.

There’s no real magic.

Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.

I get letters from writers all the time who take 4–5 hours to write their Medium stories. If you aren’t at a level where you’ll get any readers for that level of effort, I’d save those big ones for later.

(Here’s that second story link I mentioned earlier)

We’re all here for different reasons

If you’re still paying attention, this is act three. This is the place I use to summarize the story and give a call to action to join my email list. Yep, there’s a link here — meta, eh?

But I never say ‘join my list,’ or ‘join my newsletter.’ No one wants to be on some list. And surely no one wants another newsletter in their phone.

Instead, I developed an email masterclass.

If we want to earn more money from Medium, we’ve got to build our tribe away from the platform — to a place we own and control. Medium can take our income any day.

(This is the part where I enhance my call to action, and, since I push so hard, it’s the reason I’m banned from curation).

So, if you want to build your tribe before you need them, so you don’t have to work the letters off your keyboard to earn a couple bucks a month — tap the link and enroll in my Tribe 1K email masterclass.

We’re waiting for you. (I end every story with this little call sign).

Enroll in my Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.