How To Write On Medium For Passive Income In 2024
The Seamless Story Strategy
Yesterday, I got a comment from a reader.
He sounded angry and wanted real details on what it took to grow on Medium and generate passive income.
He wanted details like
- The length a story should be
- and most likely everything in between
I listened, and now I’m bringing you a full-blown story on how to write on Medium for passive income in 2024.
I’ll be skipping the obvious steps like
- Picking a niche
- Staying consistent
- and understanding what passive income methods work the most
Because I’m hoping you already know the basics.
Today’s story is a more advanced-level guide on how to generate passive income on Medium.
For this, we’ll cover the fundamental elements of a story that goes viral on Medium.
Yes.
I’ll be showing you how to write stories that get views on Medium.
Because remember, more views equals more traffic.
And more traffic most likely means more passive income.
That said, my focus today is on helping you write better stories that fuel your passive income business.
The Seamless Story Principle ( Medium As a Journey)
Before I share what these three fundamental elements are, I need you to understand that Medium is a journey.
Yes.
I like to think of each of my stories as a journey for the minds of my readers.
My job is to make this journey as seamless as possible for my readers, reaching a point where they feel super energized to take action based on what I’ve put in place.
This action could be to
- Follow for more stories (to get more followers for your Medium Ad revenue)
- Buy your product
- Take your recommendation on an affiliate product
- Or even to send you an email to make inquiries about your services.
Either way, there’s no action without a journey.
So don’t expect to generate passive income if you’ve failed to guide your readers through a memorable journey experience.
The Elements of a Seamless Story That Makes Passive Income
With these three elements of a seamless, viral-worthy story, you can almost never go wrong in gaining views and traffic on Medium.
Element 1: The Hook
Your hook is like the cover of your book.
- If it’s unattractive, people scroll away.
- If it’s appealing, people want to read the book.
If your Medium stories are a journey, it only means there is a start to that journey.
Well, your hook is that start.
You can have the best story in the world, but if people don’t click, they won’t know it.
- Therefore, while having an awesome title and an awful post is Clickbait,
- Having an awesome post with an awful title is a waste of time.
So before you even think about writing your story, deliberate on the title.
Because what’s the point of writing the perfect story only to end up with zero views.
It’s depressing but can be avoided.
So how do you write the perfect hook for your stories?
There are so many ways to go about finding the perfect hook.
- There’s ChatGPT and other AI tools that literally generate headlines ideas.
- And there are online headline analyzers, like Coschedule, that will help rate your headline while giving you tips on how to improve it.
But that’s not all.
There’s a hook strategy that I use and abide by.
It’s literally what got me my first viral post on Medium and here’s how it works.
I call it the Steal Like An Artist Hook Strategy.
So what does it mean?
Sometimes, there’s really no need to reinvent the wheel.
Yes, it’s okay to be creative, but sometimes it’s more effective to find what already works and take inspiration.
Notice how I said, take inspiration, not copy.
There’s a difference.
My first viral story was literally a result of finding an already viral hook that I made my own.
If you doubt me, here’s the hook I took inspo from for my viral story.
But how can you find the best hooks to take inspiration from in your niche?
- Find 10–20 writers in your niche
- Look at their best performing posts and what the title is.
- Change a few elements to suit your topic and viola, you have the perfect hook.
Element 2: The Value
Once people have clicked on your hook, what’s next?
Well, if our goal is to make sales, or just simply grow our followers, we need to keep people reading.
Like I always say, sales is a product of value.
In an ideal situation,
- you should have a valuable story
- and at the end, you link your product for people to buy.
But most of the time, writers flip the script completely.
If not, how can you write a story with 50% of it being a pure pitch for your product or spammed with links to your sales page?
Sure, mentioning your product multiple times in your post increases clicks, but do you really think you deserve the sale?
If you take anything from today’s story, let it be this.
Give first, ask after.
Before sketching out a plan to earn $10k per month on Medium, first, plan a way to provide value.
Because without value, what motivation is there for a potential buyer to choose you over someone else?
Moreover, the Medium algorithm works on a feedback mechanism, promoting your story to more readers only if the initial readers liked it.
So let’s say you have 100 followers.
Only 10–20 might see your post when it’s first published.
And based on their engagement, the algorithm decides whether or not to push your post.
So if your post has a lower value, you’ll likely receive few claps or comments from the initial readers who were supposed to help the algorithm promote your stories.
Hopefully, you see why a valuable story is so important even beyond making sales.
So, do away with posts that have no standalone value.
And if, as the writer, you cannot pinpoint at least one or two key lessons from your story, you haven’t written a valuable story.
Element 3: The Product
This element is what generates income for you.
Now, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a product per se.
Your product could be
- an eBook you created
- an affiliate program you promote
- or even a viral story that makes you money through the Medium Partner Program
The product here is basically how you convert your views into income.
But why is it important?
I see this scene playing out in different niches and with many writers.
How can you share a story about the keto diet and then pitch a Paleo diet eBook at the end of your story?
"It doesn’t even sound good to the ear."
Listen, mentioning your product more times doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll make more money.
Instead, mentioning your product where relevant is more effective.
Remember, selling is helping.
We’re not just selling a product, we’re providing a solution.
So why would you suggest a Paleo solution when you clearly discussed keto as the problematic topic?
Now, what am I saying?
- Ideally you should have 3–4 topics that you talk about on your page.
- And for each of those topics, you should have products to recommend or sell.
Because promoting the wrong product is like selling a spade to a mechanic and a spanner to a miner.
So to write for passive income, you need to recommend products only where relevant.
So Does Length Really Matter For Going Viral On Medium?
So from the comment of the day, is there really a minimum length for what a viral story should have?
Well, from my experience, length doesn’t really matter.
What matters is the value add.
- If you can deliver a speech in 20 minutes for it to be more impactful, do it
- If it takes you an hour, that’s still okay
The goal is the same.
Give as much value as you can. The length, in itself, doesn’t really matter.
How I Apply This Seamless Story Strategy in My Writing Business
Because I have this strategy in the back of my mind, there are some things I’d never really do when writing on Medium.
Some of these writing taboos for me are
- Writing when I feel tired and unmotivated (I’ll almost never write out anything valuable in that state)
- Pitching unrelated products just for the sake of it (I mean, what’s the point?)
- Writing stories that only pitch my products without providing any value at all.
By following the seamless story strategy on Medium, I’ve been able to build a community that keeps coming back.
Why?
Because they know what to expect from my stories!
The seamless story strategy is what got me the 38k Followers I grew on Medium in less than 6 months.
And it’s also the reason I’m able to make thousands of dollars just from my stories on Medium.
Now, today is my no screenshot day.
So for a breath of fresh air, I won’t be sharing screenshots for how much I make on Medium.
But I definitely make thousands of dollars every month from simple stories I write.
And if that’s not enough validation, consider how much you could make from 1k followers, let alone 38k followers like I have.
Conclusion
Medium is definitely one of the best places to build a community that generates passive income.
No platform will make you as much money as the work you have to put in.
With Medium, it’s just you being able to wake up everyday to write new stories
- Without showing your face
- Or editing long hours of clips
- Or engaging endlessly for the algorithm
Medium is definitely the place to be if you’re a beginner looking to make passive income
It’s seriously crazy.
And it’s not just me; one of my clients, Jordan Gibbs, grew over 2.2k followers in just 3 months of writing on Medium after our session.
Now, concerning how I grew over 37k Followers, with over 273,462 views every month.
And how my clients are literally crushing it on Medium, I wrote an entire book sharing exactly how I did it.
It’s called the Medium Income Playbook.
In this ebook, I share my exact thought process behind
- Finding endless profitable content ideas related to your specific topic
- Creating click-worthy titles and viral headlines to capture readers' attention.
- Creating engaging stories that convert readers into loyal subscribers and even buyers.
- My writing principles (Quantity vs quality, KLT principle and the MVA principle)
- And I’ll also share my personal experiences on how I managed to grow to over 37k followers (as I speak) on Medium in less than 5 months.
Literally everything you need to go from zero followers to making passive income as a writer is in the Medium Income Playbook.
So If you want to start your very own profitable Medium page,
Check out the steps I personally tried out and have now shared in the Medium Income Hustle playbook.