I Earned $244 in My First Month at Medium

It was more through luck than design, but here’s what happened

Hardly anything ever goes fully to plan in life.

Take my plans for Medium.

I was going to play the long game, write a range of stories on topics that I felt passionate about. I would self-publish them, engage with other writers, and slowly build up a group of loyal followers.

I had no expectation that anything would take off the way it did.

Medium was new to me and I had little idea what worked and what didn’t. That said, I wasn’t completely unprepared either. I’d done some research, I’d talked to some experienced writers and read a few beginners’ guides.

I found J.J. Pryor’s work to be particularly helpful, especially his piece: “The Ultimate Useful Medium Articles List”, which is essentially a comprehensive index of links to articles that give useful guidance for writing on Medium.

His advice for beginners was to experiment. So that’s what I did.

I posted a variety of articles in a variety of styles on topics that meant something to me, and I produced some new work almost every day.

I knew the importance of getting curated, so that was a focus too, making sure that my work was formatted in such as way as to achieve “further distribution” by Medium. There were some failures on this front, but they were outnumbered by successes.

For more than a couple of weeks, I puttered along, getting most of my work curated and feeling pleased if the views for an article made it into double figures.

The First Breakthrough

I got my first break when I was contacted by an editor of a publication who’d seen my work and wanted me to submit one of my articles to his magazine.

It can’t do any harm, I thought. I’m not really getting anywhere with self-publishing. I’ll give it a go!

I said yes, he added me as a writer, and the story was published.

Almost immediately, the views for the article began to rise. It peaked quickly and got close to 200 views the day after publishing. 200 views seemed like more fun than 20, which was the best I’d achieved up until then.

As well as getting me more readers, I figured that the article’s success would make me a few dollars too, so I was full of eager anticipation when I checked my Partner Program figures on the morning after it peaked.

The earnings were disappointing, however. Most of the views that the article had received were external. That meant that I’d earned less than 30 cents.

It was a cruel lesson to learn. When it comes to earnings, internal views are pretty much everything in Medium.

External views are better than nothing, but only just.

I didn’t let the disappointment dull my spirits, however. On the contrary, I felt inspired. I’d realized the potential of getting published. It was a way to achieve much wider exposure for my work.

Whereas previously, I’d been focused purely on self-publication and curation, now I began to take submitting to publications seriously.

I began looking around at the wide range of publications. I write on numerous subjects and figuring out what might be a good fit for each site required a lot of investigation.

As with the old print publications (I’m old enough to remember those), it’s important to fully understand what the publisher wants and what their rules for submission are. If you ignore either of these things, then you are wasting their time as well as your own.

I began getting publications to add me as a writer and submitting my work. As well as finding publishers for the new work that I was continuing to produce, I managed to find homes for some of the older material too.

The Big Breakthrough

Remarkably, one of the articles that I found a publisher for took off.

It was more dramatic than my previous success. The viewing figures for this one flew up into the stratosphere and stayed there longer.

For several days, I was waking up and seeing astonishing (at least for me) views and earnings. I thought it was going to surpass a thousand views per day at one point. It didn’t, but it came close.

Everything that I’d heard and read about beginner writers at Medium suggested that this wasn’t meant to happen.

The story was earning more than $20 per day and my monthly total soon passed the $100 mark.

By the end of the month, my total earnings were $144.

95% of that came from that one article.

I know that many people earn much more than this on Medium, but bear in mind, it was my first month. To put this in perspective, only 6% of all Medium writers earn more than $100 each month and I’d achieved that at my first attempt.

Then, to add the cream to the pudding, I was notified that I’d be receiving a $100 bonus on top of the earnings. That was a pleasant surprise.

Last month’s bonuses were apparently the last batch that Medium are giving out. That’s a disappointment. But there’s going to be a writing competition instead, so I guess I’ll have to enter that. I’m up for anything at the moment.

Will I be able to match my first month’s earnings again?

It’s unlikely.

But we’ll see what happens.

I’m sure it will be fun, however it goes.

Here’s a Summary of What I’ve Learned

And yes, I’ve only been here for just over a month, so feel free to reject some or all of it. But this list is a good reminder to myself of what to focus on and it could maybe help others.

Below are my suggestions for beginners.

1. Write on topics that you feel passionate about. Passion isn’t the same as just feeling “strongly” about something. It also helps if you actually know about your subject matter.
2. Keep the writing quality as high as you can. Writing is difficult in my experience. If you find it easy, you are either very lucky, or you aren’t doing it right.
3. Figure out how to format your articles so that they get curated. Don’t let the bots defeat you.
4. Write as many articles as is practicable. 4 or more per week is good. But don’t over-write and allow the quality to slip. One good quality article beats 10 mediocre ones.
5. If earnings are a priority, I would recommend writing well-crafted, longer articles, 5 minute reads, or longer. (Don’t write brief throwaway stories like this one!)
6. When you’re starting out, getting work into the publications can really help your work to achieve much wider levels of exposure.
7. Build up your follower numbers. This tends to happen organically, you can’t really force it, although engaging with other writers with similar interests seems to help, I’ve found.