Summary

Susie Kearley reflects on her first nine months on Medium, detailing her earnings, follower growth, content strategy, and lessons learned.

Abstract

Susie Kearley has earned $950 and amassed over 1000 followers in her initial nine months on Medium. She has published over 300 stories, with her most successful pieces focusing on writing, publishing, and the use of images, which resonate with the platform's writer-centric audience. Despite initial struggles, including earning only$ 1.04 in her first month, Kearley's persistence led to gradual improvement, particularly after reaching the milestone of 150 published stories. She emphasizes the importance of relatable content, noting that niches such as mental health, entrepreneurship, and 'how to' articles perform well. Kearley also discusses the significance of follower count and engagement, the success of short-form content, and the average earnings per story, which she aims to improve by understanding Medium's unique market.

Opinions

Kearley believes that relatable content is crucial for engagement and earnings on Medium.
She suggests that having a substantial number of followers (who are engaged) is vital for visibility and success on the platform.
Kearley expresses that while some topics like travel, animals, and history may not always perform well, diversifying content can be beneficial and reflective of a writer's broader interests.
She is critical of the approach of writing exclusively about Medium and making money online, finding it superficial and crass.
Kearley acknowledges the importance of understanding Medium's niche interests to improve earnings and reader engagement.
She values the social aspect of Medium and does not want to limit herself to a single niche, preferring to write about a variety of topics, including personal experiences like plagiarism.
Kearley's top-earning story highlights the potential for significant earnings from a single piece, setting a goal for her future writing endeavors.

I Earned $950 in my first Nine Months on Medium

And accrued over 1000 followers

The end of February marked my first full 9 months on Medium. I published over 300 stories in that time, and I’ve learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t.

My best performing stories across the whole 9 months were these ones…

They’re all about writing, publishing, or the use of images, except the last one, which is a common health complaint. Writers can relate to these stories because most of them are about their craft — writing and publishing.

I also published a lot of animal stories and travel pieces, but most of them earned less than a dollar!

The second story on that list, How Much I Made Self-Publishing 10 Books Through Amazon KDP, didn’t do as well as you might imagine because most of the views were external.

February’s top earners

Here are February’s top earners…

So my most popular stories in February were about writing and publishing too. Perhaps not surprising on a platform designed for writers and publishers!

It’s not always been this fruitful

My stats might look quite good for someone who’s struggling to reach double digits, but it’s not always been this fruitful. I started off struggling too.

By February 2022, when I had my first viral story surpassing 7000 views, I’d been publishing every day for 9 months and putting my heart and soul into trying to build a profile here. It wasn’t easy.

In my first month I earned $1.04.

I got some grief that month, which nearly put me off the platform. Many of my stories earned less than 50 cents and to say I was disappointed by the whole experience would be an understatement.

In my second month, I earnt $11.

In my third month, I earned $32.

It took some considerable time before I hit the $100 mark and when I did, my reads fell back down again the following month! It all seemed like a lot of effort for little return!

But I’m not a quitter and I was enjoying the social side.

When I passed the threshold of publishing 150 stories, it felt like a significant moment. My earnings seemed to pick up a bit after that. I’ve heard that 150 is the magic number for earnings to accrue to a more substantial monthly payout.

What I’ve learnt

I’ve learnt that relatable content is important. When people relate to your story they read and engage.

Whether you’re targeting people’s burgeoning appetite for mental health stories, writing about writing, or covering self-help, there are many niches that do well on Medium.

Entrepreneurship is huge, ‘how to’ articles can do well, and people love controversy and strong opinions. But they won’t give you an easy time if they don’t agree with you!

Some people write a lot of politics and do well on it. I understand there’s a good market for true crime too.

Often my stories on wider topics like travel, animals, and history don’t do well. But I have a stock of these stories, so I’ll continue to publish some, because you never know when one might take off.

It’ll be no surprise to anyone that having more followers helps too. When I started out with just two friends and two bots following me, it was never going to be easy! I’d hoped that getting into publications would get me in front of their followers, but it did little for my views.

There’s no substitute for having followers of your own, assuming your followers are moderately engaged and not just doing the ‘follow for follow’ thing.

Read ratios

My highest read ratio was 90% and if you look at the stories with the highest read ratios they’re all 1 or 2 minute stories. People have short attention spans! For a while, I was writing more short-form stories than anything else because that’s what people seemed to want to read.

Stories with the most fans

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the story with the most fans was also my biggest earner.

$3 average earnings per story

Overall, my Medium stories have earned on average about $3 each. That’s pretty dire if you look at the time spent writing and compare it to the minimum wage. But any career in writing is a journey, and you have to put the effort in to make it work. Then eventually, hopefully, it pays off in the longer term.

Obviously I want to improve upon the $3 average, and the more I write here, the more I’ll find out what people enjoy reading and what works.

I’ve started to realise that recycling old content that I originally created for magazines is not the best approach. Medium is a different market with niche interests. However some of my previously published content fits these niches, so there’s some overlap.

My top story earned $257, so on that basis, if I can do that four times, I can forget about writing the other 299 stories! There’s a goal to aim for, but maybe I like to share some of my less popular stories too!

Should we all choose a niche?

Some people say we should all choose a niche and stick to it, but I don’t feel I want to be constrained. Also, personally, I’m bored by people who write about nothing but Medium and making money online. It seems superficial and crass, but I guess it’s maximising the use of the limited time they have to spend on here.

Personally, I like to get to know a bit about the writers I follow and their other interests.

So I’ll continue to cover writing, Medium, and the topics that do well, but I’ll also publish stories about my wider interests, opinions, and interviews I’ve done, because that’s what makes life interesting! And the experience of publishing these stories often gives me topics for my Medium stories too!

For example, my stories about having my work plagiarised have earned considerably more than my plagiarised stories. So at least I eventually made them pay somehow!

March’s top performers!

The stats we’ve looked at don’t cover March because it’s not over yet, but here are my best performing stories, so far, in March...

Thank you for reading.