I Made $500 on Medium this Month and Won a Bet

Without any viral articles.

About 2 months ago or so, myself and The Maverick Files made a bet on which one of us would be the first to earn $500 in one month on Medium. I believe that our wager consisted of $1,500 and a Persian cat — all of which he now owes me. Muahahahaha.

Kidding aside, I do remember reading a bunch of articles in the past about Medium’s coveted “$500 a Month Club” and I strived to learn how I, too, could reach the promised land. Whenever I was reading these articles, I always found that those who made this sum had written stuff that went viral.

Well, I didn’t. I haven’t written a single article that went viral. I had to make this money one article at a time, and while doing so, I learned something about Medium — a concept which The Maverick Files was also the first to introduce me to.

Some topics are just more lucrative than others

Let me put this in perspective. I once saw an article about how someone grew their Medium Partner Program earnings by over 300% in one month. I clicked on it and was disappointed to find out that they had really just made $1 the first month and $4.11 the next. Whereas making any amount of money from your writing is commendable and nothing to scoff at, I couldn’t help but feel that the title was a bit clickbait-y.

However, being an editor for the publication the article was in, I realized that I could go into its stats and see exactly how much reading time and interaction that article got. I found that it did way better than all the other articles published that day, even accounting for the size of the author’s following.

I had noticed myself in the past as well that when you write about your Medium earnings in any publication, the articles tend to do quite well. I’m sure some of you guys who are reading this now have also noticed.

Here’s the dildo

So, the above is proof that there are certain topics on Medium that just pay better on average — such as writing about your Medium earnings. In fact, writing articles about making money through writing is so lucrative that some writers — not naming names — choose to focus on this topic almost exclusively. Hell, I’ve even written a few articles regarding Medium earnings myself. Check out, How to Make $1000 per Month on Medium Naturally and Without Any Drugs, for a hearty laugh ;)

However, in all seriousness, there are topics that pay even more. Here they are, according to my own research and experience:

- True Crime

- Writing

- Sex

- History

- Programming

Simply by writing about these topics in relevant publications, you will find that your articles begin to make you more than $10 consistently, even if you don’t yet have a large following.

These are the topics on Medium that hardcore readers are most interested in. Fiction doesn’t make too much money on Medium based on my experience. Neither do articles written about topics like Creativity or Mindfulness or Self. Don’t get me wrong, you can still make great money by writing about these things.

What I’m saying is that there are certain topics that pay you a lot as a baseline. That’s right, regardless of luck, talent, or your following, articles written about True Crime, Writing, Sex, and History will tend to pay you hundreds of percent more than any other topics. Also, writing about Programming seems to be very lucrative though I don’t know enough to write about that.

These topics are also the places where your articles will receive the fewest number of claps. Why? Because the people who read these things aren’t writers as well. Writers typically clap a lot on other writers’ work because they know how much it matters to them. However, the majority of people on Medium are “lurkers” and mostly never clap. What they have going for them is that they are voracious readers and you will get insane reading times if you can reach them.

The topics above are what they are most interested in.

To be very specific, you almost can’t write True Crime articles without making at least $5–10 apiece. Same for History and for Sex. As for writing, my articles in The Writing Cooperative have made on average about $20–30 each.

That will be all

It was actually The Maverick Files who first taught me that certain topics — specifically True Crime — pay more than others, so I’m grateful for that.

I could have written a longer article with advice on writing well, writing a lot, writing catchy titles, etc, but this was the only piece of advice I had that I felt was “new”… or at least I haven’t seen it before.

This is the article that helped me a lot when I started out on Medium — before I ever dreamed of making $500 — and it has good advice on getting Medium curated as well:

Oh, and I almost forgot… Here are my earnings so far. Today’s money hasn’t been added to the total sum yet.

May I interest you in some satire?