I tripled my hourly wage on Medium in my second month — you can too

Going really hard writing on Medium early on allowed me to eventually take my foot off the gas and still INCREASE my hourly wage.

In fact, in my second month writing on this platform, I tripled my per-hour rate.

Let me walk you through it.

In this piece last month, I described how I managed to make hundreds of dollars in my first full month writing on Medium, putting me well into the top 6% of earners here (those who make more than $100 per month).

Over at my main account James Julian in September, I published close to 60 articles, generating 7,667 views, 1,939 reads, and 308 fans.

Because I was starting from scratch, however, my hourly wage was … less than impressive.

I calculated that, because I’m a professional writer and editor with a long, deadline-driven newspaper career, it takes me about 45 minutes on average to write an article.

Some might be longer, some might be shorter, but that’s the average.

In total, I earned $354.20 in September, or $477 in Canadian dollars.

According to my calculations, that means I only made about $7.75 per hour — significantly less than minimum wage.

Earnings spike

Here’s where it gets interesting.

With a bunch of articles now generating regular income, I got to work in October at a much slower pace.

I only published 26 articles because I spent a good chunk of the first two weeks on getting my YouTube channel off the ground.

Getting that number of posts out is still decent, but it’s still less than half of what I produced in September.

So, that meant I should expect a huge drop-off in views and earnings, right?

Not so fast. Here are my October numbers:

As you can see, I saw a slight drop in views and a reads, and a slight bump in fans. I actually only had one article out of 26 generate more than 1,000 views, which accounts for that one huge spike in the middle of the month (you can check that article out here if you like).

Despite publishing less and seeing fewer views in October, however, I actually INCREASED my total income by 23.83%. Here are my October earnings:

That means my hourly wage went nuts.

• 26 articles x 0.75 (45 minutes to write an article) = 19.5 hours
• $453.82 / 19.5 hours = $23.27 per hour

That’s almost exactly three times what I made in September in terms of hourly wage.

Because the American dollar is so strong right now relative to other currencies, I’m also really benefitting the exchange rate.

I saw $605 land in my bank account for my work, which works out to an hourly wage of $31.02 per hour in Canadian dollars.

Minimum wage here is $15 per hour, so I’m now making double minimum wage doing something I actually love as a side hustle!

So how do we account for this?

My little employees

I like to describe my articles as my little employees. Once I’ve hired (written) them, they go off to work every day and come home with some money.

Some might come home with a good chunk of change, others might only come back with two cents.

The point is, I don’t need to worry about them.

Once they’re hired, they leave every day and return with money in their little briefcases with no effort on my part.

I really believe it’s important to actually own your content, and this is why. I could have written freelance pieces, but the earnings stop when the job does.

So with a full month to work with in October, my little September hires brought home even more than they did the previous month.

They were joined by the October crew, and now BOTH groups have a full month of November to generate income. Oh, and I have a batch of November hires joining in too.

Compounding is now working to my advantage.

Other factors

Some of my past articles are actually generating MORE money than just the pennies I receive for reads from Medium members.

In October, my referred member count went from 2 to 9.

I don’t know which stories actually resulted in people joining Medium using my link, but of the $453.82 I earned last month, more than $20 came from subscription fees.

And that’s recurring income. As long as those people remain members, I’ll get paid $2.27 per month for each of them.

Last thing to remember: there’s a time lag on earnings on Medium.

I wrote two stories in September that crossed the 1,000-view mark. It takes a couple of weeks for Medium to properly calculate what you should be earning on a story, so there are days later in a story’s life cycle where you might get few views but a lot of money.

Keep writing

Every story I’ve written has two ways of earning: reads by Medium members, and new subscriptions.

The more stories you write, the more likely you’ll hit on a couple for thousands of views and a big earnings bump. If you get a subscriber or two, bonus!

The point is, just keep writing. If you enjoy the process and are constantly working to get better, the money will take care of itself.

If you’re interested more in the HOW of generating this kind of income on Medium, I’ve written a series of articles that may be of interest to you, which I’ll link to below.

Before you leave, if you enjoyed this piece and found it helpful or inspiring, please give it a clap or two so others can find it. Thanks for reading!

Links:

• Can you have more than one Medium Partner Program account?
• I made hundreds on Medium in my first month
• How I became a top 6% writer on Medium in 23 days
• How to get ignored as a writer on Medium
• If you want to succeed on Medium, ask yourself this question

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