I went from making $.06 on Medium in August to $301 in October — One Simple Thing Made the Difference

I think I’ve cracked the code…

You’ve seen plenty of articles about making money on Medium. At least I know I have. I’ve followed much of the advice given, to no avail. I’ve written daily, made multiple posts a week, published with publications or published solo.

It wasn’t until I learned this one little thing that I made significant cash.

Let me tell you how I came to my conclusion…

I started on Medium writing about my experiences both as a therapist and an average human. I didn’t have any particular vision. I just like to write and have a lot of things I want to say.

I’ve shared painful stories, mental health advice, poems, and even the occasional humorous quip.

Most of my articles were shared only within my own close network and I was hanging out below the 100 mark of followers.

Nothing was getting noticed.

Nothing until my post titled “How I Became a Pants-less, Crime-Busting, Super Mom — and Was Still Home in Time for Dinner” hit the scene. This humorous tale about how my friends and I stopped a car jacking in our swimsuits started seeing more clicks than was common for me.

I soon had a handful of followers from this article and over 100 views. People liked my story. They thought I was funny.

It felt good.

So, I thought I’d do my best to replicate this success by sharing another funny story.

I wrote “Trunk Space” for a podcast contest a few years ago, and it won, so I tweaked it a little bit and threw it into the Medium pool to see what happened. It is a nostalgic piece about my siblings and I riding in the trunk of my dad’s car. The police got involved. It was a funny memory to write.

It barely spiked past 50 views.

Hmm… Maybe I wasn’t as funny as I thought? Maybe my story telling was only subpar. I figured I needed to try again to really know for sure.

In the mean time, I was also writing posts about mental health and my life as a mother. Most of them only got a couple dozen clicks. I was feeling like I’d never even make back my $5 I pay to subscribe to Medium at this rate.

I was unsure of my ability to be successful at this until I wrote, “That Time I Accidentally Flashed a Client”.

I can remember the day I logged on and saw that I had spiked up to over a 1000 views. “What is going on?!” I said to myself.

I quickly looked down to see my recent article, “That Time I Accidentally Flashed a Client” was having a ton of success.

I was shocked. It was funny, but not my best work.

I had published it with The Haven which is a successful publication but I had published with them before and not been this successful.

What gives?

As the week went on, the article just had more and more success. Within a week of posting it I was notified I was a Top Writer in the Humor category.

Not much in life has shocked me, or made me as proud as that!

I was creeping up to 10k views when I sat down and critically analyzed my successful posts against my less successful posts. Once I did that the answer became completely clear.

The one thing my most successful posts have in common is a suggestion of nudity in their title.

That’s right folks, the old addeage is true…

Sex sells.

I’m still not sure what to make of this. Do I keep writing sexually provocative titles to get clicks?

That’s not really my style.

I mean when it is justified I don’t mind, but do I write about my or someone else’s nudity just to replicate my current means of success?

I haven’t answered that question yet.

I haven’t had any other successful articles since “That Time I Accidentally Flashed a Client”, but I also haven’t tried real hard. It continues to get several hundreds views a day which continues to be rewarding in and of itself.

So there you have it folks. If you want to raise your Medium income exponentially, you don’t necessarily have to get naked, but you might have to at least suggest it’s a possibility.

Happy writing, my friends!