I Wrote 6 Stories in 2023 That Made $200+ and 64 That Didn’t

Lessons, numbers, and patterns from my most and least successful stories on Medium

I had a fantastic start to my writing career on Medium but haven’t been able to sustain it into 2024.

To learn why, I decided to dive head-first into my stats and deduce patterns that can help me replicate the successes.

It’s a long story with ambitious data visualizations, so here’s a table of contents to help you navigate.

Stories That Made It

• Highest Paying Programming Languages ($1,213)
• Programming Languages to Learn Today ($587)
• Spaces vs. Tabs: The Surprising Impact on Salaries ($205)
• Highest Paying Roles in Software Engineering ($204)
• The Programming Language Developers Want to Use ($202)
• What Countries Have the Highest Salaries for Developers ($194)

Lessons

• Write about popular topics
• Don’t be a perfectionist
• Try to provoke
• Align your interest with the Medium audience

Stories That Made It

1. Highest Paying Programming Languages ($1,213)

My most successful story was also a surprisingly straightforward story. I created a data visualization showing the highest-paying programming languages according to the StackOverflow survey.

A few hours after I posted the story, I received a massive surge of non-member viewers. More than 7,000 people looked at my story in the first 24 hours.

The earnings peaked early but sustained for three months. At best, the story generated over $30 per day. It boosted my motivation significantly, and I realized you can make real money on Medium.

I was also surprised when this article did well because it didn’t take a lot of effort. The text was sloppy, and my charts looked terrible. I thought it would be easy to replicate the success.

2. Programming Languages to Learn Today ($587)

My second-best article also used the StackOverflow Developer Survey and ranked how the popularity of programming languages has changed for the last three surveys.

The story performed well over an extended period and got a significant boost at the end of the year.

It’s clear that the number of non-member reads increased significantly at the end of 2023. Unfortunately, it stopped performing in the middle of January, and my earnings are now less than $0.5 per day.

3. Spaces vs. Tabs: The Surprising Impact on Salaries ($205)

The third story was a remake of one of the first stories I posted on Medium in early 2022. I made it better with prettier charts and a more provoking title.

The background is that I found a strange pattern in one of the early developer surveys: programmers who use spaces earned more than those using tabs.

I didn’t have high expectations, but the story performed well immediately. Many commented on the flaws of the results, but the majority appreciated the humor of the content.

4. Highest Paying Roles in Software Engineering ($204)

When my list with the highest-paying programming languages did so well, I created similar posts using other metrics in the StackOverflow Developer Surveys.

These stories didn’t perform as well, but they’ve made over $200 since May 2023.

5. The Programming Language Developers Want to Use ($202)

Since one language stood out from the StackOverflow Developer Survey, Rust, I created a post visualizing how its popularity has increased in recent years.

I spent more time and energy on this post to create stunning charts, hoping it would boost my earnings even more.

It didn’t.

It performed exceptionally well for one month but slowed down almost immediately.

I received more claps but fewer followers compared to other stories. I guess that the story didn’t have the content that raised eyebrows. It was pretty, but not interesting.

6. What Countries Have the Highest Salaries for Developers ($194)

The last piece that made over $200 was another copy of the first one, but where I looked at countries instead of programming languages. The chart below says that my earnings are $194, but that’s because I’m excluding this month.

Like its sisters, this post performed well for three months but didn’t make an impact on my bank account any longer.

Lessons

Some of these are obvious.

Write about popular topics.

To earn money on Medium, you must write about areas that interest many readers; it’s not the place for small niches. All my top-performing stories covered the same topics (programming + money or just programming) and used the same data source.

To navigate, I created a list of the 100 most popular tags on Medium that I will update monthly.

My most appreciated stories per reader are my Matplotlib tutorials for data visualization, but they only net me between $10 and $40 while taking more energy to write.

Don’t be a perfectionist.

The time I spent on my stories has almost zero correlation to my earnings. Of course, quality matters, but only if you write about something readers care about.

I have some stories where I spent days on creating beautiful data visualization of (according to me) exciting datasets.

I created one, in particular, visualizing recent conflicts and casualties where I went all in on the charts (see image below).

Very few people have read that story.

Try to provoke (a little bit)

My most successful stories are not the ones that everybody likes but the ones that create debate and discussion.

Almost half of the comments on my highest-paying stories question my methods and results, and that’s ok. It’s better to have comments from and activity from people who dislike your content than to have no activity at all.

But you need to find the balance where the majority likes your content, and a few are provoked. Creating crap that nobody likes is, of course, not a good strategy.

Align your interest with the Medium audience.

It’s so much easier to write about something that you yourself find interesting. I didn’t create any new stories for programmers for a long time, because I didn’t find the energy to do so.

Instead, I tried using my passion for data visualization on other crowds, but they were too narrow to create another successful story.

That’s why my strategy for 2024 is to align my interests with the audience on Medium. I will spend more time finding the stories that I want to write and where a large audience exists.

Conclusion

I had a fantastic year on Medium that exceeded all my expectations, given that I didn't have more than 100 followers when the year started.

I found a topic and angle that resonated with a lot of readers and managed to earn over $3,000 in one year (mostly from the stories you’ve seen).

Going into this year, my best stories have stopped performing, and I haven’t managed to repeat the success. Mostly because I’ve focused on my interests without aligning them with the Medium audience.

Thank you for reading!