I’m Buying a New Car with My Medium Earnings

Am I living the dream yet?

I’m one of those weirdos who makes her living by writing on Medium. It’s not perfect, but all things considered, it seems… close. Frankly, I don’t believe that perfection even exists for most writers. But that’s not a complaint.

I am a single mother on the spectrum of autism, with BPD, who grew up on welfare and I pretty much flunked out of college. Regardless, I am happy to wake up and do what I do (write) even though it means I am perpetually winging it.

It’s been a journey. Sometimes that journey feels long and arduous, like it’s going nowhere. Plenty of folks still think I’m not a “real writer” because I haven’t published a book or been featured on whatever very important website. But even then, I can see how fortunate I have been. I’m not the best, most popular, or most successful writer on Medium by any means, but I’ve enjoyed an exciting trajectory nonetheless.

It’s taken me two years to reach 26,000 followers on Medium. Is that good? I dunno. I think it’s faster than most writers here, and slower than a few others who got started before I did. But it’s not a race, obviously.

I joined Medium and began publishing here on April 25, 2018. That means I just had my Medium Birthday yesterday, and I think those are worth celebrating. My first few posts were simply stories I’d written on WordPress for, you know, 3 to 5 random views. “Looking for the Helpers” currently has 46 views on Medium. It’s earned $1.76 to date. “The Exhaustion That Hurts Us All” has fared better because it was curated in Family and Mental Health. It’s had1K views and made $66.09.

People like to hear about what it was like in the beginning. What I was doing and when I knew this thing was going to work out for me. At first, I was just writing like crazy to see what might stick. I didn’t know what readers wanted or if anyone would even want to hear from me. I’m not an expert in anything, so I simply wrote about life — my life with a hint of how it might resonate with yours. That first week was nothing sexy.

I made $1.36.

But I did publish this long, rambling piece about realizations on my childhood just four days after I started writing on Medium. It took me two days to write it up and it is far from perfect. But the Medium editors read it and asked to feature the story about a week later.

“Member Features” were different back then. Medium didn’t edit your work. “A Different Kind of Abuse” went up on the home page for one weekend with plenty of flaws and most of those flaws remain there two years later.

In those days, payment was still based on claps. To date, that first Member Feature has earned about $742. It’s nowhere near my best performing story, but it’s the one that seemed to put me onto a quicker path from the start. My first full month on Medium earned $749.17. And that’s when I “knew” I was in the right place at the right time.

Back then my rent was $725 a month and I was desperate to forge my own writing career because I could tell I was losing my gig as a writer for a social media marketing agency. I didn’t care if my new career was unconventional, I just cared if it could pay the bills. When my second full month on Medium rolled around, I made less — $446.17. I kept waiting to feel bad or worried because I’d earned less that month but I didn’t. I just remember looking at Jessica Wildfire and she had somewhere around 22K followers back then. While I knew I couldn’t be her, I felt a camaraderie with her work. That inspired me; she and a number of other “big” writers on the platform all inspired me.

Somehow, I believed that Medium was going to allow me to write a better future for me and my daughter (who had just turned 4 in April 2018). By the time summer came, I knew I would build my writing career on Medium. Despite not knowing how it would happen, I don’t think I’ve ever believed in anything so much. It was all just a matter of doing the work and putting in the time.

That’s what I kept telling myself.

In July 2018, I was still green on Medium but the editors once again asked to feature a story. Now, things are always changing on Medium, and by my second, third month of Medium, they changed their process for Member Features. My story was edited, given a new headline, a similar but different photo, and audio. It hit the front page, and also on a weekend.

To date, “Twenty, Married, and Still a Virgin” has earned $1,071.14. Last winter, as Medium did away with their former “collections,” the story was moved from Losing My Religion to Human Parts.

I went on to have a third Member Feature in January 2019. Again, as Medium keeps shifting, it was an entirely different experience that third time around. More editing, but this time I got to approve those edits. Part of me wishes I’d said something about the picture though because I hated the one they chose. My original image was much darker — a girl skulking away from a monster or demon. The final image ended up being cutesy and pink.

Too lighthearted.

Medium kept my headline, but didn’t distribute the story very widely. To my knowledge, it never made the front page. They did, however, also add it to Human Parts toward the end of 2019.

“Who’s Afraid of Their Big Bad O?” has earned $389.87 to date. Up until that point, I deeply believed that I needed to consistently get my stories featured to earn a good living on Medium. But when this story was so poorly distributed, I started to change my mind.

Since then, I’ve had a few more pieces make it into Medium-owned publications. Human Parts took “How Can a Fat Mom Raise a Healthy Kid?” along with “What I Wish People Knew About Reporting Suicidal Friends on Facebook.” The former has earned $348.72, the latter $352.09.

Forge published “A Clean Home Is an Investment in Your Sanity,” and it’s made $201.72. One Zero took “Is It Just Me, or Does Disney+ Kinda Suck?” and it pulled in $202.14. Elemental published “The Newly Expanded Recommendations on Autism Are Good News for Kids,” which has earned $45.37.

Looking at all of those numbers has cured me from the belief that I need to be on the front page or in a Medium-owned publication. The reality is that I do much better publishing on my own, though I’ve had a few outliers with other people’s publications (like PS I Love You and Post Grad Survival.)

Despite having my flops that fizzle out almost immediately after publication, I’ve got enough stories that bring in hundreds of dollars. Thousand dollar+ stories used to be pretty rare for me, but since getting into a groove in 2020, I’ve seen some stories hit $1,500 or $2,200 pretty quickly.

For many readers and writers on Medium, any discussion of earnings is unacceptable. I get plenty of criticism for being crass, shallow, or conceited for writing about the money, but I suspect that few of those critics have also been homeless single moms.

I have always felt some responsibility to be honest about money simply because I know what it’s like to be told constantly that writing doesn’t pay the bills or that all of this yearning to write for a living is some silly pipe dream.

My intention here has always been to fulfill my purpose. I aim to do what I love and support my daughter at the same time. Medium has allowed me to do that and I’ll keep doing it for as long as I can, or, until a new home for my writing makes more sense.

That said, my “success on Medium” has always relied upon building up a following of readers who are actually interested in my work. I wouldn’t be here if there weren’t folks who felt something resonate with my awkwardly honest stories.

Last year on my Medium birthday, I reached 11K followers, and earlier this week I saw the number roll over to 26K. There’s a lot of truth to the statement that your follower count isn’t as important as you probably think it is.

Having a lot of followers doesn’t guarantee success. Remember, Medium is still constantly evolving and there’s a good measure of luck and timing that none of us can ever really quantify.

When Medium shifted their payment model from claps to reads in October 2019, there seemed to follow several algorithm tweaks that impacted the way our stories were distributed. The adjustment came with plenty of ups and downs for me. For a while, it just felt like my stats were in freefall.

I’d like to think that I finally do have a better grasp of which stories of mine do better on Medium, and as a result, it seems like I’m finally in that place where I always wanted to be : writing regularly, but being able to take a day or two off publishing without the sky crumbling down on me.

I still write some stories that I know are going to get stuck at $20, $40, $60. Maybe less. And I write those pieces because they still need to be written. There’s also the random story that seriously surprises me. “My Mother Thinks Bill Gates Is Trying to Kill Us All” is one of those surprises for sure. I wrote it for myself and my own need to vent. It wound up being a top earner in just two weeks. Clearly, it’s not even my best story, but it was still relatable and controversial enough to log a lot of reading time.

It also received a nice plug from Mitch Horowitz on Twitter that didn’t hurt.

At any rate, I have always been very hopeful and driven about making Medium work for me. I often joke that joining Medium and sticking with it is one of the few things I’ve actually done “right” with my life.

But I do have to be honest. I think in certain ways, Medium has also been easier for me because I’ve benefited from enough strokes of luck and good timing to stay motivated. My first full month on Medium paid my rent. My third full month here reached $1,400 and it’s never dipped below $1136 since August 2018. I didn’t see a month below $4,243 in all of 2019.

Obviously, it’s a lot easier to stick with something when you’re happy with the results. And I’ve learned that I’m happiest when I accept the natural ebb and flow of my earnings, don’t compare myself to the top top earners like Tim Denning, and write the stories that I really want to write.

So, I definitely understand the importance of “reading the signs” when you tackle a huge goal like writing for a living. I’ve written a couple of well-paid pieces for the Dame Blog, and I’ve had many stories freely syndicated on sites like Mamamia, and Kidspot, plus a handful of random websites you’ve likely never heard of. I’ve even done a few interviews — my favorite being when I chatted with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby earlier this year about toxic relationships. But Medium is my home, because this is where I earn my income. I find it worth my time to focus on Medium.

In my first year here, the big deal for me was quitting my social media gig and paying for a ton of much-needed dental work. Writing on Medium became my full-time thing in December 2018, less than 8 months after my beginning.

My second year on Medium marked a significant lifestyle change. Last July, my daughter and I took our first-ever vacation. In August, I began sending Sophie to a private pre-kindergarten with a forest nursery program. On November 1, I finally got my driver’s license at age 37. My first car for the purpose of learning was a gas guzzling 2008 VW Touareg.

Today, April 26 marks the first day of my third year on Medium, and I’m actually buying a brand new car this morning. A much more fuel efficient Kia Soul that I hope my daughter can learn to drive in… 9 or 10 years. It’s crazy, scary, and wonderful.

But that’s life.

I don’t write about writing or making money on Medium as much as I used to. It hasn’t felt necessary to me. But I’m real fond of writing some sort of post to recognize my “birthday” here. It’s good to look back over the past year(s) and those up ahead.

And I daresay that although this post will grate on some nerves, it’s going to help somebody somewhere on their own writing path. How do I know that?

This is the kind of story I have always needed to read for myself. A single woman, following her dream to write, coming up out of poverty yet still dealing with all of the weirdness that comes with it. I’m not naive. I know that Medium doesn’t owe me success on their platform. I understand that Medium or the Partner Program could go away and I would need to change course.

But there are so many things I have no control over. I choose to focus on the stuff I can do, even when it’s temporary (as most things are). I also choose to have faith in myself and what I’m doing here. Not just on Medium but here. In the universe.

I think I was born to write about difficult things. I think I was born to write about often unspeakable things in a conversational or matter-of-fact way. Honestly, some of the stuff I write is so damn embarrassing that there are stories I just can’t make myself reread, or I know I’d take them down.

Keeping them up is a good thing. I’ve learned that life moves on no matter how many times strangers have followed the most sordid details of my life. Oh yes, I know — there are plenty of folks who feel my work is silly or stupid because nobody really wants to know that much about me.

There’s a secret, however, when it comes to writing about yourself. You’re never just writing your life story. (Well, if you are, you’re doing it wrong.) When you do it right, you’re writing about the awkwardness, the fears, and the longing that so many other people feel yet don’t know how to articulate. Often, you’re giving words and validations to the feelings they could hardly acknowledge on their own.

Of course, sometimes, you’re inspiring people too. Not because your life is perfect and not because you’ve figured it all out. You can inspire folks with your writing because we live in this culture that is very lean on dreams. The older you are, the more practical you’re supposed to be.

And we’re used to it. We’re used to telling children to dream grand things but grownups are supposed to suck it up and not go for anything too crazy. There’s a lot riding on us all following the status quo. There’s even some outrage when we have the audacity to grow up believing in more for ourselves.

So few people are seriously living their dreams that it’s almost insulting when we see somebody who’s painfully ordinary (or possibly an underdog) doing it. We want to remind them that life is hard and they’re not that special, you know?

That’s the thing about me. I’m not that special. If you’re very familiar with my work, you know that I write most of my stories on my phone and I am pretty much the worst self-editer out there. I’m not big on writing “rules” and tend to do my own thing. I miss a lot of typos, er, swypos, but I have the audacity to come back day after day.

Here’s the thing. I believe in what I’m doing here much more than I’m afraid to look foolish. Which means I’m able to get over my mistakes without melting into some puddle of humiliation and that’s helped me get through the bad days. And on the good days, am I “living the dream?”

I don’t know. I suppose it feels like I’m on the right path and that feels good enough for now. I probably won’t really feel like I am living the dream until I reach a certain nest egg and quit “re-starting” my savings as each big thing comes up in my life.

I might feel like I am living the dream once I finally do decide on a “next step” after this. Like if I ever finally know what my first book should be about. Securing a large advance would help me feel more like I’ve reached my dream. Leveraging my writing career into other opportunities without feeling like I’m being thrown off course — that would feel a lot like “making it.”

But for now, I’m really just happy on my journey. I am much more independent than I was when I first started on Medium two years ago. Even though I’m not exactly where I want to be someday, I don’t personally feel like I need to hurry.

Honestly, I only ever really feel pressure about what I’m doing when I let others get in my head. When I let their fears for me or their own careers shift what I do. Inevitably, though, I realize that I need to go my own way. And quit apologizing for every time I follow a path that deviates from someone else’s expectations for me.

Two years ago, I was a nervous wreck about dental bills and sending my daughter to school. I looked down on myself for being single and for not knowing how to drive a car. I didn’t think very much of me and I was ashamed to see how many years (decades, really) had been wasted due to depression and a history of poor or safe choices.

I didn’t believe that good things happened for people like me.

Every time I write a post like this about my journey on Medium I hope like hell that people will get it. I hope that you’ll understand this isn’t about me patting myself on the back of bragging about anything I’ve done.

My hope is that you’ll read my story and believe in good things like your own dreams again. I hope you’ll know that there are ways to start over when your life is going nowhere. I hope you start looking for whatever makes you special no matter how mundane your talents seem.

I think I’m special in the same way Mister Rogers said we’re all special. I think there’s nobody else in the world who’s just like me. Which means there are things in this world that only I can do in my own way. I believe the same thing about you too.

Whatever your reason for being here, only you can decide if it’s a good one. Only you can choose your path.

As for me, I plan to keep writing for as long as possible on Medium, and I want to celebrate every bit of freedom this path brings. Today it’s buying a car… despite needing to wear a mask and carry hand sanitizer just to complete the paperwork.

We live in uncertain times. Every day is a reminder of that lately.

Don’t let anyone talk you out of doing the things you really think you’re supposed to do. Have the courage and faith to believe in your own way.