It’s Astounding I Accomplished the 100 Dollars a Month Goal on Medium

At seventy-nine I joined the six percenters group, if I did it, you can too. But now I have a problem

Medium says only six percent of writers on Medium earn $100 or more each month. Now I’m one of them! If I can do it as a seventy-nine-year-old, you can too. I’ll share some of my concepts in an effort to give you the boost needed to become a six percenter. In the end, you can help me solve my problem.

I’ve been writing on Medium since March 2018.

It’s been a long haul of $1.98 to 8 dollar monthly payments from Medium. Then, it went from $7.54 in August to $81.33 in September to an incredible $248.91 in October. Wow! This month I’m over the $100 mark so far.

What happened

First, a few things caught my attention. In searching over my three-year trek on my writing journey, I wanted to find how I reached this goal?

I noticed doing well in writing takes practice, patience, and production; it’s a journey. We learn stuff along the way. We’re good, and then we know we’re not so good. But we keep on, keeping on.

Writing is not a sprint. It’s a marathon

Here’s the down-to-earth bit on practice. Practice doesn’t make perfect; learning during practicing does the trick. So, it is with our writing; I have to be a learner. Now, not by a long shot am I good at it, but in my writing practice, I’ve learned ways to hit it out of the park.

These five helped me join the six percenters

1. Over 200 stories fill my Medium vault. You must have a reservoir of stories from which to draw, and this will take time. I always include one or two of my relevant previous stories in my new posts. Like this one on being seventy-nine.

2. I’m now publishing ten to twelve stories a month. I should post more, but I’m the full-time caregiver in my house. But, it’s true, consistency will draw more followers.

3. I’ve kept over one thousand followers. Several months ago, Medium removed hundreds of followers that were ‘Bots.’ These are not real people. I don’t know about you, but I want genuine breathing souls for followers. It makes sense, doesn’t it? I responded by continuing to write. By doing this, instead of complaining, I regained those I lost. Now, I back over one thousand followers. I’m thankful for everyone.

4. I am reading the comments readers make on my stories. Reading the readers’ comments is the fun part, don’t you think so? I reply to everyone. In responding, I address the person by name. Each of my replies contains one of these two words phases; Thank you, or I Appreciate. Also, I mention something they wrote in their comment; that’s the kicker. I like to have a dialogue with my commenters, so much better.

5. Finally, my writing voice has become more natural to me. We’re all the same as humans, but different. My writing voice should track close to how I speak, which hasn’t been easy for me to change. The adage, show, don’t tell, has me midway on the learning curve. I’m rounding the bend at getting better on showing, not telling.

Then, I need all the help I can get, so I use apps.

1. The Grammarly paid app. I write in this app; first, it’s helpful since I’m not the best at punctuation and spelling. It makes my readers think I’m a wiz.

2. Then, I copy and paste it into the Hemingway app. Here my sentence structure becomes more concise and readable.

3. After Hemingway, I copy into the Naturalreaders app to have it read to me. So helpful to hear what I wrote. Then it’s back to Hemingway.

4. Now my writing is in Hemingway, I publish it as a draft into Medium.

5. Once my writing is in Medium; I fine-tune, add previous posts as links. Add a picture, then decide where to post on Medium.

Then it’s on the Medium for the world to read.

So, what’s my problem

How do I stay in the coveted six percenters?

At this juncture is where you become my problem solvers. You see, as I said, I’m a seventy-nine-year-old man. I’ve done a few things and been to a few places in my life, but this is the first time I’m earning money by writing. And, by gosh, I like it. I want to keep it going. If you have insight, I’d be glad to read your input.

Thanks,

Richard

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