That was the month that was

My June Jackpot

Making a mint on Medium

Until June, the best month of my six on Medium was (checks spreadsheet) March. When I made $47.44. I’ve yet to have a month where I haven’t made my subscription back, so it’s all gravy, I tell myself.

This past month has been different. I’m still trying to work out what happened, and I’ll examine the factors later on. But Wow!

Running the numbers

Let’s check out my spreadsheet. This dates to my first days on Medium, when I was just gathering data. I know they say don’t look at the stats page, just write, but I’m the sort of details girl that wants to know how the system works.

Basically, June was the month where I was going to come back to life after being down in the dumps due to the pandemic. I wanted to write two articles a day, and although I drew on previously written material for a fair chunk of this, I shot pretty near to my target. If I could equal my previous best rate per article, then I’d be looking at something like $100 for the month, as the “Projected Earnings” line indicates.

Nothing fancy about this projection. It simply takes the calculated “$/day” rate, multiplies it by the number of days in the month, and assumes that I’m going to keep on churning out articles of that average quality every day for the rest of the month.

The rest of the table is just a matter of entering the numbers and doing basic arithmetic.

My very first story of the month was a long one. I had a lot of fun writing it and put in some nice sunny images. I called it “My Good Travel, Bad Sex Story” because that’s what it was. The best travel stories are always the ones where everything goes wrong, but in this case, the travel was great.

And nothing happened for half the month. I dutifully wrote my stories, and they got dutifully read, just as I was doing to the stories of people and pubs I follow.

In fact, by about the 13th, I was confident this was going to be a good month, and I wrote a story about how writing for ILLUMINATION had increased my earnings fivefold over the low point of May when I made $22, itself an improvement over April where I drew $14.

Blame the pandemic for the lows.

This was because I was on a roll, I was keeping my output up, I was feeling good about the publication.

We have liftoff!

Then things took off. I looked at the next day’s numbers, and I was making six times the previous rate, so I went and retitled my story.

And if you want to know the not so obvious trick to putting a new title on an old story in Medium here it is:

But the numbers just kept on rising. Partly because a week earlier, my fun little travel story was curated — into “Travel” — and so a few more eyeballs fell onto it. But that wasn’t the only factor. Some switch had been cycled and my readers were heading for the moon.

How about that! At its peak, my story was getting 600 views and making $40 per day. It’s tapered off since then, but it’s still my best earner by far.

The rest of my output for the month was about what you’d expect. A few cents per story per day. Take out that one story, I made $60 for the month. Still a good month, but.

What went right?

First of all, it was a good story. I worked hard on it, had fun telling the story, put a few jokes in, made it colourful, pushed the tension and drama in the plot up and down, and gave it a twist right at the end. It’s a good read.

Second. The headline. For some reason everybody wants to know about bad sex when it happens to other people. Or bad things that aren’t tragic; it doesn’t have to be sex, but sex is what draws the interest. The travel helps. Travel stories when everybody is locked down and worried, that’s escapism right there.

Third. The lead image. I picked a shot of a blonde woman in a bikini lying on the same Malibu beach where I set my story. It’s not me in that shot, but not too far from the truth, except she has a way better tan.

Fourth. Curation helped a lot. To begin with, I followed all the rules for curation, like attributing my images. You should always try to make your stories curatable, unless you are writing about Medium itself, when they aren’t.

Fifth. Me. Once I worked out there was a bit of traffic going on, I made this story my featured story on my profile page. Everyone who clicked on my name got this story front and centre, via the headline, the subtitle, and the image.

Sixth. ILLUMINATION. The publication puts a lot of effort into promoting the stories of its writers. There are always going to be a lot of eyeballs on a good story. In fact, this may well be the major reason for the story doing so well. And thank you to Dr Mehmet Yildiz and all the other hard-working staff. Your efforts are appreciated. You go above and beyond.

Seventh. The story length. It says its a fourteen minute read, but the average reading time is about a third of that. In any case, it’s quite a bit longer than my usual length, and long stories earn more money.

Eighth. Serendipity. My very next story — about rediscovering an old programming package — was also curated (into Programming) and I guess all those readers had a chance to look at my travel/sex story.

There are probably other factors at work that I haven’t discovered yet.

I did a little promotion on Twitter and Facebook, but I’m not a promotion or SEO guru, so most of the views — 95% — are internal.

I’m happy with this

Very happy. This one story has earned me five hundred American dollars.

It’s fired me up into analysing why this happened and inspired me to do the same again.

I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t think that I could entertain and inform readers, and this has pressed a lot of buttons for me. I’d like to do it again and again, and that means having a lot of happy readers.

And isn’t that what Medium is all about? I don’t know about you, but just browsing through the thousands of Medium stories means that I’m bound to find stories that thrill and delight and inspire me. My $5 monthly subscription is money well spent, and getting a little bit back by writing a few articles in my spare time is the icing on the cake.

And everybody loves icing. Or frosting as the Americans put it.

What’s your success story?

I’m nowhere near the top of the tree. We’re talking personal best, not world record. Some stories on Medium earn thousands of dollars, and some writers do it again and again.

But every success story is a success, and even if last month you made a buck more than the one before, that’s a win, and your thoughts on your win are something I’d like to hear about. Drop a comment, drop a link, I’ll follow and read and we’ll both be lifted a little.

Britni

Another story with sex and travel: