Just Got My First Paycheck From Medium. Here’s What I Found Out

Why you should always trust the process.

Just received my first money from Medium. But this is not the typical story of how I earned $2000 in two weeks. Not at all.

This post is how to make $8.24 in a whole month. That’s the amount I earned in April.

Although we all dream of earning a thousand bucks a week only by writing, only a few people actually reach that milestone. They all tell us how easy it is, how fast it is, and the only way to do it is just to follow their tips.

I don’t want to offend the folks out there that give insights about how they earned money through writing; I myself have taken some of their advice.

My point is that, it’s always super frustrating in the beginning.

How It All Started

I found out about Medium from my professor in university who taught the class Writing for Media. I remember her mentioning it a couple of times and also that we should be posting our stories there. I, unfortunately, ignored her advice.

It was not until this year that the conversation about Medium started again. This semester (which is my last one), I took the class Advanced Writing for Media with the same professor. I checked Medium again and started reading stories. However, most of them were locked, as I was not a member. It was upsetting.

The subscription fee of $5 was not that high for the standards in my country. Well, heck, a Netflix subscription is twice as expensive.

So, I gave it a try.

I did see that there was some kind of membership program and that Medium paid its writers, but thought: “well, they probably only pay the big fish here.”

I just wanted to read stories interrupted and occasionally write one on my own. Then I realized that I’m not actually that terrible at writing and Medium was probably the only place where I could express my ideas and knowledge about topics that were of real interest of mine.

So, I started writing. At first I was uploading works that I initially had written in class. I had to start from somewhere. I tweaked them here and there so that it doesn’t sound that academic and more of a Medium-blog-like.

The very first story I posted here was called “DMT and Ayahuasca: Similarities, Differences, and How They Affect the Body & Mind.” It immediately got curated to the psychedelics and lifestyle sections. My very first article!

Up to this day, this story has earned the enormous amount for me of $10.73, which makes it, by far, my biggest earner.

This was the only story I published during my first one week on Medium. However, when I saw the results, I got encouraged to publish more of my work.

After 6 days, I published the article “What Food Can Teach You,” which, to this day, has earned me the exact sum of $0.01. On the first day of its publication, I had 21 viewers, 80% of whom came from my Instagram or Facebook profiles. Afterwards, I had 2 people viewing it per day. Quite discouraging, right?

Then, we had an assignment in class to write whatever we wanted as our last article. I decided that I’d produce something jaw-dropping. I would research the hell out of it. That’s how I came up with the 13-minute read “11 Easy Ways to Boost Your Immune System.” It had more than 30 cited sources and more than 3000 words. The outcome? 100 views in the first two days (only external ones thanks to my friends), 4 on the 3rd day, 1 on the 4th. Earnings? $0.04.

Up to this point, I was disappointed. How can I not have been? I spent a week writing a 15-page article and nothing came out of it.

That’s when things changed.

I had long been following the publication ILLUMINATION. I was in love with the articles posted there. So, I thought: “well, I’d lose nothing if I fill in the application.”

The next day, Dr Mehmet Yildiz accepted me in! You can’t imagine how proud I was. It gave a new head start for my writing on Medium. Now, I’m more engaged with what I write about and what I read. There are all sorts of ideas in my head that I’d like to put on paper (or rather, on screen).

So, look, if you have gone so far through the article, let me tell you some last words.

My start on Medium wasn’t the worst one — my first story got curated. However, some time after that was a steep downhill. Nevertheless, during all the frustrating and disappointing days I knew that something would come up. An idea, an opportunity, a drive.

And it came.

My advice to all you folks that are just starting out — the beginning is annoying; then it becomes frustrating; then disappointing; and right when you have lost all drive to write, something comes up.

While I was putting together this article, I had been wondering what makes writing so satisfying. Then some wise words from Malcolm Gladwell, written in his book Outliers, popped up in my head:

“Those three things — autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward — are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”

I can proudly say that my work is satisfying.

I hope yours becomes more so after reading this story.