The Long Tail on Medium

My lifetime earnings show residual income works

Ignore the success stories. Yes, some writers earn thousands of dollars on Medium with a handful of articles. And yes, Medium is still one of the best places for freelance writers to build an audience and earn money online.

But it’s not magic.

The rules of content marketing still apply. Like it or not, the simple, boring, painful truth is that Medium is a long game. Or to be more accurate, it’s a long tail game.

Once you understand that the lifetime earnings of your articles are more important than that initial endorphin hit you get from claps and comments, you’ll start to see just how valuable writing on Medium can be.

Here’s an in-depth look at the initial earnings and long-tail revenue for three of my top-performing articles, so you can see exactly how your writing can earn money month after month—and why that’s such a big deal for your writing career.

What Is the Long Tail?

If you’re unfamiliar, “long tail content” is a marketing term that refers to the lifetime value of an article. You tally up how many clicks, views, conversions, signups, or dollars an article has earned after the initial bump when you published it — that’s your long tail.

Basically, a content marketer asks one simple question:

“Is this content still getting the kind of traffic I want?”

If the answer is “yes,” congratulations — you have a healthy piece of long-tail content.

What’s great about the long tail is that the daily number of views, clicks, even earnings doesn’t have to be impressive. In fact, most long tail metrics are underwhelming if you look at any given day in isolation.

But every blip on that line above represents real-world earnings. Money in the bank. And that’s the whole point.

Because when you add up the total aggregate earnings, that anemic looking long tail almost always outperforms the initial spike you got when you clicked “publish.”

You just have to give it time.

My Long Tail Earnings on Medium

I’ve been writing on Medium, part-time, since October last year. To date, I’ve published 57 articles and earned just over $527.54. That’s $9.26 per article—and climbing.

I know that’s not exactly Rockefeller money, but that doesn’t matter. Medium isn’t a get rich quick scheme. It’s an investment in the lifetime value of an article.

And I’m a patient guy.

To prove it, here’s a detailed look at the initial earnings stats and the subsequent long tail revenue for three of my top-performing articles over the past eight months. Hopefully, it’ll help you rethink your Medium content strategy and how you measure success.

Here’s Exactly What It Costs to Travel the World: Lifetime Earnings—$66.72

This was my very first Medium article, and it earned $13.50 during its first month. Again, not earth-shattering, but not bad for a first try.

However, that initial pop is less than 20% of the lifetime earnings so far—$66.72—and it’s still earning every day. (Hello from the future: I’m editing this article just two days after I wrote it, and it’s already at $68.51. So that’s fun.)

When you look closely at the long-tail views and earnings data here you can see that this article has made more money this year than it did when I first published it last fall.

Look at that spike in January. There’s another spike in July. The earning stats for this article look more like a Richter scale than traditional long-tail content marketing. That’s the real strength of Medium — your articles can experience earning spikes with zero effort on your part.

Heck, this article is my top-earning article this month!

Sure, it’s only earned $10 this month, but that’s an additional $10 for work that I finished eight months ago. Just imagine if you had hundreds of articles like this…

It’s Not Hard to Become A Writer: Lifetime Earnings — $46.16

This inspirational how-to article was pretty popular after it was curated, earning $17.76 in its first month. Again, it’s not a ton of money, but it’s pretty typical for the average Medium article for a writer with my reach.

But that’s still only a third of its total lifetime value.

This graph shows me that Medium’s royalty-style payment structure incentivizes long-tail earnings—especially for evergreen posts that stay relevant for months, or even years. It’s also worth noting that while the views stay high, the earnings don’t quite match up.

It warms my heart that this article is still being read months after I wrote it, but it’s important to remember that long-tail revenue isn’t guaranteed. And even if you get significant returns on an article over the long tail, it won’t last forever.

Topics fade. A better article comes along and Google or Medium will stop showing your article to new readers. Eventually, every article—even a great one—becomes obsolete.

Try to create valuable, timeless keystone content to give your article the longest shelf-life possible. The right article can be a steady revenue source. But more importantly, a well-read article can expose you to new readers and followers every month. There’s a lot of value in that, too.

How to Find Better Images on Unsplash: Lifetime earnings—$55.77

I wrote this how-to article because I was sick of seeing the same six images on every Medium post. It turned out a lot of other people were too.

It earned $26.46 during its first month, which makes it my second-highest single article monthly earner, but I’m more excited by the fact that it continues to earn a decent revenue every single month.

The long tail on this article is much more traditional, a big spike followed by small trickle, but I point this out to show that even a trickle can amount to a flood if you give it enough time.

This article has banked more than half of its lifetime earnings since April. I expect it to keep earning for at least a few more good months, if not longer.

How-to articles with concrete advice and tips based on real-world experience are one of the best ways to generate consistent long-tail revenue on Medium. Share your expertise.

These articles might take a little longer to write, but they’re usually worth a heck of a lot more in the end.

How to Write for the Long-Tail on Medium

Odds are you won’t go viral writing on Medium. But that doesn’t mean you can’t earn decent money writing here.

If you earned money on Medium last year, you might have noticed a funny thing when you did your taxes recently. Your Medium earnings are classified as royalties.

That means you own creative property that earns you money from licensing it to someone else. Congratulations — you’re officially a creative professional.

Track the lifetime earnings of your writing to see which publications, topics, and articles earn you the most over the long run, and double down on the writing that works for you. (I use a massive Google spreadsheet, but you do you)

Treat your work like a professional portfolio and you’ll set yourself up for a lifetime of success. Like an investment, you just have to give it a little time.

Full disclosure: I’ve also published ten poems on Medium, but I left them out of my earnings info, even though I love writing poetry, because poems just don’t earn very much money on Medium. They’re mostly just for me.

Shawn Forno is a freelance travel writer, blogger, content manager, and poet. He enjoys writing about himself in the third-person.