Medium Gave Me a $500 Bonus This Month — Here’s Why

A nice unexpected surprise for creating engaging content

April was a largely slow month on the writing front for me. I was very busy with work in my other life as a Ph.D. student so I never got the time to write as much as I wanted to. I got through it largely by writing about what interested me most and what I know best as it required less time to prepare. I normally check on my Medium Partner Program earnings a few times a month — I barely did that in April. I would have been surprised if I broke the $100 barrier because I didn’t have as much time to invest in Medium as I would have liked.

The $500 Bonus

When I got that earnings report email from Medium this morning for $500, I was certain someone at Medium had made a mistake. I was actually a bit annoyed because I expected to contact someone on the team to return the money, which would have been more admin I didn’t have time for. Anyway, I got another earnings report soon after with a more accurate figure for what I expected to have earned in April. A quick check on the Medium Partner Program revealed there was no mistake at all — Medium had given me a $500 bonus “for receiving high member engagement”. It honestly made my day.

I didn’t know this was a thing

I’m fairly new to this platform — I’ve been writing for about 5 months, and I’ve loved every bit of it. I have noticed that there is a lot about how Medium works I just don’t know. I think this is partly because Medium is constantly evolving. I’ve learned a lot from established writers on the platform like Zulie Rane and Tom Kuegler but developments like this bonus make me realize there’s more to learn.

At this point, I’m still not sure if this was a program Medium has had all along, or if it’s a new feature introduced as Medium has evolved more recently. I am also not sure if this bonus was awarded to me for engaging content in April or over my last 5 months on Medium. I did write three stories that got some traction very late on in April, but up until then, my stories performed about average. I’m working on being a top writer in at least one category, but I’m not there yet — so it’s not entirely clear how I’ve been chosen to be part of the group of creators to receive this bonus. I am very grateful however, $500 is about 5 times what I made in April — I still got paid that too. What felt like a slow month has turned into my best one on Medium by far!

What I’ll do going forwards

The short answer is, keep writing about what I love. I have gathered enough data now that I know which types of stories tend to do well. For me, they are consumer technology stories — specifically Apple-related products. I think this is because I am very passionate about this subject. I honestly believe readers can sense that passion through my posts, even though I can’t explain how.

I’ll keep writing work for other people. By this I mean articles that offer some value to readers, again those are the highest viewed stories in my catalog. I’ve largely learned not to write blog posts only I find interesting — at least I try not to do that too often.

Conclusions

Medium has awarded some creators $500 for writing engaging content. I’m not sure if this is a new scheme or one that has flown under my radar in my time writing so far. I will say, it is a truly nice surprise, especially in a month where I feel I could have done more as a freelance writer. I will end by thanking Medium for looking after their writers and I’ll do my best to be in that top group of most engaging writers next month too.