Medium Partner Program, Month Two

My Progress in the MPP

Be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of this page. Why? Read Views vs. Reads on Medium.

You may be thinking of entering the Medium Partnership Program, just in the beginning stages, or struggling to understand why you are not making progress after a significant amount of time. There are many factors that contribute to progress on this platform, but I will detail my own journey so far and perhaps you will be able to relate it to your own situation.

My First Month

My first month in the Medium Partnership Program turned out better than I had expected. I didn’t earn enough to open a bottle of champagne in celebration, but it paid for my monthly fee, plus a little extra. After reading about others’ experiences, I was really only expecting a few cents or maybe a dollar, but I ended up making $10.01. That was great for me!

In addition to that, I gained 232 followers in the month of November and that was wonderful too. I engaged with a lot of other writers and readers. Yes, I found out that some people are here more for reading than writing. I viewed Medium as a platform for writers and didn’t consider that there are those who aren’t here for that.

There are several things that surprised me about my first month in the program. As I’ve mentioned, the money I made was a nice surprise; the number of followers I was able to gain (without Follow4Follow) was more than I thought I could get; the amount of engagement with other members; and the particular stories that performed better than others.

The stories that performed best were the ones about Medium itself. After hearing this from so many other writers, this seems to be a common theme. One of the other surprises was how well one particular story did and how little it made. Theater Review: Rocky Horror Picture Show had 441 views, but most of them were external, so I didn’t earn much from it. Nevertheless, my posts were getting attention. The question was, would I be able to keep up the momentum in the following months?

I Made Three Times as Much!

Don’t get too excited. Remember I said that in my first month, I made about $10, so three times as much is only $30 (actually came in at just $28.01). I can look at it from different angles, though. Working for a dollar a day doesn’t sound very good at all. However, making three times as much in my second month gives me the hope that I could repeat that trend.

What if, during my third month, I could make three times as much as the previous month? Then, as I keep repeating, month after month, that could be very lucrative. Do I think it will happen? I’m truly not sure. I haven’t been doing this long enough to collect enough data to make that kind of prediction.

My Best-Performing Posts

The post that made the most money for the month of December was My Medium Progress So Far. You can read that one here:

My second-best post, which was a bit of a surprise, was A Medium Challenge: Ten Things About Me. I never thought so many people would be that curious to know about me!

Third, was Views vs. Reads on Medium. This was not a surprise at all because I have been inserting this one at the beginning of most of my posts. As far as I can tell, it is still valid until Medium decides to change the way a “Read” is counted. If you read nothing else in this post, please read this one:

Fourth, was About Me — Brandon Ellrich. Again, more about me! If this keeps up, I’ll develop a large ego — just kidding; I have too much self-doubt for that to happen!

As I said, the success of the articles about Medium was not a surprise. I seem to be garnering a lot of views and reads for my humorous posts, which is amazing. I have never considered myself much of a “humor writer.” On my WordPress site, I have written mainly poems and fictional short stories, which have done fairly well.

When I got here, I was surprised by how little attention my fictional stories received. I then had to change my strategy. A different audience required a different approach. I may still try my short stories again if I find the right publication.

When I started reading so many other posts, I guess I was more inspired by all the humor I found and tried my hand at it and it paid off. Again, many of the writing prompts were a great help.

Followers and Engagement

I did not garner as many followers in December, which is not a surprise to me. In November, I engaged quite often with other writers. I read, commented, clapped, followed… It took a lot of time and my efforts were rewarded.

The month of December, however, I began a new freelance writing job and I just was not able to dedicate the same amount of time to these things. Still, I gained 198 followers and that is still a decent number, in my opinion. Incidentally, just today I reached 500 followers!

Achievable Goals

My goal for December was to write 30 posts. Now, notice I did not say that I would post every day in December. I knew that was unlikely to happen. With Christmas activities and my job, I knew that I probably wouldn’t have time on some days to write anything for my blog. However, I could possibly post more than once on certain days to make up for the days I missed.

This is why it is good to set achievable goals. I knew my limitations as well as the realities of my life. I did pretty well until I got to the 25th of the month. I had been posting an average of once per day and had been making about a dollar per day. Then, by the 25th, I became busier and didn’t post for a few days. What did I notice? My earnings pretty much stopped.

I still wanted to achieve my goal, so I had to write a few posts to make up for what I missed. In the weeks and months to come, I will not make a goal to post every day, but I’ll try for at least two or three times per week.

Medium Family

I was just shy of my goal of 31 posts, but I came close enough with 28. I would not have even made it that far if not for my fellow Medium writers. I was tagged in a few different prompts and so even when I couldn’t think of anything to write, these prompts were a great help.

Prompts from Penelope Mayfield, Miss Catherine La Grange, spinster, Jason Provencio, and Linda Ng were extremely helpful. Then, of course, I came up with my own prompt which gave me a few more posts because Lark Morrigan, Bruce Coulter, and Benighted participated.

Engagement, Consistency, and Quality

If you are fairly new to Medium or if you have been here for a while and find that you are not achieving the success you had hoped for, I have some advice.

Read as many posts as you can and respond by clapping and commenting on them. This will not only help the writer of those posts but will, in turn, help you. That writer will likely go to your page and read an article or two that you’ve written and respond to it as well. This simple engagement may even add a new follower to your list.

Post articles consistently, whether it be once a week or 3 times a week. I personally don’t have time to write one every day. I barely made it through December and I know I cannot repeat that in the following months.

Even if you are able to post an article every day, it will not help if your articles do not have a quality that will make readers want to hear more from you. If you drone on and on, do not have subheadings to break up sections, write long paragraphs, and/or have a lot of grammatical errors — all of these things can be a turn-off to readers.

Publications

One more helpful aspect of posting on Medium is submitting to publications. Some readers subscribe to certain publications because they enjoy reading about a particular subject or genre. If you are accepted as a writer in a publication, it will put your articles in front of readers that would normally never see them.

Some of these publications even have editors that will help catch mistakes that you may have overlooked. Some of the publications I write for are:

These all contain great pieces and I encourage you to visit them. You may even consider writing for them if they are ones that fit your particular “niche” (if you have one).

I hope this article has been beneficial to anyone who needs it and at least interesting to anyone else. I am encouraged by my progress so far and I hope that will encourage you as well. Please let me know what you think in the comment section.

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