My Earnings on Medium Doubled Again — Here’s What Worked

Milestones, insights, and how you can “steal” my approach

My Earnings on Medium Doubled Again — Here’s What Worked. Since my last update, my income on Medium has trended upwards. In this article, I will break down exactly what has worked for me.

Here is how this article is organized:

• Basic stats on earnings
• The milestones I’ve hit this month
• The exact strategies that have worked for me
• The resources I use to plan and write Medium articles (not affiliate links, just super helpful tools)

I write these updates to document my journey, organize my experiences, and hopefully share something of value that you can use to make more money on this platform.

By the way, if you haven’t read my last article, I’m going to reference it, so you might want to read that one first. Here it is:

My Stats & Earnings On Medium

First, a few baseline details about me:

• I am in my second month of writing on Medium (My very first story posted at the end of November 2020).
• I am not yet in the $100+ per month club.
• My goal for my first full month (December) was to make $50.00
• I ended up making $60.00 in December.
• My next goal is $100.
• I’ll reveal what I’ve made so far in January (by the 10th) in this article

My Strategies Helped Me Hit A Few Milestones In Early January

I have been overwhelmed already in the first part of January. Using the strategies I will outline shortly, here is what happened:

• One of my stories was curated for the first time in the Writing topic
• One of my stories was published in Better Marketing (one of my favorite publications)
• One of my stories was published in Blank Space (a Startup Publication, as I understand it)
• One of my stories was published in the Writing Cooperative (another favorite publication)
• One of my stories was published in P.S. I Love You (Guess what? That’s another favorite of mine:)

I am humbled, overwhelmed, and delighted with these milestones. If I’m honest, a little scared, too. I mean, can I repeat this success? I have no idea. I think so, but we will see.

What I’ve Made So Far in January

It’s only January 10th, and I’m shocked and happy to tell you that I have made $50.00 so far this month! I fully believe that I will reach my goal of making $100.00 or more by the end of January.

In just a moment, I will give you my best-calculated guess on why this month is doing well for me (by my standards). I am not making loads of money, but I am trending in the right direction.

Here is a screenshot of my top-earning articles for January:

What Worked for Me?

So, what worked for me? To what do I credit my earnings so far this month?

First, let’s get the basics out of the way:

• I wrote and published consistently. Pretty much every day.
• I have published 12 stories in January so far. I also have roughly three stories submitted to publications and awaiting responses.
• I have published a total of 56 stories since I started writing on Medium at the tail end of November 2020.
• I continue to engage with Medium Facebook groups. It’s a wonderful community.
• I follow the Medium guidelines.
• I use SEO best practices.
• I have tried to improve my writing, formatting, and title skills.

Therefore, publishing consistently and engaging with other Medium writers continues to drive my success. The compound impact of publishing more and more stories can not be overlooked.

At the same time, quantity is not the silver bullet. It is the gun. Quality articles based on data still seems to be the best and most lucrative long-term approach.

Now, let’s look at a few specific strategies I’ve used that have worked for me.

Study the Data

Starting last month, I took a deep data dive behind the scenes at Medium.com. I looked at the most popular pages and keywords based on search traffic.

One of the key findings in my search was the value of the keyword “Blowjobs”. Go figure, right? 😁 If you look at the top 50 keywords, a variation of this word comes up a time or two.

I already knew that articles about sex were doing well for me personally.

Therefore, I put the two ideas together and wrote my best-performing story so far this month:

I actually published this article on December 31st. So far this month, it has earned me $10.38. Why?

I studied the data and then wrote to the data. Here are a few other possible reasons:

• It uses a variation of the keyword, “Blowjobs”.
• To me, the title is catchy and triggers curiosity.
• The topic includes three “taboo” subjects: sex, blowjobs, and swallowing.
• I used a unique image with risque symbolism. I’m just going to guess you can sort that one out yourself. 😉

Takeaway: Study popular topics on Medium and write articles on those topics.

Write to the Data

I wrote my best-performing story to the data. But I didn’t stop there.

I have tried to write most of my articles to the data. I rely heavily on information from Ahrefs, Google search, and my Medium dashboard.

Last month, I realized that articles on the topics of sex, relationships, and success on Medium performed the best for me.

Therefore, this month, I have focused on writing more articles about sex and relationships. Three of my best performing stories this month are about relationships and sex.

You already know about the blowjob article, so here are the other two:

A few important points about these two articles:

• The first article is an 18-minute long read. It is by far my longest article to date. I wanted to write the best and most comprehensive article on the subject that I could find on Google. I think I did it. I’ll be watching the data on this one to see what I learn.
• The second article was my first story published in P.S. I Love You. If you don’t know, that’s the biggest active publication about relationships. It has a huge readership, so that definitely factors into the equation.

What’s new in my Medium dashboard data this month? Articles about writing are performing well. I will be writing more of these articles this month.

Takeaway: Write articles based on your past best performing stories.

Cartoon Images

Another variable I’m experimenting with this month is images. After reading several articles about how to be successful on Medium, I kept hearing the importance of using unique images.

I knew this concept already but I mostly used images from Unsplash and Pexels in December to be safe.

In January, I started using more images I created with Canva.com. I have a pro account, so I have access to some very cool features, images, and elements.

Case in point, I used Canva to create the image of the blonde girl holding up milk for my blowjob article. But I didn’t stop there.

I also read somewhere (I honestly can’t remember where) that Medium stories with cartoon images had performed well in the past. That got me thinking.

Starting this month, I began using more cartoon images for my stories. Here are a few examples:

The first example, my story about writing and dentists, is a perfect example. It is my first ever curated story on Medium. I’m not sure how fast, but it certainly was curated within a few days.

The Startup (called Medium’s biggest active publication) picked it up for a related publication, Blank Page.

To say the least, I’m thrilled.

What does all of this mean? I’m honestly not sure yet. The articles that have used cartoon images have also largely been articles written on popular topics — writing, making money on Medium, and relationships.

I will continue to use more cartoon images for longer-term data analysis.

Takeaway: You may want to give cartoon images a try.

Combine Two Worlds

A few of my best-performing articles this month combined two different worlds. My writing article about dentists, again, is a great example.

Even my article about blowjobs combines sex and science.

Based on the success of these two articles, I am writing a few more articles that combine totally different worlds. You might want to give it a try.

Simply take one topic, say “Technology,” and pair it with another seemingly unrelated topic:

• Technology + sex
• Technology + mindfulness
• Technology + minimalism

You can also write about the lessons you learned about technology from an unlikely source:

• My Barber Gave Me The Best Programming Advice
• What I Learned About Blockchain From the New Star Wars Movie

Takeaway: Combine two different worlds.

Submit To A Mix of Publications

Since I have started writing on Medium, I have submitted most of my stories to publications. I have always submitted to a variety of publications — small, medium, and large.

I still think that this is a winning long-term strategy.

What changed this month is that I submitted to a few of the largest publications. And, to my surprise, three of them accepted and published my stories:

• P.S. I Love You
• Better Marketing
• Writing Cooperative

Again, I continue to submit to publications of all sizes, and I encourage you to do the same. But don’t be afraid to submit stories to bigger publications, as well. You never know!

Resources I Use To Write Medium Stories

Just to be clear, none of these are affiliate links.

I simply find these resources super helpful in planning and writing my Medium stories. I share them so that hopefully they will help you, too.

• Ahrefs.com (This is my paid keyword search tool. It’s expensive, but I like it. I use it for my website on writing and for my YouTube channel about writing).
• AnswerThePublic (This is a free website where you can get loads of ideas for your Medium articles)
• Keywordshitter (Crazy name, but a very effective free tool to get ideas for Medium articles)
• Exploding Topics (This is a new website I discovered on another Medium article. It shows trending topics that you can use to write Medium articles)
• YouTube (There are some crazy good YouTube videos about success on Medium. The link on “YouTube” goes to a search of videos about Medium. I highly recommend that you check it out).

Here is a video I made about Tim Denning’s success strategies on Medium:

Final Thoughts

Thank you so much for reading! Here is a summary of the takeaways from this article:

• Study your Medium dashboard data
• Write articles on your past most popular topics
• Experiment with cartoon images for your stories
• Combine two different worlds
• Submit to a mix of publications
• Use trend-finding tools to collect great ideas for your next Medium story

Lastly, but not least-ly, I really appreciate you and wish you a wonderful and profitable January! You are awesome! 😄