Summary

A writer on Medium shares their surprise success story, where an article they wrote about an uncontacted tribe went viral during their holiday, significantly boosting their monthly earnings and leading them to reflect on their writing strategy and the potential need to focus on a specific niche.

Abstract

The author of the article recounts their experience of achieving unexpected financial success on Medium while on vacation. Despite taking a break from active blogging, an article they had previously published gained significant traction, resulting in their best month on the platform. The article in question, which discusses the impact of an uncontacted island tribe on the author's faith, garnered substantial views, engagement, and earnings. This success occurred without any promotional efforts from the author. Reflecting on their approach, the author emphasizes the importance of frequent and diverse writing, honesty in content, and high-quality prose. They also ponder whether they should now focus on a specific niche, given that their top-earning articles are related to religion, faith, and spirituality, despite their broad range of topics including blockchain, education, philosophy, language learning, climate change, and sustainable lifestyles.

Opinions

The author believes in the value of consistent content creation, suggesting that writing frequently encourages followers and increases visibility on the platform.
They advocate for writing on a variety of subjects to attract different audiences, which has been a natural strategy for them due to their diverse interests.
Honesty in writing is highlighted as crucial, even when discussing controversial topics like meat-eating and religious faith.
The author is introspective about their success, questioning whether they should narrow their focus to a niche that has proven to be financially rewarding.
Despite the financial incentive to niche down, the author leans towards continuing to write about a broad range of topics, indicating a preference for creative freedom over potential earnings.
The author expresses a sense

My First $300+ Article Blew Up While I Was on Holiday

And even without it, I’ve had the best month of my Medium career — despite having taken two weeks of it away from my blog. How?

A picture of me, on holiday, accidentally making money from an article I didn’t think would go viral. Photo by Josh Rakower on Unsplash

Wow.

I went away to Slovenia and Italy for two weeks, ‘surviving’ on Medium purely by articles I had pre-written and submitted to publications before I left.

I even said goodbye to Medium before going, as I figured a tech-detox would be good for me. At the time, my blog seemed to be going well — I was earning $5 a day roughly in the first half of August, which was about 5–10x more than I was earning before.

A few days before I left, I published an article I kinda liked. It wasn’t the article I was most proud of necessarily — though I take pride in all my work — as it didn’t strike me as anything special at the time.

Judge it for yourself. This is the million-dollar (well, not quite yet) article:

How People From an Uncontacted Island Tribe Made Me Doubt My Faith

“Satan’s last stronghold” lies around 700km west of the Southern tip of Myanmar.

medium.com

The topic was important to me, for sure. It’s something of a personal anecdote about a news item from a few years ago that really shook my faith in something I’d grown up believing. And something in that struck a chord with people.

What happened afterwards:

I travelled to Slovenia on the 14th, and the article blew up overnight. What happened? To be honest, I still don’t quite know.

You can see that even after going ‘viral’ (in my own small way), I plateaued at around 300 views per day all the while publishing nothing (except the odd pre-prepared article I had in the pipeline, none of which took off in any way).

This was about what I was getting before the ‘Pay Day’ article on uncontacted tribes when I faithfully published around 2 articles a day for weeks.

So much for all that effort, huh?

The viewing time I got from the Uncontacted Tribes article has been phenomenal. 179 hours and 30 minutes to date, with 1.7k claps and reams of comments, both for and against, beneath.

Funnily enough, the peak only came 5 days after it was published — on the 10th of August. I hadn’t publicised it anywhere, nor had I particularly thought any more about it since publication.

Suffice to say, it has been a nice surprise to come off my tech detox to (what is for me) a preposterous amount of money just from writing mere words on the internet about something I care about.

Prior to that, I had been earning pennies — literally — daily. My entire first year on Medium just about paid the membership fee of $50 before the next payment was due. Even without my highest earning article this month, I still will probably have made almost $100.

Earnings from my top-performing articles this month, as of the 27th August. Total: $389.76 so far.

My principles:

Write frequently — give people content every day, or at least many times per week, to incentivise them to follow you. This also means that people see your name on the platform more frequently, and so they’re more likely to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button next time they see you. I have been on a break from University, and so have been lucky enough to have time to churn out two or three articles per day — one day I even wrote 5 in a row, which were published on subsequent days.
Write diversely — I struggle to stick to one topic for long enough to really hone in on a single niche, so this one comes naturally to me. I love writing on everything like blockchain, education, philosophy, language learning, climate change, and sustainable lifestyles — to name but a few. I feel like the diversity of my writing this month has opened me up to new audiences, and there’s something for everyone.
Write honestly — I haven’t held back, despite having perhaps controversial opinions on some things, most notably when it comes to meat-eating and religious faith. I feel like I have found a voice this month, and that has really helped me figure out what I want to say and then to actually say it in a way that sounds like me. Just saying any old random garbage in a nonplussed voice isn’t going to get me anywhere.
Write well — I can’t say I have done this all the time (my own dad has sent me typos that he’s noticed in my writing), but I have genuinely poured a lot of effort into every article I have produced. Whether or not you can do this depends on how much mental and emotional energy you have to give, to be fair: I have been able to dedicate a lot recently to my blog, happily enough. But producing genuinely high-quality content on a reliable basis is the #1 reason that people will follow you, I find.

Do I need to niche down now?

I also noticed that I have something of an accidental niche going on, though it isn’t one I expected to fill. Most of my articles are about climate change, philosophy, science, veganism, and that sort of thing.

However, recently I have been writing a little on the topic of religion, faith, and spirituality. I am a relatively-recently apostasised atheist in a very loving family of priests, and have thought a lot about religion in the past few years. I still have plenty of loose ends, but it seems that these have made for popular articles: my top three earning articles have all been in the same topic area of religion.

Is it a sign that I need to ‘niche down’ now?

Or can I still keep on writing about whatever the hell I please, as I have been doing?

I don’t know about you, but I’m leaning towards the latter: having had such a fantastically successful article (again, relatively speaking — I still consider $10 a whopping great win, while Tom Kuegler might think $500/article is a bit dismal) has given me newfound faith in myself, but I don’t think that any one single niche is for me.

Not yet, anyway. I’ll need a bigger pay day than that first.