My First Week on Medium Was Hell Week

But the success came soon thereafter.

I’m going to be honest with you.

I thought I would earn money on Medium right off the bat.

Seriously. I did. You probably did too.

Every day during my first week on the platform, I would check my earnings to find my stories weren’t earning anything. And here’s what I thought of first:

It’s a rip-off.

But as time went on, my patience grew. And so did my confidence. The more I read about it, the more I learned no one really earns money in the first week on Medium.

But then came my first payment at the end of the week: $0.01

Yes, you read that right. I earned just one penny.

I forget which story earned me that, but it doesn’t matter now. It was the ending of Hell Week on Medium, my only week so far like that on the platform.

Hell Week Taught Me to be Patient

During the time I was waiting to be paid, I should’ve been writing. When I thought the money would pour in from the sky, it didn’t.

The first week week taught me to be patient because the best is yet to come. I should’ve been focusing on the reason why I was here in the first place:

To write.

That’s why we all should be here.

Sure, we all want to be compensated for our work. Who doesn’t? But it takes time, especially on a large platform like Medium.

I’m Earning Great Amounts Now

During my first month on Medium five months ago, I earned $3.08. Yes, that little.

I could barely buy a gas station hot dog and drink with that money.

Nevertheless, I kept going. I found my niches and continued to write them.

Because of this, I soon built a following and my earnings rose from the ashes. Nowadays, some of my stories earn a few dollars at a time.

It just took some patience to get there. You will have to do the same if you want to earn well on Medium.

But it’s all worth it.

Closing Thoughts

We all want success on Medium. I want success for you too.

And we can do it.

But we have to focus on the writing, the reason we’re all here. Stats and earnings are great, but it’s the craft of writing that we should be doing all of the time.

The stats and money will come, and if we practice the craft of writing, they will come to us in masses.

I’m living proof of it.

You just have to get past Hell Week.

Are you ready for success on Medium?

Noah Nelson is a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign majoring in journalism with minors in political science and history. He serves as a senior columnist for The Daily Illini, a writer on Medium and the host of his blog called Nothing But Noah. “Life: A Collection of Short Stories” is his first book available now on Amazon.