My Painfully Honest Recap of 2 Months Writing for Medium

I wrote 10 stories, made $109, and learned that writing for a top publication doesn’t mean I’ll go viral

In April, with my freelance writing income free falling along with the economy, I decided to try writing on Medium.

I was already reading on the site — my husband had given me a subscription for Christmas. There were so many great stories, on so many different topics! I wanted to be a part of it. Here’s how it went.

Story 1 — my first dud

I had been toying around with the idea of writing an ebook about college admissions for parents. I felt qualified — my daughter was a senior in high school and just finishing the college search process. I figured I could write a series of articles for Medium, maybe even start a publication, and then compile them into an ebook once I generated enough content.

So my first article highlighted how solid SAT scores can help students without strong GPAs earn scholarships:

• Published by: Myself
• Curated in: Not curated
• Views: 25
• Earnings: $0.01

This article turned out to be a dud. I still think there’s some decent information in it, but the pandemic upended the whole college planning process. SATs aren’t even scheduled until late August, and a lot of schools are making them optional.

Plus, parenting doesn’t seem to have a big audience on Medium yet. The tag “parenting teenagers” doesn’t have any stories so far. And I gave up on the ebook idea. The college admissions process is going to look a lot different going forward.

Story 2 — another dud

My second story was a quick piece about volunteering for coronavirus research, inspired by a post I saw on Facebook:

• Published by: Myself
• Curated in: None
• Views: 35
• Earnings: $0

Another dud —but at least this one didn’t take me long to write. At the time my number of followers was in the low single digits, so without curation, this story disappeared into the ether. It doesn’t have much of a shelf life, so I don’t expect it to bounce back.

I shared it on Facebook and LinkedIn, but I don’t have a strong enough social media presence to see a lot of impact there.

Story 3 — my top success so far

I could see I was going to need to publish in Medium publications if I wanted my stories to get in front of readers. I’ve been a professional writer for a long time, and writing about writing seems popular on Medium, so I figured I would try that.

By searching Medium for “writing” and clicking through to “publications” I saw The Writing Cooperative on the top of the list — that publication has more than 200,000 followers. And it covers the full range of writing, unlike some others that focus on fiction or poetry.

I joined The Writing Cooperative’s Patreon, partly because it seemed like a good publication to support and partly because that buys me expedited reviews for my article.

They accepted the first article I sent to them and curated it under “writing”:

• Published by: The Writing Cooperative
• Curated in: Writing
• Views: 4,400
• Earnings: $91.91

This article turned out to be a hit for me.

Here’s some interesting stuff I learned once I had an article that got in front of some readers and earned some money:

Its earnings are ongoing

I come from a traditional writing background — I pitch an article to an editor, she accepts it and offers a certain amount of money, I write it, and I get paid. I get a decent amount of money per article and that’s the end. I don’t earn additional income if it does well, or if she reruns it later.

On Medium, it’s different. This article earned some money right away and got another bump when it was featured in The Writing Cooperative’s newsletter. Then it saw another spike on June 1 — I don’t know why but I assume it was promoted somewhere on Medium.

Now that it’s built some momentum, it earns a little something every day — yesterday it earned 78 cents, and there’s never been a day when it earned nothing. I think this is key to earning money on Medium — getting enough articles out there that are all earning a little, but combined they are adding up.

I’m not there yet, but this article’s success has motivated me to build my bank of articles. My goal is to add 65 new articles by September 1.

A lot of people recommend publishing once a day, but that’s too ambitious for me right now. I think a little less than once per weekday is more manageable for me — I have writing work outside of Medium, and I’m not a super-fast writer.

It’s evergreen

Evergreen is magazine-industry-speak for an article that could run anytime. With print publications, it’s always good to have some evergreen content ready to go, in case something else falls through. Online, evergreen means stories that aren’t tied to a particular time. My second story was related to COVID-19, so even if it was popular it would fade eventually. This story could potentially attract readers forever.

It’s in a publication that keeps stories up for a relatively long time

The Writing Cooperative publishes every two hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., according to their guidelines. Some publications put up a lot of new stories, so each one isn’t in front of readers for very long.

It has a strong headline

At this point, I hadn’t heard about CoSchedule’s headline analyzer. But the “staircase strategy” seemed to resonate with people — I think they were curious to find out what that was. And writing faster and better is what a lot of writers want.

It got curated

Medium’s curators recommended this story under the “writing” topic. Here’s what they say in their email alert: “Based on its quality, they selected it to be recommended to readers interested in Writing across our homepage, app, topic page, and emails.”

Story 4 — shooting for a second hit

With that success, I figured I’d write about writing again. I interview a lot of experts for my freelance writing so I shared some tips about how I get good information from my sources:

• Published by: The Writing Cooperative
• Curated in: Writing
• Views: 139
• Earnings: $1.88

I was disappointed. After the success of the Staircase Strategy, I thought every story would do better than the last one.

Since then, I’ve realized a few things that might have hurt this story’s success:

The headline isn’t that compelling

I’ve never been great at writing headlines, but it hasn’t mattered too much — I’ve been writing for publications where it’s someone else’s job to make my headlines better. Now that I’ve been writing on Medium for a while I understand the importance of a strong headline. If I was scrolling through my Daily Read I doubt I’d click on this story.

It’s a niche topic

This story doesn’t appeal to a broad range of writers the way the Staircase Strategy story does. Not all writers need to do a lot of research, and those who do may get the information they need from online sources or email queries instead of phone interviews. If you aren’t getting paid much for an article, it’s hard to justify a 20- or 30-minute phone conversation, plus transcribing time.

It’s short. Maybe too short

I can make the case that it’s as long as it needs to be — it’s a tight topic. But readers know that a 3-minute read isn’t going to be substantive.

Story 5 — in search of a home

As I was writing on Medium, I discovered the value of finding great images through Unsplash. I thought it was easier to find good images through the Unsplash site, not the Medium built-in feature, so I wrote about that:

• Published by: Myself, then Feedium
• Curated in: None
• Views: 28
• Earnings: $0.37

I sent it out to a few publications — Better Marketing, The Writing Cooperative, and The Startup — but it didn’t get accepted anywhere so I published it myself.

It didn’t gain any traction. But I like this story. I feel like any Medium writer could get some value from it. So I looked around again and found a smaller publication where it might fit — Feedium. It got accepted there on June 10 so I’ll see if that helps drive traffic.

Story 6 — still shooting for a second hit

Next up, another article on my writing strategies. I tracked my time on writing projects for a month last year and in this article, I shared what I learned:

• Published by: The Writing Cooperative
• Curated in: Writing
• Views: 220
• Earnings: $2.06

I like this article and hope it still finds an audience someday. But in hindsight I see a problem with it reaching a large audience — it’s targeted to full-time writers.

A lot of aspiring writers are grabbing 10 minutes or an hour to write while they’re working, studying, or parenting. And if they’re blogging, they probably have a different audience than I do. So this information might not be relevant to them.

Story 7 — one to watch

I made a HUGE mistake on a writing project a while back. It stung professionally and financially, and I shared what I learned in this article:

• Published by: The Writing Cooperative
• Curated in: Writing
• Views: 459
• Earnings: $10.19

I’m keeping an eye on this one — I expect it to chug along and earn money over time. So far it has earned something every day, even if some days that’s only pennies.

It went live on the Friday afternoon right before Memorial Day weekend, and I think that might have given it a slow start.

Story 8 — a lesson in curation

As a freelance writer, I get a ton of pitches from public relations professionals promoting people, companies, services, or products they would like me to include in my articles. I can only answer a small percent of those emails, and I can only use an even smaller number. Here, I explained why:

• Published by: Better Marketing
• Curated in: Writing, Media, and Marketing
• Views: 135
• Earnings: $2.07

When I saw this one was curated in three topics, I was thrilled! I sat back and waited for the views — and the dollars — to start piling up.

That’s not what happened, though. Maybe it will get a boost down the road, or maybe not. I can only guess as to why it hasn’t been more successful. Maybe it’s too specific to public relations pros? Maybe it just went live at the wrong time?

Story 9 — still finding my way

This story on napping as a productivity hack was really the third one I wrote for Medium:

• Published by: Myself, then In Fitness And In Health
• Curated in: None
• Views: 66
• Earnings: $0.55

I pitched this story to a few publications but I didn’t find a home for it anywhere, so I published it myself. With my small number of followers, it didn’t go anywhere.

After about a month, I took another look at it. I rewrote the headline as a teaser (my original was 5 Powerful Ways a Nap Can Help You Cope in a Pandemic), updated the image (I had used one of a boy napping in a wagon), and lightly edited the article. That version got published by In Fitness And In Health but so far I haven’t seen a boost in views.

Story 10 — going in a different direction

I saw a few articles encouraging people to plant gardens during the pandemic, so I wrote a contrarian viewpoint:

• Published by: Myself
• Curated in: Food
• Views: 276
• Earnings: $1.37

Some topics don’t have a lot of content on Medium, and food is one of them. I sent this article to Heated, but I never heard back, so I published it myself and also sent it to Tenderly. Maybe it will get picked up there.

I didn’t want to wait too long to publish it since the time to start gardens was winding down. I couldn’t find many other food-focused publications on Medium that were still active and open to new writers.

I was happy to see this article got curated even though it didn’t run in a publication — a first for me!

I shared this article to a Facebook group for a nationwide network of people who buy farm shares, and it got a little flurry of activity on its first day but it dropped off quickly. And I posted it on that page with my friends link, so it didn’t generate much income.

What I learned

Ten articles in, I’m getting a better sense of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to writing for Medium. I know how much headlines matter. I know curation might give a story a boost, but it’s no guarantee. I see how hindsight shows me the flaws in my stories that weren’t obvious to me going in.

For now, I’m going to follow the advice of a lot of other Medium writers — keep putting out strong content, and see what sticks.

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