My Stories That Keep Earning

Two qualities of my $25 stories

I wrote a story last week on my journey going from earning $6 in my first month on Medium to $197 in my fourth month in March.

I received a lot of encouraging words and comments, and it got me thinking about writing this story about my top-earning stories.

I took a peek and found I have two stories that have each earned $25. This is a lot to me as a writer who just started writing here in October 2021.

And there are two takeaways: My top earning stories relate to a niche, and I noticed that I revised my highest earning stories more than my other stories.

What is the lesson?

Both of my $25 stories relate to a niche audience: Neurodiversity. So lesson #1 is to find your niche subject, and #2 is to see the importance of editing.

I’m writing an autism memoir and many of my stories I’ve edited over 50 to 100 times because my goal is to have them become part of a published book.

My story, “How I Learned About PDA,” is on a lesser-known form of autism known as PDA, short for Pathological Demand Avoidance, diagnosed only in the UK, and I was having a hard time writing about this related to my son.

Finally, I found a solution: Write a scene about my wife and me watching a YouTube video about PDA, turn the YouTuber into a character, and quote and paraphrase what he said mixed in with dialogue between my wife and me.

I remember rereading and editing that scene over and over to get the right mix of quotes, paraphrases, dialogue, flow, and details, and I don’t think that it’s any coincidence that this has become my highest-earning story to date.

So if you’re one of those writers who likes to get your stories out there ASAP, they might get you more reads and earn more money if you take time to polish them by thinking about what you might add and the things you can delete.

Write for niches

I’m not saying there are riches in the niches. But I like a $25 over a $2 story, and niches are great because they have built-in audiences looking for content.

What’s great about niche readers is they are less likely to skim your story. The reason for this is that they have a vested interest in learning about a subject.

I’ve written a lot of stories for Artfully Autistic, and most have done well because their readers are specifically looking for stories about autism.

My top niche combines two topics (memoir writing and parenting). I had written lots of narrative stories on adventures with my son from a previous blog, so I started out with this as my niche and kept writing new stories.

But let’s say you’ve written a story about your cat. You probably have more.

I found a built-in audience of cat lovers in Catness, and if you tag your cat story under pets and humor, I discovered a cat story can earn $10 or more.

Keep looking for more niches

I found another niche by writing stories about caring for my aging mom or my experience rescuing her from hospice care, and these have got a lot of views.

My stories about my mom resonate with readers going through the same experiences, and that’s why my stories have done very well in Crow’s Feet.

I also like that readers of this publication are older and have more time to read, and they are less likely to bail on a story after reading a paragraph.

Earning $14 just for writing about your mom is pretty darn good, right?

Niche publications

The best place to find a niche audience is to go the publication route. Yes, it might take a little time to find the right publication for your audience.

But the right audience for your stories will help you get more engagement from readers interested in your stories and help you to earn more money.

So, if you tend to self-publish your stories, look back at the stories you’ve written and look for publications they would fit best in. You can’t republish them, but you can see where your future stories might find a niche audience.

Also, look at your pets, parents, kids, and yourself because I’ve found all of these typically relate to niches that can be a source of ongoing stories.

Here are some good publications for different niche subjects:

If you decide to go the niche route, just remember you don’t have to write about a niche forever. You can write about one niche for a while, and then switch to another niche with a built-in audience that’s looking for content.

To me, it’s just like fishing. You’re looking for where readers are biting.

Thanks for reading my story.

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