One article, 50+ hours reading time, and good earning!

Quality over Quantity

I am in awe of Medium right now. I never imagined that a story of mine would create a buzz in the programming community. I joined Medium on 30th May, 2020 and I had no idea about how it works.

I just kept writing posts and that’s it!

It took me a week to get familiar with the fundamentals of Medium. How people earn money on it? How people get dozens of thousands of views? I got to know about all that slowly and steadily.

Interested in Python and Data Science, I started writing regularly for publications. Articles like How I built a Twitter Bot using Python and Selenium, Learning Intermediate Probability principles for Data Science were getting good views. For me, a good number of views meant 200+ and not much. I was really happy with these numbers.

When My Story took the high-road

And, then came the D-day in my blogging cycle. When I wrote ‘Why every Pythonista must-read “Automate the boring stuff with Python”?’, I was shell-shocked by the result. I never expected it to burst like a firecracker.

It has been six days and I have got around 7500 views till now with 63% of reading ratio. The number is way more than any other article in my arsenal.

But, this is something I could even gulp down my throat. What I couldn’t digest was the reading time my article got?

When I am writing this piece, my story has already got 54 hours of reading time. In the seven days of my article timeframe, a time period of more than 2 days has been spent on this article. Isn’t it cool?

When I started, I was earning $2 each day. So, I was targeting $60 at the end of the month. But, this article has alone earned around 70 dollars in six days.

P.S- It is 67% of my total earned money of this month.

Reading Time is vital for the story growth

In Medium Partner Program, reading time is a huge factor for determining your earning. I am not saying only reading time matters. Other factors like claps, followers, and reading ratio also play a big role in your story’s success. But, never take the reading time for granted.

Let’s say you have a story with 50+ views and a reading time of 1–2 min. It won’t earn much- 1 or 2 cents maybe. But, if your reading time on the same post is around 2 hours, you will earn a dollar or two – a win-win for you!

Reading time is directly proportional to money

Special thanks to The Startup and its team, who published my article on their publication. Medium has certainly boosted my confidence. When a story creates huge buzz, it means a lot to introverts like us, who are always nervous to express in front of people. And, now I expressed in front of thousands which is a pretty big deal.

So, keep hustling. Wait for a beautiful idea, make a draft of it, and then, publish it. In the end, Medium is all about writers and their ideas.

Peace!