January 17, 2024

My Very Precious $0.01 Medium-Size Pennies

I Analyze and Break Down What My Medium Pennies Tell You About Your Article Engagement

Don’t clap yet! Do it at the bottom when you get to the bottom.

Learning from Bin Jiang- a $500+ Medium Earner

I was largely inspired by reading the articles from Bin Jiang to take a larger and longer look at my analytics and statistics. I was passive about the metrics and drawing insights from them while I started writing on Medium.

I was only looking at the audience insights and trying to see what I should be writing to help my Meidum journey grow and support what my loyal subscribers and followers want to read.

I found that it was mostly psychology, productivity, writing, and money that were of interest. I started with the intention of writing in the technology niche. As someone who was studying software engineering and technology concepts, that was my natural gravitas and direction since my first day.

However, I have since then learned from many other top Medium writers that sometimes it is wise to get into a niche that the audience also wants to hear or see writing on.

I think Bin is onto something wise and ingenious: to look at the insights from the Medium tools to drive new moves. After all, actions enable insights and those insights may enable more action later.

My Very Interesting Pennies

My engagement largely increases exponentially.

However, that can sometimes also drive down my reading time and average ratio because of the sheer size and volume of how many people start reading the writing that I push out.

I noticed something very interesting when I started looking back.

I was earning a lot of pennies from my older posts. I earned almost a penny for each single older article that was in this list of articles. Some of them have gone on to earn much more though it was an interesting look to see how they were all so sycnhrously similar.

Take a look below at the list of articles and how some are only earning me $0.01 and others are wildly combining to earn me over $100+ immediately as I have written about in other writing pieces.

So the insights?

Nobody knows what is going on except that writers want to be able to food on the table. And pennies are not going to be able to do that for us.

Medium continues to be one of the most awesome platforms on the internet for writing however some of the experiment updates may have both upset or changed the way writers can live on their skillsets and produce high-quality writing without worries.

I read through some interesting analyses from some other writers as well suggesting that the computational systems may be introduced to help us all filter out lower-quality writing materials that are seeping at the bulk of the earnings that should be going towards high-quality writers. The penny payments must be an accidental consequential result of high-volume traffic and lower engagement.

What does this mean for writers?

The insights give me a few pointers that may be helpful for writers and other writers who want to support their community of writers working together to push out high-quality materials.

• Write so well that people will want to read to the bottom
• Avoid engagement with non-readers that are just glancing around
• Differentiate the worthwhile writing pieces to read through from the more one-off ones such as announcement articles

I know it upsets me a little bit because when I started investing full 8–10+ hour days onto the platform, I quickly realized that the earning potential I had in mind would take much much longer to achieve. My first few months of discovering and writing on Medium were the best as I was reading to learn from the community and writing briefly without much expectations and fewer hours invested.

Medium Experimentations, Writing, and Income

Money matters in life. It’s a reality all of us face eventually.

I wish I could earn enough or more on Medium that I do not have to be doing multiple things at a time. It’s a juggle to look for project clients, write, run back to do chores, make coffee, and type the keyboard again all while stressing about the next paycheck being so small.

Since then, I have noticed the constant changes and experiments being noted by many other writers on the platform over the years of their time.

Software and technology technical writers can price themselves at $200,000+ (USD) annually and even regular writing outside of technical or niche expertise may fetch $80,000+ (USD) with a high level of university-level English knowledge, formatting, vernacular, and more.

The convenience and freedom of writing on Medium are still compelling to write about. Between networking, working in an office setting, application, and management under teams, Medium is a great haven for remote-friendly, work any time, style of work.

I hope this analysis helps you understand and decide if you will keep writing on Medium, how you can stay sustainable as a writer, and how the type of engagement matters when it comes to performing well financially.