Steady Increases and Gains

On my journey to $100/day, the biggest gains are in loyal readers, good reads, and daily increases.

Happy new year! Thanks for choosing to read me and my journey to making a passive income on this site.

If you’re new to this journey, here’s week 1, 2, and 3 to see my progress.

Quick Intro

I’m a professional writer and editor off of this platform and am looking to add Medium as another revenue stream and a way to get some of stories, poems, etc. out into the world for people to read. I write a lot. I publish a lot.

Last month was my first full month on Medium. I started with a simple goal of making $1/day during that month and ended month making more than that and completing my goal of publishing 60 pieces and making over $30. I learned a lot about how to see returns and gain loyal followers.

I tried a bunch of different things during the month to see what delivered the best results when it came to views and earnings, what mattered more curation or engagement. Taking what I learned last month, I’m approaching January with a new angle.

I’ll be focusing on writing a lot, publishing a little, and engaging/reading the most. My goal is to publish and share 2–3 pieces a week, submit to more publications, write 6 articles a week, and read each day—except for on weekends where I usually take time off to write, love, and live.

I’m shooting to double my earning by making $3/day in January from doing that strategy.

Stats for 4th week

Last week’s write up had me excited over getting 163 views. I’m now reaching those heights on the regular. More than anything, that bump up was because of my new reading strategy, focusing on people who actively engage and read on this site.

I posted 9 new articles across last week in order to hit my 60 stories mark. Most of which were poems. They get a lot of engagement for me and have a track record of being curated almost instantly upon publishing.

My highlight from last week was earning a few diehard readers who went through my whole collection of stories. From my understanding, the way Medium does it’s pay outs and earning calculations is all about membership reading time.

Not just how long members spend on just that one piece, but how long each one spends on your pieces over others. If a member spends their monthly $5 reading time on more of your stories than any other writer, you’ll get more earnings.

More earnings than if a random reader read your story and clapped it but never read another one of your stories again.

By the end of the month, all of my stories were earners and a majority were earning over a $1. None, however, earned over $10 on their own. So, that’s going to be a stretch goal for me this month.

I gained over 150 new followers during the week, over 10% of those were diehard readers who read more than 5 of my back stories. I’m now in the featured writer rotation deck on topics Writing, Creativity, and Poetry. I’ll be aiming to dominate those categories with my pieces over the next few months.

Another big win was having a high curation week. I still see engagement as the highest factor in success, but my curated pieces still earn on days when I’m not reading or sharing my work.

Best Story This Week

Worst Story This Week

As you can see, both were curated, but only one really is getting any reads and taking off. Each one has value, but they are of different types.

How to Pitch an Article has career advancement value. It goes into how someone can pitch their article idea to a magazine. The Artist Who Hasn’t Created is all about intrinsic feel good value.

There’s nothing of knowledge or information in that one, but it’s the best performing article to date. Time, placement, and content are all behind that one. I just have to push it further to make it reach its full potential.

For the Artist Who Hasn’t Created Anything in 2020 will be the article that I try pushing past the $10 mark. I think it has it in itself to be a high earner. But it’s not evergreen, so I have a small window to make it earn out before it withers and falls into my back catalog.

Last Week Takeaways

Before last week, I spent most of December going through my following list. I saw what people were posting or not posting and decided whether or not I wanted to keep following them.

Last week, I changed that up and spent more time reading and engaging with people who were sharing in Medium Facebook groups, people who followed me, and people who were showing up in my daily following read list.

Essentially, I read the people who I knew were active on this site and followed me in hopes of fostering a connection.

I sometimes feel like a scratched CD. Always repeating the same things.

Connection and engagement. Connection and engagement. Connection and engagement. Connection and engagement. Connection and engagement.

But really, over curation and featured whatever statuses, those are the two things that I have found to really bring home success. That’s how the writers who aren’t getting curated still make an earning from their stories.

Connect with your audience through your words and articles. If you’re unsure of who your audience is, read through your followers list and see what they respond and clap for. What are their interests? Do they align with yours? Then that person is your audience.

Since Medium’s newest changes, the way they share work and want writers to use this is focused less on mass spread and pumping out content. It’s all about connecting and writing value articles within your niche.

Having a niche and a relational strategy when working on this site is how you reach more of your audience. And in turn, it’s how you consistently make money on this site.

Engagement comes down to being genuine. Don’t aim for a clap for clap relationship or a read for read one. Aim to garner friendships through commenting and regularly reading writers whose work touches you.

Keep writing the words that mean the world to you. I’ll do the same.

Till next time!

–Aigner

Aigner Loren Wilson is a queer Black SFWA, HWA, and Codex writer. She was listed on the honors list for the Otherwise Fellowship award for 2019. She offers a writing craft newsletter to people who want to become better writers and publish quality pieces.

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