The Anatomy of My First $500 Article on Medium
A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Viral Medium Posts
Earlier this month, I’ve published an article explaining in-depth how I increased my income on Medium by more than 500 % in just one month and made over $ 1,700 in January 2020.
I was quite skeptical about whether I should publish the piece or not.
Actually, I was insecure about whether sharing my number that openly would cause any problems. I was afraid people would judge me on bragging about my stats, but the reality was the complete opposite.
I received tons of positive, uplifting comments, and many of them explained how the article encouraged them to keep going and fighting for their Medium dreams!
I honestly can’t tell how happy this made me. I love Medium, I love all the opportunities we have here, and I believe there’s still room for many more aspiring content creators to build their tribe and share their message.
Yet, most readers not only thanked me for sharing my numbers but also asked whether I could share a few insights on how I ensure curation and what my significant lessons are.
Admittedly, I can’t give you the ultimate success formula for Medium articles. Nobody can. And if anyone promises you to do so, he is lying.
However, the fact is that I’ve already produced several articles hitting the $500 mark, and some of them will even hit the $1,000 target in a few days.
Even though I can’t give you a secret formula, I can indeed share the details of what works best for me.
Thus, I decided to break down my first article that hit the $500 mark in January 2020 to give an overview of the crucial factors for a successful Medium post.
Here’s the article we’ll be talking about:
The Title
I’ve read it so many times but didn’t truly understand until I experienced it myself:
The title of your story makes or breaks its succcess.
Your headline defines whether people click on your story or not. If they don’t even open your story, they surely won’t read it, and the odds of going viral and reaching a significant amount of people drops.
Listicles & How-to’s
For me, listicles and How-to’s work perfectly on Medium.
My three top-performing articles in January have all been listicles and had very similar headlines:
“8 Harmful Habits That Drain Your Energy And How To Get Rid Of Them“
“12 Self-Care Tips I Wish I’d Known About Earlier”
“10 Quotes by Confucius That Will Change Your Life Forever“
Numbers
Numbers also play a significant role. You obviously need them if you want to write listicles.
In January, my 15 best-performing articles all had numbers in the headline. (In total, I published 27 articles)
I’ve already come across the tip to use odd numbers as psychologically more people would click on those. However, most of my articles had even numbers, so I don’t have any experience regarding this statement yet, but I will experiment in my next stories.
The value of your story
Clearly communicate the value of your story in its title.
If your reader has a specific expectation, he is much likelier to click on your story. We usually don’t click on headlines that sound like fluff.
Your headline needs to promise some sort of real juice, something new or practical.
Here you can find the best performing Medium stories of all time. Once you scroll through these epic articles, you will recognize there are similarities.
The Subtitle
In my perception, many Medium writers undervalue the power of a great subtitle.
As mentioned, readers decide whether they click on an article or not in less than a second. Based on the title, image, and subtitle, they decide whether your piece is worth opening or not.
Thus, the subtitle is one-third of the entire decision; it’s powerful.
The subhead is a diamond, and it can tremendously help a reader in deciding whether to click on your story or not, make use of that power.
These are the titles + subtitles of my most successful pieces from January:
Here’s how much each of these stories made in January:
Even though I have a few favorite types of subtitles, I still experiment with them.
However, here are a few structures which work well for me in almost any case:
A clear statement underlining the initial title:
Sometimes, it’s our little, harmful routines that break our success. (The title was: “8 Harmful Habits That Drain Your Energy And How To Get Rid Of Them“)
Caring about yourself is absolutely crucial if you want to upgrade your life. (The title was: “12 Self-Care Tips I Wish I’d Known About Earlier”)
If you don’t respect yourself, nobody will do. (The title was: “2 Powerful Strategies To Develop Self-Respect In 2020“)
Quotes that fit the message of the title:
How you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have. — Daniel Handler (The title was: “Lessons Learned From the 50+ Personal Development Books I Read In 2019”)
“Personal development is a major time-saver. The better you become, the less time it takes you to achieve your goals.” ―Brian Tracy (The title was: 8 Personal Development Books That Transformed My Life)
Picking one of the bullet points (if the article is a listicle):
#3: Make sharing your content easier (The title: “5 Essential Social Media Strategies to Focus on in 2020“)
An addition to the initial title:
The Cover Picture
When I first started writing on Medium, I didn’t spend much time on the title pictures of my stories. And I also didn’t produce great results through my efforts. Seems like there’s a correlation, huh?
Now, I sometimes spend half an hour adjusting my title, subtitle, and the cover picture of an article.
It matters.
According to Forbes, most people are visually receptive. We tend to process information based on what we see. Thus, the cover picture of your article indeed plays a significant role in your story’s success.
I’ve read many times that title pictures showing people would work best, especially showing women. I paid close attention to this tip and used a cover picture with a woman on 13 out of the 27 stories I published in January.
However, I can not say these performed better than stories with other cover pictures.
Looking at the five best-performing articles, I can’t find many similarities regarding the cover pictures:
Even though I can’t give you an ultimate checklist for the perfect cover picture, taking care of these two points will definitely save you:
High-quality pictures
Always ensure your cover pictures have a high resolution and are of excellent quality. Using images with poor resolutions or bad colors is the surest way to lose the game.
Make sure you are allowed to use the picture
I usually find my cover pictures on Unsplash. That’s the most comfortable way as you can browse through their library directly on Medium.
Plus, they have an extensive range of fantastic photos.
By clicking on the loupe, you can immediately access the Unsplash library. Just type any keyword that could fit your article and start browsing through tons of amazing photos. Once you find one that suits your needs, click on it and place it accordingly.
If I can’t find any suitable graphic on Unsplash, I usually browse through Pexels.
Where you get your pictures from actually doesn’t matter that much, the key is that you are allowed to use those pictures.
Thus, you need to either use stock photos from pages like Unsplash or Pexels, or you use your own images, which, of course, takes some more time to create.
Lots of white space
Once you open my first $500 article, you will quickly realize the story contains a lot of white space.
I grasped this learning from one of Shaunta Grimes’ articles in December, and it immediately resonated with me.
English is not my first language, not even my second.
My family is Turkish, so that’s what I’ve learned at home. But I was born in Austria, so my strongest language is German. Even though I had great English teachers, my competence can’t compete with those of a native yet.
I often found myself writing endless and complicated sentences and paragraphs. The rule to have lots of white space in my stories helped me tremendously in changing that.
I give my best to share one idea per paragraph and divide my stories into lots of sections, instead of writing long, exhausting passages.
By doing so, I ensure my readers get my point without much blah-blah plus, the article looks much more appealing.
Formatting
Almost all my articles contain quotes.
Here’s why:
- I love quotes.
- If you do proper formatting, they pimp the visual appearance of your story
- Many readers highlight quotes, meaning their reading time increases, which means your earnings might also increase.
Surprisingly, I didn’t use many quotes in my first $500+ article, yet, I still did some proper formatting and highlighted some of my own statements.
Formatting is one of the few topics where Medium provides clear guidelines that help to improve the visual appearance of our stories.
Even though cool, colorful formatting like Casey Botticello does it looks stunning, it decreases your chance of curation, which might be your only chance to make it big here — keep reading for more details on that.
A great publication
My first $500+ article was published in Mind Cafe, which is one of the big players here on Medium.
Especially if you are at the beginnings of your Medium journey, publications might be your only chance to get your work in front of many readers.
Additionally, I believe your chance of getting curated increases with specific publications. I can’t prove this statement, but it’s what I experienced.
Additional to the Medium stats, I keep track of my numbers in a separate sheet where I also document publications, curation, and other data.
What I recognized is that most of my articles (or even all) in Mind Cafe, Better Marketing, or The Ascent got curated.
I honestly don’t believe that’s a coincidence. Publications have power, and as writers, it’s our job to make use of these fantastic leverage effects to reach more people with our message.
Curation, Curation, Curation
Well, I assume you came across this tip many times, and you don’t want to hear it anymore, but…curation matters.
At least that’s the truth for me.
Currently, I have a little more than 5,000 followers here on Medium; however, of course, not all of my followers see new stories. Through publications, I can reach more people, but nothing can come close to the power of curation.
Through curation, my first $500 story got over 30,000 views:
By way of comparison, here are the numbers of two pieces from January which didn’t get curated:
Quite a difference, huh?
Bottom Line
While I am writing this post, I already know I’ll have a few pieces crossing the $1,000 mark in February, which is pretty exciting.
For me, Medium is quite a crazy ride right now, my stats are exploding, and I am having a lot of fun experimenting here.
In February, I will cross the $5,000 mark of earnings in one single month. That’s a stunning number for earnings, but what fascinates me even more, is that more than 250,000 people have clicked on my stories in the past 30 days.
I believe that’s a tremendous power I have, and I will give my very best to use all of this traffic, helping people to uplevel themselves and live happier, more successful lives in the long term.
I am aware that I can’t sustain this crazy growth rate for long. Growth on Medium is finite at some point, but until then, I will keep going and giving my best to spread the message of love and support those who want to unleash their full potential.
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