The Complete Step-by-Step DIY Medium Base Pay for the Rest of Us
It’s not much harder than the NewsBreak deal, except you get to write the way you want
Instead of crying in your beer about the end of NewsBreak base pay or whining about not being included in the mysterious Medium fellowship program last month, how about, we do what working writers have always done and create our own base pay?
It’s not really that complicated, but it will take hard work and some math. I hear you on the math part — it’s not really my forte either, but I can manage the basics with my trusty desk calculator.
As for the work part, I know you’re capable. If you played the NewsBreak game you know you can crank out enough content to meet a target, right? We just need to find the targets.
So let’s get to this!
Set your own base pay
In the Medium fellowship base pay plan you apparently aren’t part of, the minimum pay offered was $200. Some people were offered $500 or even $1,000. I’ve got do-it-yourself plans for each of those amounts laid out below, so start thinking about your preferred base now.
How much do you really want to earn here? Keep in mind that popular stories will always come along that boost your bottom line. What we’re aiming at is your base — what you want your minimum payout to be every month.
It’s okay to start low and work up to the $1k plan, but let me ask you a question first. If you’re a former NewsBreaker who raked in a grand a month initially in exchange for publishing a measly three stories per week, did you consider asking them for their smaller version? You know, the one where you didn’t have to work so hard?
And then when they increased the max base to $1,500 a month if you wrote 25 high quality (as perceived by them) stories per month, did you falter, or did you knuckle down?
No judgment here. Just posing questions to help you set your base pay. It is truly okay to aim for the $200 base, so let’s start there.
The $200 base pay plan
Now for the first math lesson. In order to earn $200 per month, your starting point is 12 stories, each earning an average of .50 per day.
That will get you $180 (12 x .50 x 30 days). If you already have a catalog of stories written, you can add up your monthly earnings of all those that earn $1 or less per month to see if they make up your $20 shortfall. If not, then you’ll need 13 or 14 stories per month earning .50 per day. Or check out these ideas for short filler stories to balance your full-length features.
It all sounds pretty easy until you do a little more math. What we’re really talking about are stories that earn $15 per month. The really good ones will keep earning $15 every month for a few months, possibly reducing your workload.
Here’s the best news: If you can write one $15 story, you can write 12. The only thing holding you back is you. Go back through your recent story stats. Did you have any $15 stories?
If you did, analyze the heck out of them. Study the things your readers highlighted or commented on. Create a plan for yourself that will help you produce more stories like the ones you already know you can write.
If you don’t have any recent stories that earned $15 in a single month, you’ve got some work to do. I’ve got a checklist to help you get started.
The $500 base pay plan
To set your base pay at $500 per month, it’s gonna take a bit more work, and stories that are a step up in quality in most cases. The math breaks down like this: 13 quality stories earning $1.25 a day will get you to $487.50. Your buck-a-month stories and fillers will complete the $500 base.
What’s a buck and a quarter a day add up to? Your stories need to each earn $37.50 in any 30 day period — hopefully in more than one 30 day period.
I just heard a collective sigh. Stop that! If you were writing $60 stories on NewsBreak two months ago, what the heck are you afraid of? It’s only $37 freakin’ dollars.
If you’ve done it once, you can do it again. Here’s an analysis of some of my $37 stories to help. If you’ve got your own, analyze them and create a checklist of your own. What publication did you put them in? How were they formatted? How did you promote them?
The $1,000 base pay plan
Hello big dog. Are you ready to lead the pack in the four-figure category? You’ll need 16 stories that rake in $2.00 per day — or $60 per month each.
It sounds lofty, I know. I’m right there with you. I haven’t cracked the $1k mark on Medium yet. But here’s the thing I keep reminding myself: I always earn more than $1,000 a month from my other writing sources. I was clearly capable of writing $1,000-plus worth of material on NewsBreak, where I earned more than a grand every month from November 2020 to July 2021.
Do I think, no wait, do you think, that was an overpayment? Oh, hell, no. If anything, it was an underpayment compared to other outlets we write for.
So the first thing we’ve got to do is get our heads straight. Our writing here is worth $1,000 a month. Our stories should all earn $60 a month the first few months after publication unless we are intentionally writing fillers (which serve a valuable purpose). In March, I had a story that earned $60 in 10 days, so I know it can be done.
Next steps
I’ve dumped a lot on you in a short amount of time. So I’m going to leave you to stew on all this for a bit. At a minimum, I hope to have inspired you to take a harder look at how much money you might be leaving on the table here. My real goal, though is to lift you up and show you that whether here, or on some other platform or publishing method, the keys to earning what you really want as a writer are:
- Set a target that is broken into small pieces.
- Analyze your past successes and create a repeatable pattern based on them. (Note I am talking about YOUR successes, not anyone else’s.)
- Put your butt in the chair day after day and follow-through.