These Headlines Will (Probably) Make You $500 Per Month on Medium
Headline strategies to implement to help you get more viewers.
Headlines, headlines, headlines.
If I were only allowed to work on one thing as a writer on Medium, I would work on writing captivating headlines.
It doesn’t matter how good your content is if no one reads it.
To get those readers, you need to have a good headline.
Over my last five years of writing, I have tested so many different headlines (525, in fact) and found different elements that have helped me make over $500 on Medium in various months.
In this article, I will share four headline strategies you can implement to help you get more viewers.
Use Brackets (When It Makes Sense)
One strategy I have been testing with good results recently is using brackets.
In the early days of Medium, subtitles were super powerful.
You can write something like “9 Writing Strategies That You Must Implement,” with a subtitle like, “These blogging strategies make me $5,471 every month,” and it’ll likely get a lot of views.
Ever since Medium changed its layout around two years ago, however, subtitles have slowly faded into obscurity.
The subtitle text appears on the same level as the first words in the article which causes readers to miss the subtitle.
Writers adapted, however, and brackets became a potent replacement for subtitles.
I’ve been testing it recently with good results. Here’s one of my recent, popular ones:
The idea with the brackets is to cause readers to question something about themselves or life. When we have questions, we want answers, so we click on articles that make us curious.
In my example, the “You Probably Experienced This” makes people wonder if they experienced the pitfall I’m talking about, leading them to click on the article.
Admittedly, I’m not the most experienced with the use of brackets, so credit where credit is due, I’m going to link to a few articles from Lea Bardot and Charlie J 🕊️, both of which have used brackets very effectively in their headlines.
Lea’s articles:
Charlie’s articles:
Use Shocking Numbers
My second piece of advice is to use shocking numbers. Some of my most successful articles are a result of this strategy.
Here are a few examples:
The key to this strategy is context.
Look at Ethan Ginsberg’s “How I Will Make $1,417.21 on Medium in February — Yes, Next Month.”
$1,417.21 is not huge, but it is for Medium earnings. That’s because most writers never come close to breaking past $1k in payments from the Medium Partner Program.
When Medium used to send out emails congratulating people for their earnings, my $100 month put me in the top 99% of Medium writers.
Or, consider my stock portfolio articles.
My post, “$100k In the New Quad-Fecta Dividend Portfolio Pays You $1202 Monthly,” did pretty well because a 14% yield is crazy in the stock market.
People are curious about what investments one buys for that kind of cash flow.
Don’t Reveal Everything
My third piece of headline-writing advice is don’t reveal everything. Headlines like “Stop Drinking and You’ll Never Get Hungover” or “The Secret Sauce To Success Is to Work Hard” will get skimmed over.
There’s no point in reading the whole article if they got everything they need from the headline.
Instead, keep things hidden.
Take a look at my third highest-earning post of all time:
Notice how I don’t reveal the actual to-do list tactic? I save that for the article.
Be Specific
That being said, you do need to be specific.
Here’s one of my recent flops:
At first, I was hyped about the article. It sounded so powerful.
“You won’t be successful until this happens. What? What needs to happen?”
The problem was that the title was too broad. Successful? Successful at what? What does success look like?
Everyone wants to get everyone to read, but the irony is that trying to accommodate everyone accommodates no one.
Be specific about who you’re trying to share content with.
Additionally, it helps to be specific about the results one can achieve if one reads your article.
Compare these two headlines:
The Writing Strategy That Helped Me Make Money On Medium
Vs.
The Writing Strategy That Helped Me Make $323 In My First Month On Medium
I’d much rather click on the second article than the first one.
Headlines — An Ongoing Experiment
To summarize, the four headline strategies you can use to help you make $500 on Medium are:
- Use brackets
- Use shocking numbers
- Don’t reveal everything
- Be specific
Of course, these tips won’t guarantee success, nor are they the only paths to success. As I always like to tell people, learn, test, analyze, and repeat.
