This is How To Consistently Make at Least $100 a Month on Medium

Trust me when I say it’s not hard. You just have to be willing to work with Medium and not against it.

I’m going to be honest — if I offend people I apologize in advance — it’s not hard to make $100 a month on Medium.

I did it, and I’m not that special.

I jokingly say I am a blue-collar writer on this platform.

I don’t go viral. I don’t have any posts with 1k claps. I rarely post in publications (I need to change this), and until recently I wasn’t promoting my work outside of Medium, and with all of that, I still made $135 in my first 30 days on the platform; and this is with me floundering about the first couple weeks until I found my footing.

Seriously if I can do it, you can too.

Now I can’t tell you how to go from $100 to $1000 a month on Medium.

How to scale my earnings on Medium is something I’ve been thinking about, and right now, there are no easy answers. But $100 — with simply what I’m doing now and no major changes — I can consistently make that with no problem.

With that said, there are some things you have to do consistently to make it happen, and that’s where I see most people go wrong. They are trying to make Medium work they want it to work, instead of working with how Medium actually works.

Here’s how you work with Medium to reach the $100 a month milestone:

1. You can’t write about anything you want

Let’s just get this out of the way: yes, I know Medium bills itself as a place you can write whatever you want and make money — well that’s a lie.

There are topics that perform better than others. Unfortunately, it may not be one you’re passionate about. My suggestion to you is to make it work or find somewhere else to write.

I’m not being harsh either, I had to take my own advice, and quickly, or I would have never made 100 dollars my first month on Medium.

I like writing about pop culture topics (film, tv, media). I also like writing news type political posts. No one claps for those even when they get curated. What they do get is a lot of views; unfortunately, we don’t get paid by views.

I could have persisted and then complained incessantly about how I wasn’t making any money. Instead, I curbed the amount of time I spent writing that type of content and started writing more of what was actually making me money.

Stop bumping your head up against the wall.

If what you’re writing isn’t generating any money, write something else. Medium doesn’t owe your content success. If you have to write about something else, find a topic you like (even if you don’t love it), that’s profitable, and go from there.

Here’s a great post by Michael_Spencer that details the topics that perform best on Medium.

Read it.

Study it.

Choose a combination of topics from the article to focus on and write on those topics only when you first start writing on the site. You can branch out later once you’ve established a fan base and have some money coming in, but you want to be hyper-focused initially.

2. Only publish in publications

In your first month, you shouldn’t self-post anything.

Everything you write should go into a publication.

This is actually my biggest mistake, not posting in publications, in my first month on Medium, and because of it, I left a lot of money on the table.

You’re new to Medium.

You have no followers.

You don’t have any way of getting eyes on your writing other than to post in publications that already have a large base of followers.

Michael Spencer also recently wrote an article on the best publications for new Medium writers to submit to. Here it is:

Check out the submission guidelines of each one and when you write an article, instead of hitting publish, submit to a publication.

Bonus points: Medium publications and Medium partner publications enjoy a juiced-up curation rate. Get published in one of these publications and your article is likely to be curated as well.

Speaking of curation…

3. Write for curation

If you follow step no. 2, this point becomes moot. Getting published in Medium’s partner mags is going to (almost) guarantee you get curated.

There’s a new writer in one of the Facebook groups I belong to who said all of her articles had been curated. Out of curiosity, I checked her profile, and she’s published all of her articles in P.S. I Love You, a publication believed to be a partner magazine.

The days of being an indie-publisher getting curated are rapidly coming to an end. In some topics, it’s still relatively easy to get curated without being apart of a publication, but in most of the big ones, it helps to be be published in one of these Medium approved magazines.

Other than that, follow the rather opaque curation guidelines:

And make sure you aren’t making any of these mistakes:

4. Follow 125 people a day. Members Only.

This is one I always tell people to do; most don’t do it. But if I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t have made anywhere near $100 in one month.

I was self-publishing and not publishing in any publications (or very few) that if I wasn’t following people, I wouldn’t have had anyone for Medium to share my posts with when they weren’t curated, and honestly, even when they were.

Remember you only earn money when a paying Medium member claps on your article. So the key to success involves cultivating a fan base of paying Medium members.

With that said you don’t just follow anyone. Find people who write in your niche and who have large followings. From there, you’re going to click on the people who follow them and only follow the ones who are paid, Medium members.

If you hover over the follower’s names, it will tell you whether they are a member or not. If they aren’t a member — skip — if they are — follow.

Simple.

About five to ten percent of those you follow will follow you back. If you want to double that percentage read, clap and comment on the articles of the people you’ve followed.

5. Publish daily

I don’t understand people who want to make a part-time income from writing, but don’t want to write daily. That makes no sense to me.

If you got a part-time job and was working an extra 20 hours a week, wouldn’t you show up every day?

Would you ask them what was the least amount of work you could do and still make a part-time income?

Writing on Medium isn’t any different.

Do you want to hit at least $100 a month in your first month and every month thereafter?

Publish one new 700 to 800-word post daily.

Every. Day. No Excuses.

6. Have an engagement goal, then make sure you meet it

You should have a fan goal in mind as the number of fans you have is what’s going to determine how much you make.

When I started on the site, my goal was to hit five fans a day. Then my goal was to hit ten fans a day. Next, it was twenty, and now my goal is 30 fans a day, and I will be changing that to 50 fans a day very soon.

And here’s the thing: I don’t go to bed until I hit it.

So, if I write an article and it only gets ten fans, and I get another 15 from old posts, well that means I’m five fans short from where I need to be.

Time to write another article.

If you write your article for the day and it doesn’t hit the engagement levels you’ve set for yourself, well, guess what, you need to write another article.

And you need to keep writing until you hit your goal.

August Birch of the Book Mechanic says on average a fan is worth 50 cents. Keeping that number in mind, you can sit down and do the math on how many fans you need each day to hit the monetary goals you want to meet.

On Medium, the key to success is to control the things you can control and adapt to those you can’t. You have complete control over how much you write.

Use it.

7. Utilize Medium Facebook groups

I was skeptical of the usefulness of the many Medium Facebook groups that are available to join. It turns out I just wasn’t using them consistently, and once I started to really engage with the various communities, I begin to see real results.

Traffic, followers, fans increase every time I post and engage in the Facebook groups. Now don’t be selfish. These aren’t places for you to spam links to your posts without taking the time to read and clap for other writers' works.

Also, be useful to the community. Answer questions, offer to help if someone is asking for assistance and it’s something you can do. Be social. That’s what they are there for. Building community goes a long way to increasing your Medium earnings.

Here are the six groups I belong to:

1. Medium Partner Program Friends
2. Medium Magic
3. Medium Writers
4. Grow Your Blog Movement
5. Medium Writers & Bloggers
6. Medium Writers Support & Marketing

So, take 30 minutes out of your day to engage in Facebook groups and see what they can do for helping you reach your Medium Goals.

8. Decide you’re going to make money

And finally, you have to have a money-making mindset if you’re going to succeed on Medium.

None of what I said above matters if you don’t beleive making money here is possible. I started writing here with the sole purpose of adding another income stream to my freelance writing earnings.

I wasn’t looking for a place to express myself, test out my writing, or make friends. I came here to replace some lost freelance income when a company I worked for went under.

That’s it.

I beleive I can make money here.

Do you believe you can make money here?

Are you willing to do what it takes to make it happen?

If not, Medium may not be the place for you, and that’s okay.

Final Thoughts

While there may be more lucrative places to write than Medium, this is the only place where I can (mostly) write what I want, on my schedule and get paid in a timely manner.

Where, for the most part, I can determine how much I make by how much I write and don’t have to negotiate with clients, deal with editors, or hunt down overdue payments.

As much as some of the recent changes to Medium may rankle my nerves, it is still a better option then much of what else is out there for the amount and type of work it takes to be successful.

Ultimately you have to decide if Medium is the right place for you.

But as I said earlier, if I can make money here you can too, you just have to believe it’s possible and follow the steps above.

That’s it. It’s not magic. Just a little strategy, some work and a wee bit of luck and you too will be one of the 7.9 percent who makes at least $100 a month.

This is How I Made $135 Dollars in My First 30 Days On Medium

Only seven to nine percent of writers make at least $100 each month on Medium. I did it in my first month. Here is what I did each week to achieve my goal, hopefully, you can use my journey to $100 a month to achieve yours.