Two Months of Writing on Medium: A Case Study

I’m still learning, but I went from $5.80 to $557 in two months

Exactly two months ago, I quit my six-figure job because I made $5.80 on Medium. If you were one of the 836 people who read the article I wrote about it, you’ll understand why.

Suffice it to say that I want to eventually make a living as a full-time writer, I believe in the power of compounding, and I truly believe that anyone can do pretty much anything if they work hard enough for long enough.

If you want more info about why I did it, you can read it in the article below.

Since then, I have made almost 100 times what I earned in the month of August writing on this platform. And I believe that I’ll continue to increase my earnings if I keep learning about how this platform works, learning about the kinds of things people want to read, and honing in on how to best convey my ideas in a clear and concise way. (Yes, 100x seems like a crazy increase, but remember that I only made five bucks in August).

An examination of the numbers

No, I’m not a “rags to riches” overnight writing success story . . . yet. In fact, I’m not even paying my mortgage with what I have earned writing on Medium. However, after two months, I can now take care of the car payment and buy a few groceries. And that’s better than the coffee I could buy in August.

Let’s start by looking at my earnings over the past few months.

There are a few things to note about these numbers:

• I started writing full-time on September 1st, so the numbers from previous months reflect an occasional post once or twice per week.
• From September 1 — October 31st, I have religiously written two pieces per weekday (and maybe one on the weekends). As I look back, some of them are crap-a-doodles and some of them are approaching good. I didn’t exactly have two posts per day because I couldn’t exactly predict when publications would schedule my posts.
• October’s number reflects a total of $57.92 in earnings for paid viewers of all but one of my articles plus an additional $500 for one article in Better Humans (they paid a lump sum for one piece).
• I like to break things down into earnings/day as well. For some reason, I find that more encouraging.
• This is not all of the dough I made writing. I have other income from clients, book sales, and teaching. I’ll save that info for another article.

Now, here is a breakdown of my views, reads, fans, and followers over the past few months (as of 8am on October 31st).

As you can see, it’s been a pretty steady increase month over month. Because of the number of increased followers (thank you, y’all!), I now see reads on things I self-publish or put into my teeny tiny publication (A Little Bit Better — you should follow it!).

Because I don’t really know what the Medium algorithm is, I can’t really attribute increased story success to anything other than minutes read by members, I can only track these numbers and make sure they continue to increase steadily as I keep writing.

How I did it

This is the least sexy part, but I did it by writing consistently. I wrote two or three articles per weekday. Every weekday. Some were good and some (in hindsight) were not so good. I wrote and I submitted to publications. Sometimes I was published by them and sometimes I wasn’t. The one common denominator is . . . I kept writing.

What I’ve learned

• First of all, I have continued to understand best how to optimize my time in the day for maximum writing output. There are very specific times when I can be most productive and other times when I should give up and do the laundry. If you want to know more about how to find when you should write, check this out:

• Next, and this is what I love about Medium, you have to write something that doesn’t suck. Ever how crazy the changes are, this platform still values writers who either write beautifully (other folks) or people who convey valuable information (hopefully me). Writing is such a difficult skill to master (particularly if it’s not your native language). I have some quick tips in the piece below if you want more help with conveying your ideas.

• When I’m finished writing, I cut and paste the entire thing into LinkedIn. If you have a free account and you click the “Write Article” button, you can paste and Grammarly automatically checks your grammar. I inevitably have one or two (or ten) things that I have missed. I make corrections, and then cut and paste back into Medium. Easy peasy.
• Titles are EVERYTHING. I realized this when I was scrolling through other publications looking for things I’d like to read. And, unfortunately, I absolutely hate coming up with titles. I have found, though, that it’s a necessary evil. One tool that helps me is the headline analyzer on CoSchedule. You can enter a title into its super mega computer brain and it spits out a score (1–100) based on the balance of common, uncommon, emotional, and powerful words. Originally, this title was, “I Earned 100x More After 2 Months of Writing on Medium,” but it only scored a 61 out of 100. So, I played around until I got a title that scored a 71.

• After I find a title I like (or, rather, one that scores highly — I tend to personally prefer weird titles that get scores of 50 and below), I throw it into TitleCase to make sure it is properly capitalized (I can NEVER remember which words should be lowercase).

• Next, finding the right publication for an article is, well, challenging. Largely because you might have an idea of how your article comes off while a publication may have a completely different idea. The more stories you read in a publication, the better you’ll understand what they’re looking for. I have a list of each publication for which I have been added as a writer and exactly what types of pieces they’re looking for.
• Rejection is a part of life. I start big when submitting to publications and often get shot down. Case in point: I have submitted 5 articles to Better Humans. They published one. I sent 3 to The Ascent and they published 1 (the other two may have had a chance, I just got impatient). Here is (what I think is) some good advice on what to do when your article is rejected. The point of it is that you shouldn’t let any of your good ideas go to waste.

• And, last but not least, don’t just let your good ideas live on Medium. There are so many other ways to earn dough from your writing. The stuff you publish on this platform is yours with which to do whatever you want. I have a blog, I post to LinkedIn, and I packaged my stories into a self-published book that I am selling on Amazon. It all adds up. Whether it’s to readers or to dollars (or cents).

Listen, I definitely don’t know everything about writing on this platform. (Not even remotely), but I’m learning. And I promise to keep you all in the loop as I work to become a better writer and reach more people to hopefully inspire them to life happier, healthier, and more productive lives.

The key to success seems to be pretty much the key to any success in any industry. And that is to keep working on it. To keep creating, to keep honing your craft, and to keep humbly sharing it with others. The more you write, the more success you will have as a writer. You know, it’s that whole 10,000 hours thing.

Now, it’s your turn. What else do I need to know? If you have a tip or trick that I have missed that you think I might be able to use, please leave it in the comments. So, maybe next month, I can pay for the phone bill AND the car payment. Keep on writing, folks. Let’s grow and learn together.