Under 10% of Writers Make over a $100 on Medium Every Month — SO WHAT?
Here’s why it shouldn’t bother you at all.
Medium is the best platform for an aspiring writer seeking to build a decent career in blogging. Especially for someone like me, who has been in freelance content writing for over eight years.
I can tell you from experience that writing for clients on niches they select, and topics they choose, inevitably gets boring after a while.
Then there’s the absolute need to adhere to each of their requirements. Miss on any of it and you have yourself an email asking for a “quick” revision. A revision that is anything but quick in reality. All of this is more than sufficient to ruin the entire experience for a writer; at least it did for me.
Medium, on the other hand, lets you relish the freedom of writing about things that you like.
The idea of starting my own blog popped into my mind some gazillion times in recent years. But the thought of having to struggle with WordPress or similar tools, and spending years on marketing to build an audience never resonated with me.
Medium is a quick, impeccable fix for the aforementioned problem. Here, you have an opportunity to put your work in front of a community comprising over 80 million subscribers. A society that brings readers and writers from across the globe under a single umbrella.
Making a full-time income blogging about things that you are genuinely interested in, is a borderline fetish for a writer. But just when you are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, you find out that only under 10% of active Medium writers make more than $100 a month on the platform.
Ah! Come on. That wasn’t part of the plan, right?
But can I ask why is it that you are immediately disheartened by a statement like that?
No Pain, No Gain
If you let it steal your motivation, you have already put yourself on the track to failure. I want you to be honest with yourself for a minute and ask this:
Did you lose motivation because apparently, a tiny percentage of writers earn a decent income on Medium? Or is it because you just got hit with the reality check that the journey wasn’t going to be as convenient as you thought?
If you measure success in terms of how much a professional makes, wouldn’t the statement hold true for pretty much all professions? Are all engineers successful? Do all doctors make a six-figure income?
Truth is, there is always a small percentage of people in every profession who climb to the top. Do these people come pre-installed with an upgraded software? Is it because of the better-quality hardware that they get to experience success in its essence? Absolutely not!
The high-achievers are just like you in every aspect except for one. An undying commitment to their work. A passion that doesn’t fade away. A determination that just won’t die.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t the idea of getting into the privileged 10% elite on Medium excite you? Personally, its all the motivation that I need to continue writing on this platform.
As I highlighted in the beginning, I’ve been in content writing for over eight years. A writer of my caliber and experience should be able to get into the top 10%. And I’ll continue to put an effort and improve my work unless I make it happen. It’s as simple as that.
On Medium, I’m competing essentially against myself. That’s my favorite kind of competition.
The Mind Is What the Mind Is fed
The problem, you see, is not with the intimidating statistics. The problem lies in the state of mind. Think about it. What’s the first thought that pops into your head when you find a writer making a full-time income on Medium? Isn’t it usually along the lines of:
“Even if I get to make 15% of that income, I’d be thrilled.”
Why 15%? What’s stopping you from shooting for the stars? May I please know the reason for this self-doubt? Sounds very interesting, by all means, enlighten me!
How do you expect the curators, publications, and readers at large to trust your words and believe in you as a writer when you can’t even trust your own skills?
When I follow a writer like Ayodeji Awosika, who is making a six-figure income on Medium, it doesn’t intimidate me. It inspires me. It excites every last cell in my body. All that my inner voice yells in my ears is that if he can do it, you can do it too.
Why? Because as I said, successful bloggers like him don’t have an underlying edge on any of us. They are there because of their utter hard work. They didn’t look for convenience. They didn’t try to cheat the algorithm. They didn’t hunt for short cuts. What they believed in was “effort”. An undying, unflinching effort.
A commitment to invest as much of their time into the process as it took to establish their name in the writers’ community. Simply put, the difference between you and them, is that the statistics never really bothered them.
Note to Self: Don’t Give Up
Only 10% of writers find success on Medium because thousands of other writers refuse to even go through the grind. They’d register on the platform, write five stories in an hour each and expect them to go viral.
For an inexplicable reason, they want the curators and publications to immediately go crazy about their content.
When you start with that state of mind, you are bound to disappointment. And that disappointment almost always translates into quitting.
I spent five hours on five stories and didn’t make $5 out of it. So, I’ll just jump to the conclusion and brand it as “not worth my time”.
You need to realize that things don’t work that way. Take Ayo, for example. The guy has been at it for five years. That’s half a decade. Are you so naïve to believe that he got where he is today with your five hours-five dollars theory?
In other words, what distinguishes the top 0.001% who makes a six-figure income on Medium, is that they didn’t quit. That’s pretty much the extent of it.
Let’s Talk Numbers
If you are still not convinced, let me try it another way. So, Medium tells you that under 10% of its writers make over $100 a month. For the sake of argument, I submit to the narrative that 10%, indeed, is a stunted percentage of success.
But what if we ditched percentage and talked directly in terms of numbers instead?
Now, brace yourself because things are about to change drastically. Say that Medium currently has about 80 million subscribers. Understandably, this number represents the readers and writers combined. Let’s assume that only 25% of these subscribers are writers. That’s 20 million writers on Medium, right?
That translates to 2 million people (10%) making more than a $100 on Medium every month. If 1% of the total writers are making more than $1000 on Medium, that’s two hundred thousand writers every month.
Is that a large enough number for you yet? Why can’t one of these two hundred thousand writers be you? Are you really going to sit there and let the unfounded self-doubt humiliate you like that? Because if that’s your plan, I’d like to see you outside now. That’s it!
Learn to Enjoy the Journey
All you have to do is commit to improving. Learn to find solace in the arms of the process and stop being in a rush to get to the destination. Focus on learning, experiment with your writing. Most importantly, read what the top writers are posting on Medium. Get a sense of what’s working for them.
Put yourself in a competition with YOURSELF. Your writing should be a percent better today than it was yesterday. And another percent tomorrow, and another the day after. As long as you can keep a learning attitude that takes pride in growth, I promise you that success will ultimately find you.
Growing as a writer is a beautiful journey. And you’re missing out on a lot as you continue to focus on the destination or the money that you want to see yourself making out of it. Your words are a work of art. Stop putting a price on your words and focus on mastering your craft.
You are a great writer. And you can only become the greatest with practice. Now stop second-guessing your skills and go pen your next story!
