What I Didn’t Do To Become a Top Writer on Medium in 3 Weeks

Here are the fully transparent facts and figures. This was a huge milestone for me, and I want to see it happen for you, too.

While I might not be one of the top-paid writers on Medium (absolutely nowhere close), I recently received my first Top Writer badge in Feminism. That’s a huge milestone for me in my journey on Medium.

I know many of you are searching for specific articles about how to become a Top Writer on Medium. I know this because I was doing that exact same thing last month.

I decided last month to develop a strategy to integrate Medium into my business as a possible additional stream of income. I made several goals for myself to achieve by June 2019.

One of those goals was to receive a Top Writer badge in at least 1 category. I received it at 3 weeks into executing my plan.

Here are some parameters to understand before we dive in (because I’m a social media strategist by day and love digging into some juicy analytics for reference):

• I got my email on April 2nd that I received my first Top Writer badge after writing on Medium daily for 23 days straight
• I’d published 55 articles at the time of receiving my Top Writer badge
• I brought in $83.51 last month from Medium
• My content was distributed by curators around 25% of the time when I published content in March
• Most interesting of all, I haven’t been distributed in the category of Feminism, not even once. Although I have included the tag in several of my more popular posts. In those specific posts, I was curated in Equality and Women, but not Feminism. So apparently you don’t have to be curated in a particular tag to become a Top Writer in any given category (interesting! I did not know this until now).

So, all of this is to say that I’m nothing particularly special or fancy — I’m just your average-joe kind of Medium writer.

Which is great news for many of us, including myself!

Here are the posts which my Top Writer email from Medium indicated were the articles responsible for gaining me a badge in Feminism:

Now that we’ve got some variables to work with, enough small talk.

I know exactly why you’re here, so let’s dig in:

I didn’t save my “best content” for when I became “more successful”.

Straight out of the gate, you have to be putting your best content out there.

No question.

If you’re saving your “best content” for when you have a few more followers or a few more claps, then might I politely ask for you to get over yourself? Be humble, and realize that you’re not Hemingway.

You’re an online blog writer, and you have a lot of growth to do if you want a Top Writer badge.

Realize that you’ll be a better writer tomorrow than you are today. Understand that, if you are writing daily, your content in one month will be far more improved than that “best content” you’re holding onto for a “sunnier day”.

Your best writing isn’t in the present, it’s in tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

It will always be ahead of you, and the only way to reach it is to continually move forward.

So publish the posts sitting in your draft folder. Experiment and see how both readers and curators react to your work. Were you selected by curators for a specific topic? Are you getting claps, or even better, comments and fans?

The only way to figure out what your “best content” could possibly be is by testing, troubleshooting and eliminating what’s not working.

I can’t tell you how many times (there have been so many) I’ve published an article thinking it’s incredible and will definitely be a huge hit… and it turned out to be a total flop.

Yes, the first few times this happens it will hurt like hell. But that’s just the name of the game — rejection comes with a territory of being a writer. Grow a tougher skin, and try not to take it so personally.

Whatever you do, just keep trying.

Because the only guaranteed way you’re going to fail is if you stop writing entirely.

I didn’t publish an article a day.

That was my intention starting out, it truly was. But I realized quickly that as much as Medium is about quality, it’s also about quantity.

The key to remember is that Medium content can be evergreen — which means that great article I wrote 6 months ago? Still getting pushed, I’m still getting claps, and I’m still getting paid.

This isn’t Twitter, where you have a few precious seconds to grab your audience’s attention, and a moment later your chance is gone for good.

Medium’s algorithm (God bless) isn’t so fleeting. Your content, if it’s good content, will continue to be recommended and distributed, for months and months to come.

Success is on the horizon as long as you’re patient enough to give it the breathing room it needs to grow.

So, with that in mind, I published, not 1, but 2–3 articles every single day. And will continue doing so.

Yup, it’s been a hell of a lot of work.

Speaking of…

I didn’t hold true to pursuing Medium as a part-time hustle.

The intent was in the right place — I was going to build Medium into my business as an additional stream of income, and as my passion project for improving as a writer.

It would be a part-time job. Or so I thought.

But that’s not how it turned out. I was clocking full-time hours on this platform as soon as I committed to working Medium into my business a month ago. Apart from taking a break now and again to do some chores and have dinner, I was at my desk. Writing, drafting, brainstorming, researching. Wash, rinse, repeat.

My fiancé barely saw me for two solid weeks.

I was putting in overtime hours for three weeks with my business AND on Medium.

I’d like to say that the decision I made to put so much time and energy into Medium was “intentional”, but it wasn’t.

Truth be told, I became borderline obsessed with Medium for the first few weeks.

The content ideas and stories just wouldn’t stop coming. I’d opened the flood gates, and my fingers could barely keep up with the endlessly churning content creator in my head.

This was actually a poor business decision on my part, as I can make $40-$50/per hour in my business when I’m taking on client work. I was putting 6+ hours A DAY into a platform that was making me mere pennies per hour.

I actually did the math on my active Medium hours in March (because I track time clocked in my business and I guess I wanted to see myself suffer for this article). Oh boy… prepare yourself, because I just sh*t my pants a little bit.

In 3 weeks, I clocked 139 hours on Medium, and received a payout in March of $83.51.

That means I made a whopping $0.60 per hour for a month of pure dedication and hard work.

Did you hear that? It was the sound of cold, hard reality making a dramatic entrance into this article.

Some people are really lucky on Medium (okay, obviously not lucky, they’re phenomenal writers with a keen ear into what users want to read about. Aka. They’re geniuses!), and they can start making a full-time income within 2 months of actively posting an article a day.

I want to show you a statistic (this comes from the most recent report for the Medium Partner Program). Last month, of all the active Medium Partner Program members who created content, only 55% made any money. And of that percentile, only 7.5% made over $100.

So no, while there are writers on here making bank in just a few months, that’s not at all typical.

Don’t expect that result, because there’s a 90% chance it won’t be you. Most of us will have to bust our asses for many, many hours and many, many months, improving our craft and experimenting with content before we even see $100 from Medium.

But hey, I’m in it for the long haul. In my first business, I was clocking 60–70 hour weeks for 7 months before I saw anything similar to a respectable income.

So I’m no stranger to sticking it out. Bring it on.

Which leads me to my final point…

I didn’t look at Medium as a get-rich-quick scheme.

If you want to be successful in Medium, you have to actually want to be here.

Because if your plan is to make money fast, you’re doomed to fail.

Seriously, did you read my numbers above? I’ve averaged $0.60 per hour on this platform since pursuing it on a full-time basis.

But, of course, this also depends on what your definition of “rich” is.

Because if you’re looking to grow and mature as a writer, you’ll get rich real quick as long as you stick with it and really apply yourself.

If you’re hoping to lock down a full-time income within a month or two on Medium through writing 1 hour per day and publishing 3 articles per week, you’re off in La La Land and need to come back to reality.

There is potential for your income from Medium to grow, but like all good, quality things, it will take time, dedication, and an extreme amount of patience.

Are you sure you have what it takes to stick it out?

Medium is an incredible platform, not because it’s full of money-hungry writers, but because it’s made up of a committed community of writers who are passionate about crafting quality content and improving people’s lives.

Medium’s brand is entirely about being sincere and authentic. If you’re neither of those things, then you’re not the right fit for this platform and you should just give up while you’re ahead. Because your efforts will be wasted.

But if you really care about writing, want to participate in this incredible community of creatives and learn a thing or two along the way, then I just have one thing to say:

Welcome home.

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