MONEY|WRITING

What I Made (And How) In My Third Month (120 Stories Total) Earning Money On Medium

December of 2021 was one hell of a roller coaster ride and here’s why

As much as I like to read about and see photos from other people’s experiences of making money on Medium, which includes stats, of course, I am finding it harder to motivate myself to write an “update story”.

Therefore, this will be the last time that I write, for a while anyway, about what I’ve made and how it all happened.

The following story was published on December 1st about November’s earnings and I ended it with this:

Some people think that writing and publishing daily on Medium will cause earnings to consistently double.

I would love that to be true.

It is my truth for last month.

We’ll see what happens this month…

I didn’t expect to make $460 or more in December, but I certainly hoped I would come close.

So when, for some inexplicable reason, my earnings went down to an average of $4 a day from $10 a day during the first week of December, I was really disheartened.

I’d read about other people’s views and earnings going down.

One writer who’s been on Medium for at least a few years (I’d tag her, but I don’t think she’d like that for this story) said that this was normal for December.

At first, I resolved myself to the grim reality and aimed to simply reach the same amount I made in November- $230.

Even if I made $5 per day, I’d only make $155 in December at that rate.

I needed to dig deep and come up with some kick ass stories if I stood any chance of breaking $200 in December, especially with the holidays and all that I had planned the second half of the month.

This is what I consider the “how” part of my “success story”.

Sometime in the first week of December, my partner had texted me a story that made me think about stories that I could write along these lines:

“The one thing my most successful posts have in common is a suggestion of nudity in their title.

That’s right folks, the old adage is true…

Sex sells.”

One of my first successful stories on Medium did have something sexual in the title, but I eventually had more success with a story that had to do with me growing up biracial and another that combined issues of money, race and culture.

I’d written a story in late October that highlighted me seeing a naked woman in a window during my time in Amsterdam. It did okay, but has only had brief moments in my top 10 earning stories.

All that to say, when I wrote the following story, I had absolutely no idea that it was would take off the way that it did:

It was published on December 7th, 2021. It showed promise, but nothing significant.

The story that I thought would be very successful ended up being a huge thorn in my side because of all the external views it got!?

After I read the following email, I thought I’d break $200 with earnings from this story for sure.

It did make it to my “Top 10” for December, earning me a whopping $6.78.

It was nice to have the exposure, but seeing so many view without the earnings to match felt excruciating at times, especially when I still hadn’t made more than my highest day in November, and it was already mid-December.

I don’t think I ever had more than 350 views before the U2 story.

Then a Christmas miracle happened…

At first, the U2 story help push my views to almost 1,400 in one day. It accounted for more than half the views.

But then “How Getting Naked…” started to climb the charts.

I started to get excited.

I also decided to go back to that story and add a personal comment from one of my friends that I met 10 years while modeling for her art class. She had texted me her response to reading the story and said that I was welcome to add it, so I did.

Wonderfully enough, I also came across photos I’d taken of sketches people had drawn of me and added those to the story as well.

At some point, I even added a couple more links to other stories at the end, which I believe helped boost views for those stories too.

Some people think that editing stories makes the views go down, but I have yet to find that to be true.

The following stats show otherwise:

The following photo is a screenshot of my top 6 stories for December in terms of earnings.

“How Getting Naked In Front of People For Work Is One Of The Best Things I’ve Ever Done” is #1.

And “To Work At…” came back up after not even being in my top 10 for November.

The grand total that I made for December, 2021 is:

Considering how slow the first half of the month was for me, and I’m still a relatively new writer on this platform, I really didn’t expect to earn close to $350 in December.

I am very grateful to everyone who read, clapped, commented and went so far as to share my stories.

It really means a lot to me.

I hope that my story helps other people on their paths to growth and success- however they defined it.

Here are a few other stories of mine that might be of interest to you:

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