What I’ve Recently Realized About Success on Medium

It’s been a week full of epiphanies and it’s starting to pay off

When I first started writing on Medium, I was looking for a hobby. Ever since I was a little girl, writing has been a passion of mine. There was something beautiful and freeing about pouring my thoughts out onto a blank page, watching a story unravel before my eyes.

There were very few things that made my heart feel full the way writing did. Best of all, I was constantly receiving praise from teachers, parents, and classmates. For someone who has always been insecure, these compliments fostered my love for writing even more. To this day, people I went to high school with still ask me if I’m writing, urging me not to quit. When I found Medium, it seemed like the perfect platform to let my mind run wild.

Although I’ve always dreamed of making a living off of writing, this wasn’t something I set out to do on Medium. In fact, when I began writing on the platform, I didn’t even realize you could make money from your stories. I thought it was just a cleverly designed platform that connected writers with readers.

Up to the point when I realized there was a way to actually profit from writing on Medium, I had simply been writing for fun and self-expression. At the time, the greatest reward for my work was the responses I would receive from readers, telling me they enjoyed my work.

But then I heard about the Medium Partner Program.

Suddenly, I started reading story after story about how to boost your earnings on the platform. I saw Medium as the pathway to earning a sizeable monthly income from writing. While I worked long hours ghostwriting for freelance clients, Medium shone like a beacon of hope that I could actually make money writing about what I wanted to write about.

Setting Out to Make Money on Medium

Since joining the Medium Partner Program, I’ve had good months and bad months in regards to how much I’ve earned. Back in August, my best month on Medium so far in terms of earnings, I was blown away by how much I was able to earn.

Back in August, I spent hours upon hours cranking out one story after the other, doing my best to publish at least one new story per day. After all, some of the biggest writers on Medium swore that publishing once a day was the key to success. While some of my stories didn’t generate much of an interest, I wrote some of my most high-earning stories ever that month and those stories still earn me a sizeable income even now.

My most well-received story, which you can find by clicking here, still manages to bring in a large portion of my earnings each month. While it certainly isn’t the highest-earning story on the platform, I feel accomplished to have earned what I have from such a personal piece.

Since August, however, I’ve noticed a pretty severe drop in earnings from my stories. While I’m continuously gaining followers and my stories still earn a significant amount of views each month, it seems as though I’ve hit a lull. Discouraged, I started to do some reflecting to identify what was causing me to earn less. There were a few things that came to mind as obvious.

For one, I had started to drop the ball in terms of my output. In August, I was publishing at least one new story per day (sometimes two) and in the months since, I’ve let a week (or more) go by in-between stories. My freelance work had picked up significantly and between that and my full-time job, I just didn’t have the time to write as often.

Secondly, I realized that I was undergoing a pretty significant period of burnout. In August, I was able to come up with idea after idea almost effortlessly. For this reason, it was much easier to publish a story on a consistent basis. Unfortunately, it seems like I’ve lost my groove in the months since. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with ideas but it’s been difficult. Even when I do come up with something, it seems as though the story doesn’t do nearly as well in terms of views as I had hoped.

With these revelations in mind, I decided I needed to change up how I operated. I told myself I needed to simply find the time to write on Medium more often. I decided that no matter how difficult it seemed to come up with ideas, I needed to post at least once per day. Otherwise, my earnings were going to suffer.

Motivated to replicate the results I saw in August, I set forth to write.

My Lightbulb Moment About Success on Medium

One thing I’ve learned in the past couple of weeks is that sometimes no matter how motivated you are, things just aren’t going to happen the way you want them to. I told myself that what I lacked was the motivation and that if I could just motivate myself to publish more frequently, my earnings would see another rise.

As it turns out, I was only running myself further into the ground.

I spent hours in front of my laptop, trying desperately to come up with ideas that would surely earn me views.

I read story after story from Medium writers who earn most of their income from the platform, searching tirelessly for inspiration.

I researched what tends to perform well on Medium and started brainstorming things I could write about within that niche.

Still, the figurative well was dry. I was struggling to write more than ever before.

Then I had a series of important epiphanies about success on Medium. I realized I was going about everything the wrong way.

The Key to Success on Medium is Your Mindset

The first thing I realized about success on Medium is that it’s all about your mindset. I had this epiphany because I asked myself one very simple question: “Why was it so easy for you to write back in August?”. The answer was illuminating: I was enjoying it.

Each story that I wrote in August was something I was genuinely passionate about. I was writing because I had something meaningful to say. I was writing because I wanted to be heard and connect with like-minded readers. I was writing because I loved what I was talking about.

This led me to think about my first few months on Medium before I had even joined the Medium Partner Program. I was simply writing because I loved to write. Money wasn’t a part of the equation. My motivation to write was developing a relationship with my audience, putting words on paper to offer solutions to the problems I shared with them. When I spoke to my readers, they found a piece of themselves in what I had to say and that kept them coming back.

Put simply, during my most successful periods on Medium, I was operating in a completely different mindset. When writing on Medium was fulfilling (and even profitable), I was writing for the joy of writing. When writing on Medium became stressful and difficult, I was writing for the money. My mindset had changed and I was focused on profit, not the thing that drives great writing: a love of writing.

In realizing this, I’ve decided to change how I do things on Medium. Instead of writing for profit, I’m going to write for passion. Instead of worrying about my output, I’m going to pour my soul into creating content that has something to say. When I write, I’m going to be writing to enlighten, encourage, and connect. If I’m not genuinely passionate about a topic, I’m going to leave it on the shelf. I’ve focused on what Medium can offer me and not what I can offer Medium for far too long now.

If you look to the most successful writers on this platform, you’ll see a pattern: they write to foster connection. That’s why they are where they are. If I genuinely want to join them, I need to step back and remember why I love to write in the first place. My love for writing was never about money until recently. My love for writing is more than that and I owe it to myself and my readers to remember that. I’m changing my mindset.

The Key to Sucess on Medium is Quality, Not Quantity

When I read so many stories from Medium writers that I considered to be doing much better than I was and they stated that the key to success was publishing at least once per day, I decided that’s what I had to do. Unfortunately, this led to me scraping together articles even when I didn’t have a topic that I was interested in writing about. The result was completely uninspired writing that held no clear purpose, providing no meaningful takeaways for readers.

While publishing one story per day on Medium is a well-intentioned plan meant to foster momentum, there’s a reason that those who set out to do so and end up failing fall short. In an effort to post consistently, their writing lacks substance and is often filled with errors proving that they were focused on cranking out something just to remain consistent.

Sure, nothing is ever perfect but I believe that readers on Medium are seriously smart people that can tell the difference between something published just for the sake of publishing and something created with thought, effort, and time. If you want people to read your stories, you need to offer them something worthy of their time. That’s why I’ve elected to choose quality over quantity from now on. I’ll see how that turns out.

The challenge here is to assess the substance of your writing. Are you putting in the effort to publish high-quality content that will reward you for the time you put into it or are you simply cranking out mediocre stories for the sake of earning a couple of bucks that day? Ask yourself that question seriously and let it inform your actions going forward.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather work long and hard on a story that will resonate with my readers and even earn money for the foreseeable future than to publish something lackluster to earn a few cents for one day.

The Key to Success on Medium is Connecting With Your Readers

When I first started writing on Medium, one thing I loved so much about the platform was that it was clearly designed to connect writers with readers in a meaningful way. I quickly learned who my audience was and every story I put out was written with them in mind. If they had a problem, damn it, I was going to solve it! If they had a question, I was going to put my all into answering it. If they had strong feelings about something, I wanted to address it head-on.

I believe my readers sensed how badly I wanted to connect with them specifically and they appreciated this about my writing. In the last few months, I’ve been so entirely focused on writing content that will please everyone that I forgot who my following is. If you look to those who do well for themselves on Medium, you’ll find a dedicated audience standing behind them. Those writers know who their audience is and they write for them. They don’t try to please everyone on Medium, they work hard to offer something meaningful to those who support them.

Every title that you ever come up with on Medium should be written with your specific audience in the back of your mind. Further, the content that follows needs to deliver a clear takeaway that is intended for that specific audience. If you don’t provide value to your readers, they won’t come back. You’ll simply miss out on what could have been a beautiful writer-reader relationship.

The most successful stories on this platform are those that aim to entertain, delight, inform, and resonate with a specific group of readers. Don’t worry about how everyone else is going to react- just write for your readers. Write about what you want to write about and you are sure to attract readers who want to hear what you have to say. Don’t worry about what the most popular tags are or what’s trending on Medium. Just write for your loyal followers. That’s how you build an audience, a loyal audience that will continue to listen to you.

Here’s to My New Beginning on Medium

After these epiphanies hit me like a brick in the face, I noticed a sense of relief that reverberated throughout my entire body. I had been struggling for months to identify why I wasn’t doing well on Medium. This was especially difficult considering I had felt what it was like to be successful at one time. I knew I was capable but something was holding me back. Now I know what those things were.

I’m going to continue writing on Medium bearing these important things in mind. I’m going to write because I love writing, I’m going to worry about the quality and less about quantity, and I’m going to write for my readers. Now that I’ve decided on these things, I feel like I’m going to turn over a new leaf. I feel like I’m about to start working meaningfully towards the success that I’ve always wanted to experience. I feel rejuvenated, revived, and hopeful.

These epiphanies reminded me that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is never going to work. I have to change things. After all, if I’m focused on writing several stories a week with little regard to my quality as a writer, I’m never going to get anywhere. I want to consistently improve. I want to learn. I want to go on the journey.

If you want to be successful on Medium (and I’m assuming you do, otherwise you wouldn’t have made it this far) you have to start asking yourself what isn’t working for you. When I stopped wallowing in self-pity and made meaningful strides towards identifying the problem, I came to solid conclusions that I feel are going to pay off. Now is the time to stop and reflect.

Want to be successful on Medium? Try something different and wait to see how it rewards you.