What the Top Medium Earners Are Doing that We Aren’t
5 Key Strategies to help boost your freelance writing income
Medium is getting competitive. As the number of new subscribers grow, so do the number of active writers trying to earn money.
Not only are we responsible for our own traffic, but we’ve also got to try harder to gain the attention of our current readers.
The promotion algorithm and the payment algorithm will continue to change, but there are multiple things we can do to ensure our writing income grows.
Some writing tools are evergreen.
I’ll attempt to deliver them here. These five strategies should apply, whether you write on your own site, you write for Medium, or you create content elsewhere.
Writers write for the reader — else it’s just journaling.
Therefore, we’ve got to focus on the reader’s experience. How do we create compelling content that not only will a reader click-on, but she’ll read it to the end and want to keep in touch so she can get some more?
It’s not about the first story, or the second.
This plan is about keeping a reader for life. When you have a reader for life, you’re build compound-interest around your writing. You start with a single reader. Then ten. Then a thousand. Your readers will pay your mortgage if you give them what they want.
Let’s get you those five strategies, shall we?
5 Strategies to boost your freelance writing income
1. Never waste a reader’s attention — What does this mean? It means you need an email call-to-action at the bottom of every story. No exceptions. If you earned a single reader once, you don’t want to lose that person. You need her on your email list so you can contact her in the future on a platform you own. Your reader won’t spend all day on Medium. She’s in. She’s out. If you are lucky enough to catch a new reader, you’re wasting valuable attention if you don’t have a way to capture her email for future contact.
2. Story titles must rock your reader’s socks — We’ve got no time to dilly-dally. We’re reading stories while we should be doing TPS reports at work, on the train, in line, and in the loo. We read one or two eye-catchers and return to our lives. Will your story catch your reader’s eye? Or will she say “yep, seen it a thousand times,” and scroll to the one with the sock-rocker of a title? You need a sock-rocker. There’s no room for anything else. You get there by writing a lot and paying just as much time and attention to the title as you did the entire story (yep, I said it). Do I always do this? Nope. I’m not a top-earner either… but I’m getting there.
3. The niche is a natural fence around your work — It’s important to own your niche on Medium. You want to be known for a Liam Neeson-like particular set of skills. Refer to number two. Your reader has time to neither dilly nor dally. She’s got a problem. She does a search for those keywords. Your stuff is all over the place. She follows you. You become best friends. She buys everything you sell. Niches help us build tribes we own. Niches help us plant our expertise. Niches get steeches (sorry, prison joke. I had to write that. You can un-roll your eyes now).
4. Entertain and teach — No one wants to read a story that sounds like a dry college lecture. We want to be stimulated and entertained, no talked-down to. We call this infotainment. This is the process of covering vegetable with candy coating. Teach an important message in a fun, memorable way. This delivery is best accomplished with stories. We remember stories on their first telling. Try and do that with a list of dry facts or figures. Our brains our wired for compelling stories. Tell them. Be remembered the first time. Let us walk away feeling like we’ve both eaten the donuts and ran on the treadmill, simultaneously. Capisce?
5. Have a specific voice we recognize — We return to the writers we love, not just for their subject matter, but also the way they deliver the subject matter. You develop your voice by writing a lot. When I first started, I copied the writers I love. As I gained millions of words under my keyboard, my own voice slowly developed. Make bold promises. Have a soapbox. We need to recognize you even if there’s no author attribution. That’s the goal. There’s only one you. What can you do to make that one you shine?
The freedom is in the list
If you want to be a commercial writer, you need to own your traffic. When you own your traffic your own your business. Right now, Medium owns your traffic. On Facespace, they own your traffic etc.
When you have your own email list, you’ve got a tribe you can contact directly.
Email is different.
Yes, there’s an in-box full of stuff, but each email stands alone. There are no cat videos to contend with, or breaking news clips. Plus, if you’re a writer, your audience is made of readers.
Readers love email, because it’s in the format they prefer to digest information. You can’t say that about every customer niche. But we can.
You need an email list yesterday, but today will also work.
I hand-crafted a seven-day email masterclass just for you. Enrollment is free. Past students include NYT bestselling authors you could buy in Barnes and Noble.
I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 readers (or your next 1,000) without spending a hot nickel on ads.
Guarantee your seat before I change my mind.
We’re waiting for you.
Enroll in my Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers
August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.