When a Relative Newbie Tried to Make Medium a Full-Time Job
Here’s what happened
Many Medium writers would love to make a living on Medium. Those people with huge followings probably can. But what about the rest of us? What about people who’ve only been here a year and perhaps have 1000 followers?
Well after a good run of viral articles, Edward John decided to give it a go and make Medium his full-time job. The plan was to build on his early success and grow his readership, to earn a full-time income. He was out of work at the time, so had time on his hands, nothing to lose, and everything to gain. This is what happened…
Edward found a niche on Medium that worked for him, writing spiritual critiques, and debates. He’d earned hundreds of dollars writing on those subjects, earning $300 to $400 a month writing part-time. His stories on Eckhart Tolle got a lot of traction and one of his meditation articles also did very well, exploring how he personally had benefited from integrating meditation into his daily life.
Edward was earning hundreds on Medium part-time, so logically he thought he could scale that up. If he put more hours into it and produced more content, he could multiply that success and make it a full-time job. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it?
Edward also enjoyed writing humour and got a lot of pleasure from writing funny articles online. He admitted his funny articles didn’t earn much, but he enjoyed writing them and hoped to grow his readership in that niche.
Edward continued to write articles on spiritual subjects, talking about spiritual gurus and challenging flaws in some of their ideas. His articles created a lot of debate and some people thought they were controversial. He was doing well and felt motivated.
He kept writing humour just because he loved it, and enjoyed coming up with crazy ideas for funny articles that made him laugh.
The problem, however, was that Edward’s early success didn’t seem to be scalable. Even though he went full-time on Medium, he didn’t see his income grow in line with all the extra work he was putting in. His income was pretty static.
After five months of trying to make Medium a full-time job, he felt it wasn’t working, so he started to look for better-paying gigs elsewhere, and had some success on Upwork. Once he focused on Upwork instead, his income on Medium started to fall. Eventually, Edward pretty much gave up on Medium.
Now he does most of his work through Upwork where clients offer him a set fee for writing about a wide range of subjects. He uses AI to help him speed through jobs, which aren’t well paid, but do at least guarantee him a minimum income, unlike Medium. He plans his time accordingly, to guarantee a reasonable amount of pay for a day’s work.
These days, Edward only posts on Medium occasionally. He seems to have given up on the platform, having only posted one article in the past month. He’s previously said Medium sucks up time. And it doesn’t deliver the rewards he needs to pay the rent.
It’s a story of trial and error — someone whose Medium journey started off so well, but somehow his formula for success stopped working. Or at least, doing more of the same thing, failed to deliver the same results.
He doesn’t regret trying to make Medium a full-time job though. He says it’s something he wanted to try and he had the time available to do that. It didn’t work out, so now he’s trying something else, which has worked better for him. Upwork delivers a more reliable income. And that’s OK.
The moral of the story, however, is that Medium is unpredictable and early success can turn into disappointing results very quickly. Spending more time on the platform doesn’t guarantee you more earnings. Sometimes, it’s better just to post something when you’re in the mood!
Consistency is helpful in bringing eyes to your stories, but Edward’s experience shows that it’s probably better not to quit the day job so you can work on Medium full-time. It’s too unpredictable.
Edward’s first six months on Medium were remarkably successful. But it didn’t last. You can read his story about his first six months here.
© Susie Kearley 2023. All Rights Reserved.
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