No articles were boosted, but I celebrate this achievement nonetheless
Where focus goes, energy flows. — Tony Robbins
I am a believer now!
It’s not easy, but you can succeed on Medium if you put the work in.
August 2023 was the first month I earned more than $100 through the Medium Partner Program (MPP).
August 2023 was my most productive month since I joined Medium.
Since the start of this year, I’ve been constantly working on establishing my writing habits. I usually write before work, check comments & engage in a few Medium writing communities during the day, and write some more after work — only when my schedule allows.
I don’t mean this article to brag. After all, the amount of money can’t be compared to the earnings the ‘big guns’ achieve monthly here. I only want to document my journey, and I hope it inspires you to keep writing on Medium.
Now, let’s talk about statistics.
I closed the month with 689 followers.
178 new people decided to follow my words. It’s so amazing that people want to read what I share. But even more remarkable is the follower count outnumbers the number of followers in the entire year of 2023 (from January to July).
It shows me I do something right. I feel encouraged by my readers.
No surprise; this was the best month regarding views, too!
I usually have ~3,000 views in a month; however, my views went above 8,000 in August!
However, I need to mention my experiment that in 7 days, I added 100 comments to Medium stories, so the views that my comments generated also included in the 8,000 views. I hope we’ll have the old Medium stats back soon to see how many views are actual reads out of the 8,000.
$153.89! I know it’s not a lot to many people, but it means so much that I could cry.
I’ve been part of MPP since July 2021, but my earnings only reached above $40 4 times, and only once above $50! I’m sure you understand how ecstatic I am about August’s story earnings.
I don’t use fancy tools like Notion, Trello, or Airtable, and you don’t need those tools either.
I recently developed a spreadsheet that keeps me accountable, and I use it daily to track my Medium content. I like to be organized and needed a system to monitor the tasks and status related to my content.
I published 15 articles in August. Most (12) are long-form stories with a few exceptions (3 pieces are shorter than 500 words).
Case-study-style articles work well because they help people. For example, whenever you read about my journey of selling ebooks, you get a guide on how to market your ebooks correctly.
Two articles are responsible for the bulk of my earnings.
The Side Hustle Club took one of my best-performing & earning stories at the end of July. That article alone brought me in $39. Because I published the story in July, I consider this as passive income now.
Even after a month, it still exceeds my expectations.
The article has its own life because it keeps finding its audience, my audience, people who need ebook publishing help at the right time.
Whoever reads the article appreciates it because they can immediately apply the learnings to their own ebook creation. I love that article! And I love the fact that it’s useful.
It’s a must-read for whoever wants to make extra cash with a digital book online. I expect this article will serve my audience in the long term and provide me with passive income for months to come.
My other article has a super niche audience: UX designers — I work full-time in tech as a UX design lead. That story is an opinion piece and slightly polarizing. I didn’t expect less because designers are an argumentative bunch (Sorry, designers, I heart you, I am one of you, I know you!).
The story is not for everyone. Only UX and product designers click on it (and maybe recruiters). But it’s a great read because it’s a personal opinion with industry anecdotes.
Even though it doesn’t have many comments, it has plenty of highlights that resonate with designers. Readers spend a long time on it. We know the reading time has been crucial since August, and just looking at the story’s earnings, I can tell it performs well — even though it’s not even a 2-weeks old article.
It’s not evergreen content, so I expect the interest in the story will slowly die out, and in a few months, no one will visit the article.
I applied to be a writer for 8 publications, and 4 of them accepted me. Don’t ask me why the rest didn’t. Maybe I don’t write articles that resonate with them, even though I think I do.
If the same happens to you, move on.
Many publications on Medium would happily embrace your stories.
I’ve been experimenting with sharing my articles (with the friendly link) on LinkedIn and X (Twitter). I haven’t seen lots of people coming through yet.
In software development, we hold a retrospective after each sprint to discuss what went well, what didn’t go well, and what we needed to change. The retro is a chance for the product team to reflect and learn from the past. I decided to apply this to my Medium reports.
Next, I want to measure how much time I spend writing each article to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI). ROI is a profitability metric to evaluate how well an investment has performed.
At least, I’d like to see how much my hourly rate is. I don’t have high hopes, assuming it’ll be pretty low. But that’s OK because I plan to play a super long game.
I heard great things about Pinterest and read stories about how writers were able to leverage the platform with success. I’m keen to give it a go sometime soon. I know it’ll be a huge undertaking because I need to design eye-catching pins for over 70 articles, but I hope it’ll be worth it. I will certainly report back!
This was not luck.
This $153.89 is simply the outcome of my focus and energy.
I’m excited about the journey ahead.