If You Are Here for the Money, You Might Want To Read This

We are here because we love writing, but it’s okay to make money along the way. It’s nothing else than fair compensation for the work done.

I’ve seen a hundred writers earn money on this platform, many droppers, and many others that have been here since dinosaurs chilled in New york.

Today, I want to share all the knowledge I’ve accumulated about making money on this platform. You’ll learn how to avoid dropping too early and what you should change to get the best out of Medium.

Let’s get going!

The One Thing

There are too many readers worried about a lot of insignificant stuff.

My stats are down; what I’m doing wrong? My articles aren’t making $1,000; why? Should I write CEO for every article?

This is a writing platform, so top writers do only one thing: They write. Writing is the reason for 99% of your success here, so don’t lose time trying to figure everything out.

Of course, you’ll have black days, black weeks, and black months along the way. But your job is to write, not to look at the stats every five minutes so that they don’t fall.

Believe me; the green bars will take care of themselves.

Our Inspiration

Tim Denning writes about eight articles a week, and he has had some pretty rough months. According to him, he didn’t make a single cent out of his writing in the first two years.

In other words, if you have a $0,01 article on your page and it’s your first year, you are already doing better than him. The only difference is that he has stuck for the VERY LONG haul. I think this is his 6th year on Medium.

If you make a few sums here and there, the result is that he has around 2,000 articles alive and kicking in the platform. And he just did it by writing, and doing it for a very long time.

Get That Soldiers!

Each article works for you. Every time you write, you are creating a soldier that will make you money until the end of time.

If it gets curated, it could be promoted for months or even years. In other words, articles you wrote in 2019 could make you money today. That’s the beautiful thing about Medium; articles are everlasting.

Now, Tim Denning, with an army of 2,000 pieces of text, it’s obvious that he could stop writing and still keep making money for a very long time. After all, that’s what inspires a lot of us, the possibility of ending up in the same hall of fame as him.

So, how many soldiers are you creating weekly? One, three, five?

Realize that if you write one (1) article every week, Tim Denning (who writes 8 a week) is getting in 7 days the experience that you would gain in two months of writing.

In other words, each year you expend writing one article a week is the equivalent of Tim’s 8 years of experience. 5 years after, he would have the experience of 40 years!

Did I make my point clear?

Surviving Through the Storm

One of the most underrated factors here is to survive storms. What storms am I talking about?

We don’t know how the Medium algorithm works, but we know for sure that stats aren’t going up all the time. Like the stock market, we have sudden drops in our views, and we don’t really know why.

The people that don’t even care and keep writing are the ones that make the most money here. I remember reading an article from Tim where he said that there were days he was getting just 500 views.

Is that a lot? Not at all. This guy has 30,000 views days, so every rational person will PANIC after seeing 500-views days. But he didn’t; he just continued writing.

When do I know that I’ve to change?

The rule of thumb I use is the three-month rule. It goes like this:

If my best-performing month (views-wise) is at least three months away from today, then I need to change something. That much time without improving means that I’m doing something wrong, so I change my approach.

This way, I’m completely still when the bad weather comes (and, believe me, it always comes). I changed my short-term approach to a long-term one, so now I sleep like a baby.

Nothing New

After all, everyone knows what’s the formula for success here. Write a lot and do it for a long time.

But, when motivation decays, we try to look for short-term fixes to explain our decadence. We read articles like “Five ways to wake up full of energy” or “The hidden secret to success on Medium.”

We start thinking that we can skip the hard and obvious part of writing just by following some plastic tips about motivation.

The harsh truth is that there’s no secret. It is not about knowing the way to do it; it’s about having the guts to actually do it. Let me explain myself:

People often think that they don’t have the recipe for success on Medium. They think that they have to learn something that they still don’t know in order to succeed.

It’s the opposite because there’s nothing to learn. They should worry about doing the work, not deciphering how to do it. I understand that there’s no guarantee of success, and therefore you look for hidden secrets to have an edge.

But learning to have faith in yourself is just part of the process.

What’s the fun if success was already given?