My First Pay-out On Medium ($117.76) And How I Did It.

1. How It All Started

I was an avid youtube learner always searching for a side hustle. Well, I don’t know whether to call it side hustle because I wasn’t having any main hustle.

After watching a few videos of testimonies of how Medium is making money for others I decided to give it a try. After all, I read a lot and love typing and I can create a few stories.

I wrote my first story on March 17, 2024 as a free member. I couldn’t put my stories behind the wall till August 28, 2024. I was sceptical until I saw some of my free stories hitting over 1k read. Then I started wondering, what if I put these stories behind the pay wall?

On the 28, August 2024 I was able to finally put my articles behind the pay wall. For that four days before the end of the month of August, I earned $1.31 dreading why I had not put my story behind the wall earlier.

2. My writing journey

I was writing stories that I found interesting which I believe my readers may also like to read. I wasn’t following any niche.

Over time I realised that, my stories on relationships are making me more money than any other. I was making as much as $40.29 on one story with 1.2k reads.

In the month of September I did barely $7.95 I realised this is real and I have to put in real effort. I started writing every day in the month of October 2024.

Since my payment in August and September couldn’t get to $10 my earnings were rolled over. The August and September came up to be $9.26

In October I earned $111.07 this to me is quite exciting, and I pinched myself for not putting my stories behind the wall earlier.

3. The Stories I Focused On

I focused on general stories by just looking around me and picking on stories that interested me. I know about the niche issue but the question I ask is, if the general stories could earn this much will the niche stories do better?

But on a whole, my relationships stories always earn better and higher returns than any of my other stories. I’m now making the decision either to follow solely the relationship niche or continue as a mix.

4. How the month of November is doing

The month of November to me has started very slow, as I’m writing this on the 9th November, 2024 my earning totals $16.85 though I’m expecting it to pick up pretty soon.

I haven’t posted any story for two days, I’m currently focusing on engagement to see if this will change events and increase my earnings.

The dilemma of either to write daily or rather spend enough time crafting very good and interesting stories is currently my battle.

This is because most of my stories had very low view to read ratio and I believe may be I churned them out too quickly.

I would love members on this platform and my followers to also share their experience and views about these pertinent issues with me.

Most especially about the niche, whether to continue to write generally or go down the relationship niche.

Also, writing daily as against publishing very detailed and good story every now and then.

5. My general statistics so far

Currently as I write, I have 658 views, 497 reads and 684 following. I did the $117.78 with 4.5k views and 3.5k reads. With this low start up, I kept wondering how well the month of November 2024 will end.

I want to look at different strategies for the Christmas season, whether it will be ideal to focus on the season and write more about Christmas. Please if anyone has any experience with that let me know in the comment.

This is my journey so far and would really love to continue with updates at the end of this November. Thanks for reading.

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