I Made It To The Hundred Dollar Club
Lessons learned on the slow way to making not that much money
--
So I finally earned over one hundred dollars in a month on Medium. It feels like a landmark, because I’ve seen more than one article about the slim number of writers who get over this threshold.
It is hardly a living, but it’s nice extra bit of change. And far away from the 23 cents I made in my first month on Medium. It just took me two and a half years and 169 articles (as of writing).
Stating it like that makes it sound like a bad deal, but I don’t find it that way. Ultimately, I’m not here for the money, and building an audience on Medium when I had more than one failed blog attempts in my history is very rewarding. Along the way, I’ve learned some lessons that helped guide me through this writing journey.
Back catalog pays off
You will see a lot of “writing on Medium” types of articles that talk about writing more and posting consistently. Which seems to be of the idea of consistently getting more content in front of more eyes. I want to flip that around and look at the end product of writing consistently over a length of time… the back catalog.
Part of it is math. The more you have published, the less any singular article has to earn to add up to a significant amount of money. One article having to earn 100 dollars versus 82 articles earning 100 hundred dollars. Which is how many of my articles earned at least 1 cent this month, August 2022, to ultimately add up to 100 dollars. (Yes, I do have some earning from referred members, but I still got to 100 without the referred member earnings.) The earnings were not an even spread across the 82, but the high amount of the low earners still add up with the fewer articles that are higher earners to get to the ultimate sum.
And my most highest earning article this month? Published in February.
It’s not just the math of the back catalog, it’s also the discoverability. I can see from my very notifications that I have readers who start with one of my newer articles and then read more of my older ones, from my profile, my lists, my links within the article itself, or the Medium recommendations.
