So, I’ve made some money on Medium. Finally.
How much, you ask?
$0.03.
Yup, three cents. And I’m pretty chuffed about it.
Let me explain.
Why you shouldn’t chase the big numbers as a blogger
There are two ways to get paid when blogging:
- Writing for clients.
- Writing for publications like Medium.
You may not agree with my terminology above; to you, Medium might be something entirely different to a publication. If so – tell me what it is in the comments. Regardless, I firmly believe these are the only two avenues available to you if you’ve decided you want to make money from blogging.
Here’s the truth. Option 1 can be very profitable indeed. It is for me and forms around 40% of my income. Option 2? That will never be a full time job – for me, at least.
Medium is littered with get-rich-quick articles. If you join the site and start following and reading articles about making money from writing, your Daily Digest will contain at least one piece each day titled something like:
How I made $400,000 in my first month of blogging
Some may be true. Others, I suspect, are complete bullshit. They are teeth-grindingly irritating.
You’ll never make that much money blogging, and you certainly won’t on Medium. If you’ve joined Medium to make a shed load of money, you’ll be sorely disappointed and your content will suffer as a result.
This is why you should never chase the big numbers as a blogger. They exist, but they’re incredibly difficult to find, and you’ll only exhaust yourself to the point of giving up entirely.
And that would be a real shame.
Why my $0.03 matters
So far, I’ve earned those 3 cents from this article, and I’m really happy about it.
I’ve earned more on Medium than that in the past; I have another account which racked up $10 in earnings from another Apple-related post. Although, I missed the fact I’d made those earnings entirely until about six months later when the money dropped into my account.
Back to today, and those three tiny cents matter to me, because they’re the first bite of the apple (if you’ll excuse the pun). They make the hard work that goes into writing consistently for a platform like Medium entirely worth it and, more importantly, they demonstrate that my writing is being enjoyed.
It may also surprise you to hear that those earnings came from just three views.
Publish a blog on your own website or on a platform like LinkedIn, and you won’t earn three cents from it. Even if you bundle it full of affiliate links, you probably won’t earn a penny (or cent – sorry, I’m British) for a very long time – if at all.
Getting paid for column-style writing is bloody hard these days. To be able to make a few cents from nothing but your time is, therefore, testament not just to Medium as a platform but to what the internet can be if we all come together and create, share and curate great content.
That $0.03 might grow. It might not. I don’t really care – genuinely. I’m just happy people are reading it. That’s what matters.
Want to get paid for writing?
Check out my 4 tips for getting paid as a writer. They may help you quit your dead-end, boring job and enable you to do something you love doing. Just don’t expect to be a millionaire by the end of your first year.
