How I Succeeded in Giving My Medium Articles New Life on Substack
Your articles belong to you, you deserve to make money on them more than once
Hello friends!
Today I want to talk to you about an obvious and often overlooked strategy for maximizing your writing income.
Let me just come out and say it: GET PAID MORE THAN ONCE.
This isn’t an optional approach. You either do it this way or you fail. It’s as simple as that.
Medium’s Boost has been around for about a year and a half at this point and I know that some people are still a little frustrated with the program. I think part of that frustration comes from the fact that many writers are looking at it the wrong way.
You have to keep in mind that Boost isn’t the destination. Boost is just a stop on the way. It’s not this: Write—try for Boost—get Boost—done. It’s this: Write—try for Boost—get boost—wait—publish the story elsewhere—repeat.
Let me walk you through a case study to better explain what I mean.
Repurposing an article from Medium
Above is the stats page from an article that was published at the end of 2022. At $120, it earned pretty well even though it only had a 37% read ratio. Actually, that surprises me because it’s a good article with a lot of photos, so I don’t know what drove people away.
I couldn’t find the exact date that Boost was launched. I’ve been nominating stories since February of 2023, and I think I was in either the 2nd or 3rd group of nominators.
When the program first started, we could select from stories that were up to 6 months old, so my “Illustrated Guide” story should have qualified. However, it’s probably a little too overly political for Medium (which is part of the reason why I started up my Substack).
$120 over the lifetime of a story is fine, even if it takes 2 years to get there. This was also one of the first stories that I did illustrations for. They have an advantage in simplicity, but my artwork has come a long way since then.
This story hit the markers for the kind of thing I want to repurpose on Substack:
Quality evergreen content
Important message that needs more attention
Old enough that the readers who follow me on both platforms might have forgotten about it
Response on Substack
Here’s the response to the same article on Substack. Look at that! A $420 estimated revenue increase!
Now, that’s not quite the same as saying the article made me an additional $420. I could lose those subscribers before I see that. But this is still a VERY positive response. I could fairly say that this article has now made me $540!
If I could consistently make $500 per article, I’d be very happy. Think of it, at 10 articles a month, you’d be making 60k a year! That would significantly ease my stress.
In a statistical oddity, I see the “opened” ratio is almost the same as the read ratio for Medium. Those metrics are different, so even though those numbers are similar, it doesn’t really mean much.
What to do about Medium?
Whether you love or hate Boost, I feel that the program has succeeded in motivating writers to create better work. I’ve recently read a couple of my articles from a couple years ago and they’re not as good as I remember them.
Boost helps encourage writers to edit. I’ve found that some of the articles I’ve reposted on Substack have needed significant trimming.
Even if you’re frustrated with Medium, or you feel growth is too slow, or you are annoyed that your work isn’t getting Boosted, I encourage you all to stick with the platform.
Get to know the nominators
Write quality articles
Try for the Boost
Whether your story gets Boosted or not, that’s just the beginning. Sometimes you get Boosted and you don’t make a lot of money. I feel best when a Boosted story makes around $200, but sometimes even Boosted stories only make in the $10-$50 range.
When that happens, you should reconsider your title, featured image, and topic.
Then, you should make the appropriate adjustments and try the article on a new platform. The thing is, you still get to keep the $50 you made on Medium. Whatever you make on Substack, or any other platform is just extra! You can even submit the article to a journal or magazine that accepts reprints (look for markets here—click the “no fee” button).
Challenge yourself to create better content
The way I see it, thinking about Boost helps establish a standard. Once you hit that standard, your work should be more marketable even if it doesn’t earn up to expectations on Medium.
Over the last year, my work has gotten a lot better. Whenever I scroll through articles from a year ago, I find a LOT of superfluous language that I can remove. To date, I’ve been republishing those articles on Substack without significant changes, but it’s getting so that I can’t help myself.
In most cases, your work belongs to you (assuming you didn’t sign some contract to relinquish your ownership). You are allowed to go through and make it better. The heavy lifting is the part where you write a story from scratch. When it comes to polishing off an already good article for a new platform, you might only need an hour or so.
In the case study I mentioned in this article, publishing on a new platform got me an additional $420 in earnings! You can do the same thing. It’s not going to happen every time, but if you can get another $40, or $80, or $120 on an article for the time it takes to republish, you’re ahead of the game!
You have to get the most that you can out of everything you write. You absolutely HAVE to work out a strategy to repurpose your old work.
As always, leave your comments below!
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GRACIAS
A very helpful and motivating story. Thanks Walter.