How to Grow a Following and Start Earning Money on Medium

You have to approach it like you’re launching a new business

Hello Friends,

I often get asked for advice on how to get started on Medium. I wish I could give you a miracle pill that you could take and have success the very next day. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.

I think one of the main problems that makes people frustrated with any platform is that their expectations are too high. They put in hard work, but they don’t feel the results match their work. Well, that’s probably true, but that’s also the case any time you start up your own business.

In 2011, I opened the doors on a retail bicycle and cross country ski shop. My partner and I had put in about 3 years of prep. We’d built a loyal customer base by founding a ski team and running events and training camps. We opened our doors in October with advantages other shops don’t have. At the end of our first “year” as a business (it was only 3 months), we were excited to find out that we’d only lost $2,000.

Now, we’d worked very hard for the years leading up to our grand opening and the months that we were open. All of that work amounted to a bottom line of $-2,000. We felt good about it because we knew the summer is the biggest months for sales. Most bike shops in our area make their money from April to August. We kept at it and did manage to become profitable within our first calendar year.

I mention this example just to get you in the right mindset. Writing is a small business. It’s not working for an employer. There’s no clock to check. There’s nowhere you can go to ask for a raise. If you want to make it writing, you have to accept that you’ll likely have to invest a year into getting yourself established during which you’ll see little to no compensation.

As for me, when you add it all up, it’s a lot more than just one year.

Write 1,000 articles

I went into Medium without much direction. I’d wasted a year on Vocal because I’d come in 3^rd in one of their contests and thought that was the path to easy money. In some ways, that victory ended up costing me thousands of dollars. If I’d switched to Medium sooner, I might already have 100k followers.

When I did finally switch to Medium, I decided I’d write 1,000 articles and then evaluate where I stood. This was useful because I think people sometimes get too attached to their own writing. An article is just an article. If it doesn’t succeed the way you expect it will, you can’t put your fist through the wall in frustration. Instead, you have to sit down and try to draw some useful information out of the experience.

My oldest posts on Medium:

My first post says it’s from November of 2016, but that’s a little misleading. I’d originally published that article on my travel blog and I imported it to Medium. The problem with importing articles (at the time), was that it would also import the original publication date.

As you can see, the article got 24 views, 5 reads, and earned 16 cents. Retirement here I come!

Lesson #1: Don’t import your articles, optimize them for Medium

If I was going to do this again, I’d take the time to completely rewrite the article. I’d use my existing article as a form of highly developed outline. I’d improve it. I’d use a better title.

My real Medium Journey began in May of 2020. That’s when I started writing articles specifically for Medium.

Even on this list, some of these articles were imports. I know the Craig DiLouie review also appeared on Vocal. I’ve also included I Stepped in Unicorn Poop? and A Cornucopia of Coolant here on Substack.

I was just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick.

Lesson #2: Experiment, Experiment, Experiment

In June of 2020, I published 70 articles on Medium. This isn’t even all of them:

I hope this provides some context into my “write 1,000 articles” proposal. I figured I was making a commitment of a year.

I was all over the map that month. I wrote everything that came to mind and observed how it performed.

My biggest earner from that month, and a story that represented the first time I started to get excited about earnings on Medium, was this one:

Note, that’s the lifetime earnings for that story. It only made about $18 in that month. Here’s my total partnership payment for that month:

But I’d figured out that establishing a portfolio is how you get paid on Medium. Your work continues to make money for you. Here’s what I was paid in July:

Crossing the $100 barrier on Medium is a big deal. I was quite proud of myself. Not every writer gets there.

And here’s what I was paid in August:

Also, my followers were growing (though I didn’t have any email subscribers):

Lesson #3: Learn and adapt

Today, my Medium profile bears little resemblance to my profile from 2020.

These days, I attempt to do 20 articles a month, and I’m focused on writing Boost worthy content.

Even so, every month I find I have to make slight adjustments to what and how I write. That’s just the nature of the game.

If I were starting out today, I would abandon the objective of 1,000 articles. However, I’d still urge people to give Medium at least a year. Today, you have to produce quality, personalized content and you have to get to know the editors of publications in your topic area.

That being said, do not be afraid to hit “publish.” The best way to learn is to start producing content and to interact with the comments. See how your work performs, and give the people more of what they want. Good luck! As always, leave your questions and I’ll do my best to address them.

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