Lessons from a $1,000+ Article on Medium

Let's reverse engineer this article and see if we can learn anything

I cut this panel from my $1,000+ earning article, I guess it was probably the right choice

Hello Everyone!

The main topic of debate in the writing world for the month of August has been the changes to Medium’s partner program. In fact, my friend Jason was so excited about it that he wrote about his earnings after only one day. That was a smart topic because he knew that people were curious (know your audience).

I’ve seen a lot of threads on various social media platforms where writers have been expressing their frustration over a drop in earnings. It always pains me to see that because I know some very good writers have had off months. I’ve gone through my own periods where I’ve had a significant drop in earnings and it’s always tough to navigate.

Change is the one constant in writing, and honestly it’s probable that the second month with the new changes to the partner program will be significantly different from the first. Part of that is because writers will learn to tweak their work to better align with the new expectations, and part of it is because I expect Medium will also make slight adjustments on the internal side (that’s just speculation on my part).

As for me, I had my best ever earnings month in August, but even so I am already making changes to how I expect to approach my writing in September. On top of that, summer is winding down so I have to finish up my home improvement projects and try to get the family out on the river a few more times.

There’s a lot going on, as always, so let’s dig into how we can make some money writing.

A $1,000+ article

One of my articles earned more all by itself than I’ve made for entire months of work. This is my most lucrative article on Medium to this point. I’ve had a couple in the $500-$800 range, but never $1,000+. I know that some writers on Medium have articles that have earned them in the 5k+ or even 10k+ range, but I’m not that kind of writer.

The approach I take is for consistency. I like producing quality work, and I’d actually be super content to write a 1,500 word article daily and make $100 on it. The big numbers are nice, but I just don’t see it happening on a regular basis.

Having said that, I’m definitely going to repeat the tactics I used for this high performing article in the hopes of catching lightning in a bottle twice. The trick is to not be disappointed if the subsequent articles don’t make $1,000+, and to be satisfied if they make $100 (which is my goal).

If you don’t have reasonable expectations as a writer, you’re fabricating stress. You’ve got to manage your aspirations so that you’re sincerely delighted when things go well.

What made this article perform?

The article was already showing a rise in viewers when it got boosted. That took it from daily views of around 320 to 1.6k. Those are good numbers, but by themselves the views don’t really explain the high payout.

So, the question is, why was this article earning so much on good but not spectacular visits?

The answer is the read ratio.

The irony is that my last entry for the column I write for The Writing Cooperative was on the topic of read ratio. If you don’t know, this is the difference between the number of people who click on your title and the number that actually read the whole article.

Again, in the modern writing market, this is something you have to be thinking about. As for me, I don’t generally aspire to write “crowd pleasing” work that doesn’t offend anyone. In fact, I often deliberately try to offend people.

That’s a little bit of an overstatement so let me explain with an example:

When a teacher tells a child that he’s failed a math test, the kid doesn’t like to hear it, right? However, showing the child where he needs to improve is critical to helping the child find success. No matter how nice you are about telling a child that he’s failed, it still stings.

In a lot of my writing, I like to attack sacred concepts. Many people, consciously or not, make a bunch of assumptions before they even begin to contemplate the various social problems confronting us. There are “sacred concepts” that people believe are unquestionable. The problem is that when you start your thinking based on those assumptions, you always arrive at the same conclusions. The key to progress is to go backwards and look for flaws in our sacred beliefs. Yes, it’s uncomfortable for people, but it’s where the answers are.

So, how did I keep readers engaged in an article where I was deliberately attempting to dismantle sacred beliefs?

I used watercolor paintings.

I like to dabble in art

One of the things I do to preserve my sanity is stop writing at around 10:30 and do some sketches. Then I color the sketches with watercolor pens and outline them with ink. On days when I’m really feeling ambitious, I take photos of these colored sketches, upload them into Photoshop, and rearrange them into cartoons.

Originally, in my Cycling article, I’d used a watercolor image for the featured image. However, the editor at Ellemeno (or lmno as it appears on the page header) told me they needed a photo for the featured image. Speaking of that, I think I switched out the photo 3 times before I found one I liked. There are a couple little details in the feature photo that made this one perfect, but I’ll let you discover those for yourself.

For whatever reason, I thought it would be fun to do some cartoons/illustrations that conveyed what I was discussing in the text. What I suspect happened (again, I’m just speculating) is that I got lucky and inserted those images right where readers started to lose interest. I think when a person sees a cartoon coming, they think, “Oh, what the heck, I might as well keep scrolling.”

The result is that my Cycling article had an 84% read ratio in the first few days (it’s dropped since then, but it’s still hovering around 75%).

So, the consequence of all this is that you’re going to be seeing more watercolor cartoons in my articles. I like doing them, so why not?

Of course, you need to pick a topic that captivates people and discuss it with a personal touch. However, don’t hesitate to add in cartoons or personal photos, I think that makes all the difference.

I’m not promising you’ll land a $1,000+ performing article

Please, please, please don’t make the mistake of thinking the purpose of this article is to provide a tutorial into how to write an article that makes $1,000+. I honestly don’t know how to do that. I’m just reverse engineering an article I wrote that performed like that, but it’s all guesswork.

For this one, the result happened because of the earnings multiplier for a boost and the earnings multiplier for a high read ratio combined with solid views. If this article had received 10k views instead of 1k views on the first big day of earnings, it would have earned $4,000 instead of $400 on that day (assuming the read ratio remained high and the views were internal).

Are you getting a sense of the massive number of variables involved?

At this point, about a week after publication, the article is now being shown to a less receptive audience. The result is that I’m getting some really arrogant comments. You probably won’t see them because I usually block the author after reading the first few words. I suppose I shouldn’t because anyone who scrolls down to the bottom to write a comment counts as a read, and the fact that they leave a comment counts in my favor in terms of the engagement ratio.

I think that’s fool’s gold though. I don’t want intellectually dishonest comments that are only designed to sway public opinion.

My final takeaway is that I don’t expect high performing articles like this to become the norm even with the changes to the partner program. I feel very good about consistently writing articles that make $100, and I’m ecstatic about articles that make me $500. $1,000+ is off the charts. I don’t have a reaction to that other than to take a day off and work on the fairy novel I’m writing for my kids.

Having said that, yes, I’m absolutely going to go for it again. I’ll let you know next Monday how that works out.

In the meantime, I’ve got what I think is a pretty solid article coming up for my column on The Writing Cooperative today. Go give that a look. As always, don’t hesitate to leave your comments below!