New Writers on Medium MUST keep writing and publishing
By: Lana Graham
Tags: Publishing, Writing Tips, Consistency, Careers, Writing

New Writers on Medium MUST keep writing and publishing

If you’re looking to make any sort of income with your writing on Medium, you have to do the hard yards

Photo by Max Ilienerwise on Unsplash

My ‘career’ started on Medium in January 2019, when I wrote my very first article. Surprisingly, it was picked up by The Writing Cooperative. At the time, I didn’t realise I could publish my work in publications, so it was a pleasant surprise to get a message from them asking to add my article to their publication.

It wasn’t until May 2019 when I began to fully understand how Medium works by paying its writers, that I joined the Medium Partner Program. That’s when I started to think I could actually make money from my writing and possibly even make a living out of it.

Fast forward to July 2020 and my last monthly earning was US$1.80. Not exactly a sustainable salary for a writer with three young kids living in Australia. To be honest, I haven’t made enough money to sustain a writing career solely on Medium, and to be even more honest, I haven’t exactly been trying too hard to accomplish that career.

What I discovered during my year and a half of writing on Medium is that there was one significant thing that affected my earnings.

You might have already guessed it, but that one thing was how many articles I published on Medium. It all comes down to simple output, at least for new writers who don’t have a huge subscriber base or for those of us who aren’t famous people.

My highest earning month was from late August to late September 2019, when I earned US$29.63. During that month I published eight articles, which isn’t a huge amount, compared to many writers on Medium, but one of the articles earned US$9 that month, which was a pretty big deal for me (and still is).

My last monthly paycheck of $1.80 is a result of me not writing for over two months. No, let me rephrase that, it is a result of not publishing for over two months. I was surprised to still make money when I wasn’t writing, but that’s the beauty of Medium because your articles can keep earning money many months or even years after you’ve published them. I’ve still been writing during those two quiet months — but not publishing my drafts because I don’t feel proud of them.

Perhaps it’s the perfectionist in me, but I find it really hard to finish writing articles. I get about halfway through and then I go back to the beginning and start editing the mistakes, or rephrasing paragraphs. Then I get side-tracked by another shiny new topic that’s trending on Medium and think, oh, I can write about that, too!

Putting my perfectionist tendencies aside, the key takeaway for new writers on Medium is to be consistent. Keep writing, and keep publishing. One of the most helpful pieces of advice I received was from Shaunta Grimes, who said that new writers should create their own publication, rather than always trying to get their work published in ‘big-name’ Medium publications.

I listened to her advice and started Mama Write, a publication about being a mum of three young sons living in Australia and trying to build a writing career. I managed to get 16 subscribers and those subscribers are the ones who gave me the time of day to read my articles. I probably made my first paycheck off them.

While my career on Medium hasn’t exactly turned out the way I expected, the past year and a half has taught me a lot about writing online and how much effort and consistency is actually required to achieve a decent result. If money is your key objective, then you need to put in as much effort into writing on Medium as you would into your regular full-time day job.

That effort was too much for me as a mum of three kids, working at home for my family’s concreting company, as well as doing part-time educational sales work. I couldn’t publish consistently, but that didn’t stop me from writing every day. I wrote drafts which will probably never be published on Medium. I wrote drafts that one day may be tweaked into a publishable article.

I also wrote outside of Medium. I did a bit of copywriting, which pays a lot more than Medium, but it’s also not as fun as writing on Medium. The writing that is most fun for me is when I write my middle-grade historical fiction manuscript. I’ll stay up until the early hours of the morning drawing character costumes and researching pioneer Australia. I’ll tell myself I’m only going to write one more chapter and then go to bed, but stay up until 3am and only stop because one of the kids has woken for a toilet run. That manuscript is my true passion, but it’s still writing, one way or another.

In the end, it comes down to asking yourself: What do I want to achieve from Medium?

Do you want to make a writing career out of Medium? If so, you need to treat it like a full-time job. Make a schedule, stick to your routine and get those interesting or even quirky articles out there to be read.

Perhaps you’re like me and want to write part-time because you just don’t have the time to write every day or to publish articles regularly. You’re happy to make enough money each month to cover the cost of your Medium subscription, and hopefully one day you’ll write that article that takes off and launches your writing career.

But while you’re waiting for that one day, keep writing today. Keep publishing today, because once you stop it’s so hard to start up again. However, if you’re like me and you need to take a two-month break to recharge, reset your positive headspace and take time to be with your family, then that’s okay, too.

If your passion is writing, you already know you’ll never stop doing it, no matter what form it’s in, or how much you get paid for doing it. It’s finding that motivation to keep going, even when you feel like it’s too hard or no one is reading your work. Because one day you can look back and be proud of all the work you’ve put in and what you’ve accomplished.