The Mysterious Person Who Earns $49,090/Month on Medium
By: Winifred J. Akpobi
Tags: Sarcasm, Writing, Humor, Creativity, Satire

The Mysterious Person Who Earns $49,090/Month on Medium

My detective “hypothesis” has never failed me

Photo by timJ on Unsplash

It’s funny how you clicked on this story because of the title. That’s proof that stories with dollar signs in titles and clickbait are actually manipulative. But this isn’t clickbait. My 237 IQ brain is overheating and It’s undergoing an analysis of Medium’s recent changes.

This isn’t a story with complaints like the 63 articles I’ve read all month of October 2020. This is a story of curiosity and concern, questions raising suspicions that something is going on with Medium. This is working out well for me because after figuring this out, I knew I could be the next one to make the $49,090 this month or next month. Oh, I’m sorry — I didn’t get the dollar figures correctly because It’s too stressful to check. My point is, we all know there’s some mysterious being who makes $4$$$$ in a month, and $6000 and something on a single story.

I thought someone who made that amount had a story trending. I mean, the 6 trending stories on the homepage, or popular on Medium across the topics. No. Their story isn’t either of those. We also know this person, but at the same time, we don’t know this person. We’ve been seeing this person’s name, say once a day or once in 5 days depending on your niche. But, we’ve just never noticed this person, they’re on lowkey mode. I have a suspect and it’s not who is on your mind. It took me one glance at the profile page to suspect.

They’re not an editor for any mighty publication with 4 million followers, they own a publication, and they have a specific niche. It’s not a self-improvement niche that everyone’s squeezing into. It’s a niche no one pays attention to. They don’t write listicles. Never! They don’t write self-help stuff, probably because they seem clueless about self-help, awareness, life lessons, and others like the rest of some writers including myself. They’re not a jerk writing stories about “3 things to do to change your life forever” Nope! Never! They just don’t.

They don’t write one-sentence paragraphs that everyone wants to adapt to, because most top writers do it. Their paragraphs are moderately long with little or no formatting. I mean, they don’t use block quotes and pull quotes 135 places in a single story. They’ve never published in a Medium-owned publication, just theirs. They’ve also not highlighted, clapped, responded, or sent a private note to correct a writer on his/her typos. Their titles are the most boring ever, it’s not clickbaity in any way, it’s unique, just like a newspaper headline — exactly what Medium wants.

Oh! I almost forgot. They don’t write the hail and hearty “how to make money on Medium” or “how much I earned in 3 months” or “how to make $78nslwo96 blogging on Medium” or “the mysterious person who earns $49,090/month on Medium” or “54 ways to earn $1 on Medium” or “How to get curated in 87 topics.” In other blatantly truthful words, they do not lie to their readers, just like Nicole Akers said. Why? Because honest writers don’t lie to their readers.

Hold on, there’s more.

They don’t link-bomb their stories, Ryan Fan has an insightful story on why link-bombing won’t save you. You know, the embed thing that connects your other stories at the end. They barely… barely ever do that. Also, they don’t do the “get my newsletter” thingy at the end of each story they write. Their newsletter info is sweetly tucked in their profile bio. It always glows. Everyone sees it after reading their story, you know after each story, Medium has a wonderful feature or design, whichever — it contains the author’s profile photo, the author’s bio, and most of all, the follow button. The publication’s underneath too. It even glows in the dark.

Are you wondering who this is? Honestly, you know who this person is, you’ve just never noticed. It’s funny how someone could be so unnoticed with so much quality content, and even worse, this person’s stories have an average amount of claps, not 703k. My detective brain said it’s because people sometimes forget to clap when they read a very interesting and captivating story. Psychology believes people don’t appreciate their most loved gifts, but rather appreciate their least the most. Just saying. They don’t care about claps, dwell on it, or beg for it on Facebook groups.

With these hypotheses, I’ve finally decided that this person isn’t me. It certainly isn’t you. Except it is — but that’s only if you’re innocent of these suspicions. If you read this, you’re not, because the mysterious person has better things to do than read such a satirical/ode(ish) piece about themselves.