When Your Income Takes a Dip On Medium
By: Jun Wu
Tags: Writing On Medium, Self, Freelancing, Writing Tips, Writing

In the last four months, I’ve taken a huge income hit on Medium. A year ago, I managed to have my best month of $2200 on Medium. After that, I kept my Medium statistics up for 4 months. Then, in the beginning of this year, I hit a wall. I didn’t have time to write on Medium and my income went down to 25% of what it was.

I never expected to have 7K followers on Medium. I’m a female writer who writes in both self-help and technology competing with male writers who are far more experienced than I am. I had to grind my teeth and work hard from day one.

I haven’t stopped because as a writer, I’ve found this platform to be a great fit for me. The income dip was a reality check. For a while, my ego was bruised. I busied myself with earning money elsewhere. But, somewhere in the back of my mind, I was disappointed at myself.

I doubted myself as a writer.

The truth is that the dip was timely. It allowed me to refocus on new strategies while writing on Medium.

During social isolation, taking risks in writing is my favorite activity.

Here are a few things I’ve learned about what you can do to climb back up if your income has taken a hit.

Niche Down And Go Deep

Recently, I’ve niched down to a few tried and true categories on Medium. Instead of writing overview types of articles, it’s important to have depth in the categories that you write in.

For instance, if you are writing self-help articles once a week, consider writing in depth about one aspect of self-help. For instance, you can write about “empathy”, “starting over”, “make money”, etc…

Taking on one topic inside the broader topic will allow you to reach those readers who are truly interested in your writing day after day.

Your Brand Is Unlike Others

For me, figuring out my brand took a whole year of writing in 14 different categories. You may already know what your brand is. On Medium, it’s about the practice of branding. Know what you love to write about and write your heart out about that topic.

I no longer view Medium as place of competition. For me, it’s a place of discovery and a place to refine my own brand. My brand is different than any other person’s brand out there. I may share similarities with other writers and influencers, but because of my unique experiences in life, I will have a different point of view.

Sometimes, what I write about may not be completely original or unique, but the way that I convey it will hopefully reach my audience.

So, change it up if you are unsatisfied with the reads and claps of your articles.

Be Of Service

Writing is an act of service. It’s the same as parenting where there has to be an unconditional love for your audience. I write frequently about how writers are coaches whether they want to be or not. This is true no matter how much money you make as a writer and who you are as a writer.

The best writers who are successful on Medium through the ups and downs are the ones who are adding value to the ecosystem. These are writers who can write one article a week to earn $1000 a month.

They have followers who will read every single one of their article because they deliver. They add value. They put back into the ecosystem and improve the lives of their readers.

So, hold yourself accountable by saying to yourself, “How does this article add value for my readers?”

Make Hard Choices

Topic selection on Medium is important. Writing is important. But, topic determines 50% of the article’s sharability. This means that you have to read on Medium in order to understand what people care about at the moment.

This really limits the amount of articles that I can write per a week. I’m not bothered by that. In fact, I prefer to only write 10 articles a month on Medium and make my current income. Then, I will spend time to make these 10 articles count.

The hard choices are the below:

Rein in my tendency to want to write “viral” topics simply because they are viral.

Rein in my tendency to publish for the sake of publishing.

Take time to expand on my ideas before writing the article rather than simply putting words down to save time.

Make efforts to earn money elsewhere so that money does not drive my decisions about topic selection on Medium.

Planning and Time

Planning and freeing up time to allow you to think are the two ingredients for quality. No matter what I receive as payment for my writing, I have to have “quality” things to say. Otherwise, spending time writing every day is not worth it.

When I make planning decisions, it’s about writing to gain more free time. How many hours can I spend on a quality article that will be shared well to free up time to write my next article?

This is how quality begets quality.

Planning, outlining and spending time to edit are the keys to freeing up time.