I have written 75 blog posts this year.
Here’s How Many Articles I’ve Published Per Month
January — 15 posts
February — 15 posts
March — 13 posts
April — 10 posts
May — 12 posts
June — 9 posts
Here’s my earnings per month.
January — $2,898
February — $1,857
March — $1,194
April — $1,029
May — $1,822
June — $1,268
July — Uncomplete
I’ve made $10,014 from Medium so far this year for 75 blog posts. That’s about $120 per blog post.
Not so fast, though… I’m leading you to my first point.
1. Sometimes It Takes Months For An Article To Pop
3 of my top 5 earning articles from January were published in 2021.
2 of my top 5 earning articles from February? Same thing.
1 of my top 5 earning articles from March? Same thing.
I’d say probably 25–30% of my earnings from this year actually come from articles published years prior.
Here’s an article I published in January that did pretty much nothing three months after it was published. Then.. BOOM.
May happened. My earnings went up from $3 per day to $25 per day, and that lasted for the whole month of May it seems.
Then we had a drop off in June.
Lesson: A lot of people like to wave the white flag after they’ve published three blog posts and made nothing. Well, sometimes it takes a few months for a blog post to even start taking off.
2. If You Write More, You Get Paid More
75 blog posts is baffling to me. Could you do it? Answer honestly. I have faith you’d able to. It only takes me a few hours to write every blog post. Actually, sometimes it only takes me an hour.
If you write more, you’ll get paid more.
Not necessarily because every post makes X dollars, but because eventually you’ll have one make $1,000 or more.
Sheer volume has been one of my main elements to Medium success since I got started in 2016. It has never wavered. Sure, some writers make a lot of money only posting 1–2 times per week, but that doesn’t mean these methods need to be at odds with each other.
You can make money with both.
Lesson: Write more, make more.
3. Most Of Your Articles Won’t Make That Much Money
I once did a calculation of how much money I made in May with NEW articles. Articles I published that month.
Want to know my findings?
I published 10 stories and made $200. That’s $20 on average per story. That’s not very high at all. A lot of my stories only made $8-$9, and you know what?
I wasn’t mad about it.
Writing is sort of like baseball. They say if you can get a hit 3 times out of 10, you’re an above-average batter.
Nobody realizes what the inverse means.. It means failing 7 times out of 10 is considered great. Wait, what?
How can failing 7 times out of 10 be considered great?
Shouldn’t the true professionals be able to at least get a hit 60–70% of the time? Not really.
Writing comes with a lot of failure. It’s hard to write something useful. It’s even harder to write something a lot of people can relate to. If you want to make money, you must do both things.
You need to be able to read society like a book. And guess what? Nobody really can. I have some articles go viral for reasons that are beyond me. I have no idea why they go viral. I don’t know why a lot of people liked it. But they did.
I just do my best to get out of my own way and take a lot of swings, because I know one of these times I’m going to hit a home-run, even if I strike out 10 times before I do it.
Lesson: Failing is the rule in writing, not the exception.
4. Most Of Your Money Will Come From A Few Articles
As I stated above, about 60–70% of your earnings will come from only a few articles. At least, that’s how it’s worked for me.
I’m not telling you to write a lot because you’ll make a certain dollar amount per article. I’m telling you to write a lot because eventually you’ll hit the jackpot.
You won’t know why. I won’t know why. Nobody will know why. But it will just happen all of a sudden, and then you’ll know if you write something similar again in the future, you may get more views than usual.
So, in conclusion..
Write often.
Fail often.
Hit a few home runs.
That’s how to make money writing online.
Although I do write some things and publish on Medium, I think the time would be better spent on Substack.
You are right. It’s very hard to write something useful.