PS: Find me along with an amazing community of writers at Medium.com.
I read somewhere on here that the top 10% of writers on Medium are the ones earning $100 or more.
That figure sounded weird to me. It means 90% of writers are earning less than $100/m.
In other words, 90% of writers have less than 100 articles earning less than $1/m each. Bleh, right? Sounds so intimidating.
I am new here and I only have a handful of posts. But I can see that within a pretty short period of time, it’s pretty easy to amass 100 articles. So I did some calculations.
My first month of writing 4 articles resulted in only about 20 views total and I earned about a dime.
So let’s say at that current rate, a dime per article a month, with 100 articles, I’d have $10/m. Well, that math is making more sense and the stat sounds more accurate right? $10/m doesn’t pay for much and certainly doesn’t get me excited to write 100 articles.
Well, the good news is, it’s not likely the whole story. Consistency builds on itself. Those 100 articles are likely to be getting 10x the views by the time they’re written, because the Medium algorithm awards you for participation (I’m guessing). Your followers get to know you and read your posts more often. Your content gets shared and ranks in search engines.
So let’s do some 10x math. That $10 is now $100 factoring in increased viewership per month.
So if that $100/m figure is correct, to me, this means that 90% of writers on Medium are giving up before they even get to 100 articles. I’m betting 80% are giving up before they get to 50 articles.
I don’t know about you, but to me, I see this 90% failure rate as an opportunity.
It sounds to me like if you can get yourself to 50 articles, you’re probably in the top 20% of writers on Medium.
I imagine once you’re in the top 20% of writers, Medium is really going to start displaying your posts. By that time your writing curve is really going to have gone down. Heck, you might even be a better writer by then. At the worst I’m betting you will be a faster writer.
If that statistic is correct, I see exponential growth starting right around the 30–50 article mark, with more explosive growth around 100–150.
Maybe by 200 articles that $100 is 10x? Remember, those articles will work for you as long as they’re online, and you can post them in multiple places. So that $1000/m is just the Medium money from those articles.
I read another post that talked about how some writers put all their articles into collections and self publish ebooks, adding to their income stream.
It sounds to me like getting in the top 10% of writers on Medium is not very hard and a lot of writers are giving up too early. Don’t be one of them.
When I read that stat I felt empowered instead of discouraged. I hope you’re with me now!
Medium is great and I highly recommend you pay $5/m to become a member if you haven’t already. The writer’s community is amazing and I learn new and valuable things everyday from people who really love to help make other people’s lives interesting. If you subscribe through that link I’ll get pennies from heaven which is one of my favorite things.
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