I Am Part of the $100 Club on Medium Thanks to Small Pubs

“Success as a writer is all about the number of lives you have touched. It’s not about money, though that would be a nice measure. It’s not about fame, though that too has its place” — Maria Ra ttray

I joined Medium In Feb 2021 with the sole intent of exploring whether writing was something I wanted to pursue. Apart from a few pubs like Be Yourself, Illumination & Writer’s Blokke, I wasn’t aware that other pubs existed and had literally no knowledge about how Medium works.

I’ve since gained some useful information from reading a lot of articles and engaging with other writers on a frequent basis.

It is a well known fact that only 7% of writers on Medium are able to pull in over $100 a month on this platform. Given that, I honestly am not aware of how you can make serious money, as in thousands of dollars, unless:

1.You have a massive following who actively read your work

2.You have viral articles

3.You consistently get the bonus that Medium has started giving out to its top writers.

Everyday, I come across articles which promise that breaking the $100 barrier is easy peasy if I do the following (need I mention that they all contradict each other!) :

1.Publish everyday or don’t publish everyday.

2.Take Medium courses to discover the secret sauce of how the big names do it or bumble around till you figure out a way of how it is done.

3.Some claim that getting into the big pubs is the way to success while others swear by taking the self publish route rather than being at the mercy of the pub editors.

4.Getting curated vs curation doesn’t necessarily boost earnings so don’t bother too much about it.

5.I’ll follow you so you follow me (or I will unfollow you).

6.Write specifically about X,Y and Z topics or just write about the first thing that comes into your head.

7.Create plans: game plans, short term plans, long term plans or no plans whatsoever.

8.Promote, promote, promote your articles every where to get max # of eyeballs on them or don’t promote them at all if you are convinced that your audience will find you….eventually.

9.Use all kinds of writing assistants & tools like headline analyzers to create attention grabbing headlines or don’t use anything at your own risk.

10.Become an SEO master or be the one who is like “What the heck is an SEO?”

My observations:

What works for you doesn’t necessarily work for me: If you look at my body of work, I have published around 40ish articles between Feb and July. With regards to writing and hitting publish, I don’t pressurize myself to do so and pace myself so I don’t experience writer’s burnout. I am happy to read and comment on other writers’ articles when I’m not writing.

If your articles achieve virality on Medium then you know it is a sure fire way of earning some decent cash but as writer Sarene B Arias points out in her article - “Most work on Medium does not go viral.”

So how did I get into the $100 club without any of my articles going viral?

Three things that helped:

1.Views

2.Read ratio . My articles typically have a read ratio between 50% and 80%

Let’s see why the read ratio is such a big deal with regards to earnings.

Aamir Kamal in his article published in Menlo Blogging talks about read ratio with regards to Internal traffic (member reads) vs External traffic (from search engines etc)

“The more internal traffic you are getting, the more read ratio you have. The read ratio will be higher because most of the readers will be Medium members. The more external traffic you got on your Medium stories the less read ratio you get compared to the average read time. This is because the Medium pop-ups or the person have to subscribe to the paywall to read the articles.”

In case you are wondering, I rely mainly on internal traffic or traffic within Medium for my views & reads. If you belong to the MPP, then you might also know that member reads are where your earnings come from.

3.Chosen for further distribution: My experience has shown that an article being chosen for further distribution does boost views and earnings.

I write articles about personal experiences, relationships, self awareness and humor. I find that after I’ve written an intense personal narrative, writing an article on a lighter topic helps me maintain a healthy balance. I also try to include an article about my Medium journey, like “Why I Rewrite The Title of My Articles At Least 10 Times and How It Works For Me”, which my readers & new writers find to be helpful based on the feedback I receive.

I mainly chose to publish in small pubs on Medium. Let me explain why.

I am an Economist by training and in my area of expertise there is no scope for writing the way I want to write nor topics I want to explore. I want the freedom to be able to express myself through my writing without worrying about a rigid set of submission guidelines or the stress of writing to impress. I prefer my writing to come across as if I were talking to a friend to whom I’m not afraid of sharing my vulnerabilities and imperfections.

“Spread the Ripple is a place to share stories of kindness. What are humans without kindness? Are we living if we don’t give and receive kindness? Kindness is a universal language. Kindness does not care about race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Kindness does not care about wealth or status. We can all help Spread the Ripple of kindness” — Ali Hall (Editor of Spread The Ripple)

Discovering small, unique pubs such as this gives me great delight as a writer, akin to opening presents on Christmas morning. As my Medium friend Sajjad Choudhury suggested, there should be a list of all these wonderful pubs that writers can easily access. Since I’m unaware of the existence of such a list, the only way of finding these small pubs is through research or by spreading the word.

“Since my publication Moonlight confessions is small and new, I do everything you have mentioned. Lesser turnaround time, engaging personally with every writer, and making them feel special” — Bhavna Narula (Editor of Moonlight Confessions)

I have learned a lot about article writing from editors of small pubs and am appreciative of the fact that they are kind, considerate and prompt in their replies. I am also grateful that they take the time to provide feedback, suggest edits, offer constructive criticism, take the time to do light editing (as opposed to rejecting an article outright) and publishing in a timely manner.

Last week I was pleasantly surprised when A Shayens Abran of Be Open published my article within a couple of hours of submission. Michelle Brown of Heart Affairs published an article of mine and so did Katie Michaelson of The Daily Cuppa within an hour of submission. Incredible to say the least!

So my achieving the Medium bonus and making the $100 club has a lot to do with these small pubs.

“Remember, you control your experience on Medium” — Linda Kowalchek

So if you were to ask me what I’ve learned during the few months I’ve been writing on Medium, then I would say it is experimenting with my writing (advice courtesy of my friend & guide Vishnu*s Virtues ), discovering what works for me and most of all enjoying the process.

Originally published in Medium