I’m still not very active on here. I didn’t earn much from my writing in June (about £27). I got Covid which floored me for a couple of weeks, and also spoke at a conference, so writing wasn’t a priority.
July started to pick up again, slowly. I wrote a lot but it was pretty quiet for me on Medium. Then the Daily Fail published an article citing a “miracle” trial that “reversed autism” in a set of twins. Give me strength! I was angry and generally write my best work in hyperfocus when I have beef about something. It got boosted and has made me $109 so far, contributing to the $177 for July. I’ve earned a lot more on Medium (my best month, May, brought in $518), but at least I’m getting back on track.
My older stories continue to earn the odd dollar here and there, so these provide a somewhat passive income whilst I’m freshening up my Medium page with new stories.
Unfortunately, due to taking my employer to an Employment Tribunal, I haven’t had the headspace to continue my PhD. After taking a year out, I decided to put it to bed for now. I’m gutted to say the least but I hope I can focus on my writing as well as the tribunal. Writing is an outlet and doesn’t take up the same headspace so I can certainly keep it up.
I am finding it hard to try and limit how much time I spend writing. Why would I want to limit something positive? Hear me out…
I work 30 hours a week as well as writing on the side, and occasional work as an examiner. I don’t want to use up every spare hour writing, if it means my hourly rate is very low. I’m trying to keep track of the hours I spend writing, but I’m failing at this. I did work out that in my biggest earning month, I spend around 12 hours on Medium. That works out around $43 an hour (about £33) so a decent hourly rate.
These hours don’t just include the writing. You have to interact with other writers too, to help get your work seen. It’s a writing community, not just a platform. This is something I like about Medium.
I mostly write for publications now. It opens my writing up to new audiences and it gets seen. I can still write what I want but submit to the publication that it fits best. Their editors have really helped my writing to develop. Such is the relationship between editor and writer that I feel like I really know some of them.
A word of warning though, some publications will just about publish anything, unedited. While this gets your work out quicker, it isn’t necessarily the best writing you could do. Some are less selective than others, and some publish many, many stories a day so yours often disappears. I’ve had a few stories rejected by publications, not because they were bad but they just didn’t fit their scope.
One editor was honest, and said if I didn’t want to make the story fit her publication, there was another that would probably accept it with very little additional editing. I took a chance and submitted it there, and it got boosted. Better than that, it was my biggest earning story, making $185.
I don’t have a magic formula for earning money on Medium. I got lucky in my first couple of weeks with two boosted stories, and then my following started to build up. This probably would have taken a lot longer if this hadn’t happened. There’s more about how the Boost programme works here.
The main piece of advice I’d give to anyone writing on Medium is just don’t get too fancy. Simple writing without elaborate descriptions and overuse of adjectives, metaphors and similes seems to work better on the platform. Members pay $5 a month to read stuff on Medium from multiple writers. People aren’t subscribing to one writer and people don’t have a lot of time these days. Keeping it simple helps.
All my boosted stories had a personal element to them. They may use academic references or refer to news sources, but I always try to connect it to me. However, not everyone does and boosted stories can be on just about anything, even tech articles get a boost.
Here’s some non-paywalled links to my stories on Medium. If you like them, please consider becoming a member of Medium for $5 a month and supporting the work of writers. You can also buy me a coffee here.
I Don’t Want to be Cured of my Autism or Queerness
We Used to Call Women We Don’t Like Witches, Now We Call Them Men
My ADHD PhD 