You're Being Lied to About Medium Dot Com. You Can Make Plenty of Money There.
The successful writers don't want you to know these things. Screw them.
Medium is dead.
I see a comment like that every day. Idiots. Medium isn’t dead.
The problem with Medium is it’s hard to understand. You can’t just set up an account there and become Mark Manson.
That’s why there are so many Medium courses.
Here’s the thing, in the next three weeks I will have the largest audience on Medium dot com.
Would you rather learn from an amateur who is taking a guess…
Or a pro who’s been on the platform since day one?
The #1 reason writers fail on Medium.com
Let’s cut to the chase.
The writers that complain about Medium all have one problem. I’ve analyzed it over the last 12 months.
They start out writing good headlines.
Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, they get some traction and start to think they’re really smart.
What do they do?
They start writing bad headlines.
“5 Ways To Be Happy” is a classic. “Why I think writing is fun” is another.
Nobody gives a crap about these headlines. They’re a snoozefest. My grandma wouldn’t even read that sh*t. Seriously.
Writers start to fail on Medium when their headlines become terrible.
Why do we change headline styles?
Fear.
The naughty word – clickbait – scares the pants off writers.
Good writers tell themselves clickbait is bad, or they’re joining the dark side and writing cheesy headlines.
I got news…
A headline is never clickbait. Clickbait is a crock of baloney. It’s what smart university writers say about online writers because no one is reading their work anymore.
Cheesy headlines work.
Why?
We need to be motivated to invest 5-7 minutes of our lives in your writing, because there’s a bucketload of writing on the internet we could waste our life on.
Why you, pal?
Now, if you do believe in clickbait then fine. I’ll settle the score with you.
A headline can only be defined as clickbait by arrogant literary snobs if it doesn’t deliver on the promise.
But if you say “Make $11,000 on Twitter” and then show exactly how you did it, it’s not clickbait.
Kapeesh?
Medium isn’t the same platform anymore
Medium changes a lot every 6 months.
Most writers don’t keep up. I keep my ear to those close to the inside to understand what’s happening.
You now can collect email subscribers
Making money online comes from collecting email subscribers. Read that again.
In old versions of Medium you had to become clever and add call to action links at the bottom of your articles. You then send readers to a landing page, give them a freebie like an eBook, and get their email.
You then sell them information products.
This strategy works but the percentage of readers who go through this process isn’t high. Why? It’s not a native experience.
You have to leave Medium. There’s friction involved.
Medium, recently, quietly added the ability for readers to get emails when you publish articles. So you now have followers and subscribers.
If I subscribe to get emails from Medium every time you publish then you get my email address as the writer.
All you have to do is go to your stats page and click audience stats to get them. The ratio of followers that become subscribers is decent.
Medium is one of the first platforms to give writers access to their audience data.
This is huge.
The partner program
Medium is one of the few platforms that pay you directly to write.
A percentage of the subscription revenue they collect is paid to you based on how much read time your articles get.
This continues to be lucrative.
It’s been that way for ages. Sure, you may not make millions of dollars from it like you can on Youtube, but the money you can earn from Medium will start to expand your mind.
Even $20 you earn from writing can rewire your brain.
That’s how making money online starts. It can lead to online business too.
Prepare to fall off your chair
Medium added the ability for readers to listen to articles.
It’s official: you’ll get paid directly by Medium for read time AND listening time.
Yep, another new income stream.
Old stories now show up in the newsfeed
For a long time Medium users were frustrated that old stories no longer appeared in the newsfeed.
Not anymore.
I’m starting to see more and more 1,2 and even 3 year old stories showing up.
Your back catalog of writing now makes money again.
Write once. Collect royalties for years.
This incentivizes high-quality writing.
Medium writer Michael Simmons says whenever he writes an article he wants it to be the best in the world based on the topic.
Youtuber Mr Beast is the same.
When you aim to make the best in the world of something, quality becomes the focus. Quality writing makes you a lot of money online.
Medium no longer tells us what to read
The reign of terror that Medium-owned publications caused is over.
They realized that nobody can predict what goes viral.
So, they shut down most of their publications. They’re basically all dead or have had the employees stripped out.
Now the newsfeed is determined by what readers view and clap. We’re back to the good old days.
An old feature, Editor’s Picks, is back as well. These stories occasionally appear in the newsfeed and are hand-picked by Medium editors.
90% of what you read on Medium now is based on what’s good. 10% is based on what Medium staff think is good. Nice.
Writers are the most important thing to Medium again.
Readers’ feedback holds all the power once more. Yay.
*Does happy dance*
Some say this is a pyramid scheme. LOL.
Medium introduced referrals.
A lot of people don’t get it.
Let me break it down.
You write a great story.
Medium recommends the story.
In various spots on Medium they ask the reader if they’d like to become a Medium member and pay $5 a month for unlimited content.
If a reader buys a membership and was led to the landing page by your story, you get 50% of their membership fee (after payment processing fees) – that’s for life!!!
You don’t have to do anything to make this happen. It’s inbuilt.
Now, if you want, you can also promote your Medium referral link in your stories or on other social media platforms. That increases what you can earn.
One other problem with Medium is that in the past if your articles did well on Google Search and got heaps of external views from non-Medium members, you got $0.
Not anymore.
The referral feature means that external views can now make you money.
If readers flock to Medium from Google Search and read your story, a good percentage of them will become members. That money goes to you.
Nice.
You’d think writers would love this feature. However, when referrals launched there was outrage.
“I’m not selling this snake oil crap. This is a pyramid scheme.”
This happened because most humans hate selling. They think sales is evil or dirty or sleazy. Nope.
If you refuse to sell (persuade) you’ll never make a dollar online or ever become a writer. That’s the truth.
Sales is a part of life. You sell an employer on hiring you. You sell a date on doing some doggystyle on the weekend. You sell a partner the chance to marry you.
And you sell readers on why they should spend their time reading your work.
Life = Sales
Medium referrals are yet another income stream.
The Medium strategy I see nobody talking about
The founder of Medium, Ev Williams, also co-foundered Twitter with Jack Dorsey.
The two platforms quietly share a lot in common.
On Twitter, one of the most used features is tweet threads. It’s a series of tweets that make up an entire blog post. You can go stupidly viral with these bad boys.
What I see no Medium writer doing is taking advantage of this. Here’s how:
Write a series of good Medium articles.
See which one performs the best.
Turn your best Medium article into a tweet thread.
Publish the tweet thread during peak times (Tues-Thurs)
Make the last tweet in the thread a link to the full-length article on Medium.
This is what I’m about to do. You can copy me.
It’s a great way to find a new audience and monetize external views from Twitter with the Medium referrals feature.
Closing Thought
Don’t listen to any content creator that says “XYZ platform is dead.” Medium isn’t dead. It’s making an even bigger comeback.
Nothing is dead, it’s just them. They don’t know how to write good or have forgotten.
Medium is the gateway to making money online. It’s the shift in psychology and practicing in public that Medium enables which makes the real cash.
Make money on Medium to start. Then make money off Medium.
Combine the two and you’ve got a powerful money-making machine.
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Hey Tim, I have another guess you're probably going to enjoy the recent rounds of Medium changes based on some digging I did this week. Posted it in Feedium if you ever read that pub. Keep up the great work bud. JJ
Great article Tim. Thank you.