Testing medium.com

Recently I’ve done some research about medium.com. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an online publishing platform created by the founders of Twitter as a way for people to share their thoughts, outlooks, perspectives and views when they aren’t bound by 140 characters.

Medium has a partner program in which people can sign up, for free, and submit their writing to the website giving them the opportunity to earn money for their contribution.

Medium operates much like a subscription service. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed up for the website to have access to the content of all of these individual creators submitting their written work. Each subscriber pays $5 a month to have access to unlimited content. If a paid subscriber reads an article that was submitted by one of the partner writers, the writer gets a portion of the subscriber’s monthly fee. From what I’ve read, this translates to different amounts depending on the how many articles a subscriber reads in a month.

For example: If a subscriber reads only two articles in a single month, $2.50 will go towards each article. If a subscriber reads 100 articles in a month then 5 cents will go towards each article written.

People are using Medium as a side-hustle to earn hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of extra dollars each month by sharing their writing with the platform.

If you’ve been around #MillennialLifeCrisis for any length of time, you know that I’m an advocate for the notion that if you write good content, people will find your content. So, when I started learning about Medium I thought that this sounded like the ultimate test. Can the simple act of writing great content be enough to make you money on Medium? Or, are you a small fish in a big pond of thousands of talented writers. I want to know.

I’ve told myself that I’m going to test out this website for two months. I published my first piece to Medium a little over 36 hours ago and it’s been met with mediocre stats so far. Definitely nothing to write home about (pun intended)! That being said, I’m committed to testing this for at least two months. I really want to contribute genuine effort to this and find out what are the possibilities with a little extra effort put towards it.

If anything happens along the way, I’ll be sure to update this blog. I know that many people who read my blog are, themselves, looking for ways to make money from home. So, if there are any interesting revelations, I will be sure to share. Otherwise, I’ll post an update as to how it went in two months time. I’m sharing this here as a measure to hold myself accountable to stick with it.

As of right now, all I that can report is that it’s EXTREMELY easy to sign up and that it seems to be an extremely organized and well thought out platform. Oh, that and that I really suck at editing my own work so posting to Medium will be good for me because I’m going to have to spend a lot more time editing.

Is there room for a girl like me over on Medium? I guess we’ll find out over the next two months.

45 thoughts on “Testing medium.com”

  1. Keen to see what you think. I tested the waters not too long ago and while I did get an article curated, you really do have to work hard to continue having your work curated on a regular basis. The other thing about Medium is that there is no actual way to guarantee any of your content will get curated. It is very much hit and miss. If you can handle that much, you should do well on that platform 🙂 The key (at least in my experience) is to get your work in front of the eyes of the bigger publications. You have to pitch for the bigger ones, they don’t take on writers easily and if your submission is good enough, you could get your article published by them. That’s one way to get exposure. The other, as you said, is to continue writing content people actually want to read. If you’re okay to put in the effort, you should do fine 🙂

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    1. Thank you for sharing this! As a newbie to the site, it’s good to hear the perspectives of others as I’m trying to navigate the waters. I agree, it seems like it’s a bit of a hit-or-miss with getting curated.

      I’ve got lots of time and now I’ve got a reason to actually edit my work. So, I’m going to give it a go.

      How long did you test the waters for?

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      1. For around two months give or take, but as I work full time, it’s a little bit more challenging to write on Medium as well as the two blogs I have now. The other cool thing about Medium though is that you can set up your own publication and I’ve seen some people do really well going that route as well 🙂

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      3. Hi there. And yes, you certainly can. I did that with posts I had blogged here on WordPress. The biggest difference I found between WordPress and Medium is that Medium seems to be focused on being a more “serious” writer. You really don’t get that kind of pressure here on WordPress, at least I don’t. In terms of curation, if your article ticks all the right boxes, your article might gain the attention of the Medium editing team. They have a very high standard so if your article manages to get curated, it means your work will be promoted across Medium’s channels (and potentially in front of hundreds of their readers). So its kind of the goal to get as much of your work curated as possible on Medium. I hope that helps 🙂

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      4. Very helpful. Thanks Julie.

        I’m strapped for time at the moment, so will probably just stay in my WordPress lane for now.

        Look forward to seeing how V comes along with her Medium foray.

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    1. You should try it. Just note that with the ongoing pandemic, a lot of people don’t have the extra funds to support like they had a few months ago. I had a few people cancel their patreon subscriptions because they now have to be much more careful with their funds. Which, I totally understand. Everything needs to be tighter financially right now. So if you do make one, just keep that in mind.

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  6. Good stuff V! I created an account awhile ago but never really committed to writing on it as you have. I too am curious how different writers fair on that platform. Looking forward to it and best of luck😉❤

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    1. I certainly hope that there’s truth to my statement that if you write good content people will find you. I think testing this is the ultimate experiment.
      Do you post anything to medium at all? Or never really got around to it?

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    1. You are someone who I think could do well on the platform just because of the quality of your writing and the intelligence of your person. I genuinely think you could find a tribe there. Also, your choice of topics for writing are all over medium from what I can tell, so there’s a definite crowd for it there.

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      1. Thanks for the compliment!

        I literally learned today about the ability to easily import a WordPress post on Medium. I’m definitely going to play around with that feature and see how it works. I’m still one to lean towards WordPress because I don’t like my posts to be ever behind a paywall, but we’ll see what happens.

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  10. I found medium a few days ago and I tried to read more than two articles it wouldn’t let me. I’m balling on a budget here so there’s other things that I need to spend my money on right now. Once I do have money though I’ll probably be all over it.

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    1. So you dont actually have to pay to write for medium, you just have to pay to read medium. Just stipulating that fact here in case you want to give medium a test with your writing. Writing is free. Reading you get two free articles a month otherwise you have to pay.

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  13. Pingback: Are you on Medium.com? – Mah Butt Itches

    1. Oh I will! I’m not abandoning this place. I just want to find out if there’s truth to the claim that Medium can make someone money.

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  16. Very interested to see how your two months go. I posted to medium centuries ago and earned a few euros. The model was similar but slightly different then. I think there is definitely earning potential with regular posting of captivating quality. I gave up at the time because I didn’t post regularly enough to make it worth while. I think you will do very well.

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  17. A long time ago, Medium has a MUCH bigger audience – and then they introduced paid posts, and the audience fell through the floor :/ Also – they USED to have an automatic WordPress importer – they retired it about 18 months ago, and gave no reason why.

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    1. I think the importer still works. Someone’s Medium tutorial on wordpress told me to import posts and how to do it. When I checked all of the buttons are there. I just haven’t imported any because I wanted 1)original content there and 2) to edit… and we know I suck at bothering to edit these posts. Lol

      As for the paywalls… it’s still something I’m trying to wrap my head around. There seem to be some cool articles based on titles but I cant read them because I haven’t paid. Some of it I think might be worth money? Others I think sound pretty stupid. So I could see people dying off when they had to suddenly pay…

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  19. I look forward to hearing how it goes for you in 2 months! I’m thinking of writing on medium again. I wrote on medium last year and in a span of a few months I made only 5 cents.

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