Why I Will Never Become a Top Money Earner on Medium (After Looking At a Lot of Articles)

When you look at what I write, you’ll probably agree

Photo by Rick Gebhardt on Unsplash

I see a lot of articles on Medium about making money — big money — not my little $15 or so a month. I follow a few writers who write about this, and about ways to write better/bigger/faster. I’ve read many of their pieces, and I’ve come to some conclusions.

Firstly, I have to say $15 a month is $5 more than I aimed for when I started. LoL. And you are probably thinking — after 4 years, why isn’t she pushing to earn more? Like, hundreds of dollars more?

The really ambitious writers would probably say I don’t want it enough. And they’re right. I’d rather spend my writing time working on my novels and poetry. There it is. Time.

But I have worked out that the much more important factor is … I get bored easily. Most of the people I see earning good or big money write every day, but they also write about the same things over and over. They have about five main topics, and sure, they’re things people are interested in, but those writers are able to write the same stuff with slightly different twists and approaches.

I’ve tried that and I feel like I’m repeating myself just to get some readers. I hear you mutter — well, of course! Sheesh!

But I like to give readers value, and I like to make my articles worth writing. For me to feel like I’m adding value on Medium, not just taking the same topic and tweaking it.

More than that, there are lots of things I like to write about, and they are all DIFFERENT. I publish quite a few poems, for example. Occasionally I write a memoir piece, or creative nonfiction. Or I write about my own struggles with stuff like lockdown, or what it’s like to be on a writing retreat.

A fair amount of the time I write about writing — mainly writing fiction, because that’s what I taught for 25 years and it’s my main writing gig. I also write about writing poetry and memoir. I work as a freelance editor, so sometimes I write about an issue that has come up as I am editing someone’s work.

So nobody is going to say, “Yes, she writes about X — if you want to read good stuff about X, look her up.” Because they could look me up to find out about grammar and instead find a poem!

I’m not complaining at all. It makes me laugh. I actually love that I can write anything I want on Medium, and maybe sometimes I surprise my followers. I’m amazed that I now have over a thousand of them. Woo-hoo! It’s all fine. And $15 a month buys me a new book — hey, how good is that!

(And the ducklings picture is there because today I was talking with someone about ducklings. :-) )