Member-only story
How to Earn Little on Medium
Why you shouldn’t write as I do if you want to pay the rent
When I joined Medium I naïvely assumed it was a forum for people who wanted to exchange ideas with others, courtesy of the magic of the Internet.
Paying $50 for a year’s access seemed like a great deal.
Then I discovered it was possible to earn money by writing on Medium, so I set myself a goal: I wanted to see if I could earn $20 in a year, in order to offset 40% of my Medium subscription.
To my surprise, I surpassed that goal in less than a month. But even more to my surprise I discovered there are writers here who are earning significant sums of money ranging from $1,500 per month to several thousand dollars per month.
Meanwhile I’m achieving a daily total of around $1.40. As I write for about two hours per day to generate two or three articles and also comment on an average of ten articles by other writers, that comes out to $0.70 per hour.
Now here’s the thing: I have a BA and MA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University. I also have an MS in Systems Engineering and an MBA from a top European business school. Over the years I’ve had fiction and non-fiction articles published in a variety of journals and magazines. I even paid for my first honeymoon by winning a writing contest while…
