As I pay careful attention to the moves I'm making on Medium, I have a few more insights to share that may help other contributors find a bit more success.
The Way You Publish is Important
In my last post I talked about getting my work into my first publication. When it comes to posting the content, there are two ways I have gotten into a publication, and these ways are clearly having different levels of success.
The first way I published into a publication was by taking an existing piece on Medium and submitting it. It was already live on my profile and had been viewed by a handful of people. These pieces have an initial boost in views after publication, but little to no boost in profits.
The second way is to submit a draft to a publication. This is actually the way that most publications prefer. They tend to want the exclusive. However, the publication I submit to doesn't care whether it was already published on Medium or not. But the second way seems to be the best way--not only have I gotten more views, I have also made the most profit from articles that were published directly into a publication on Medium. This is also the best way to get curated by Medium, though I haven't had that happen yet.
Meeting and Exceeding Goals
In the month of August, I met or exceeded many of of the milestones I need to hit in order to stay on track for my long-term goals. First, this was the month I started making more than just a penny. I was also able to profit from multiple published pieces, not just one piece. It's topping out at a whopping $0.15, but I'm working on keeping it consistently moving up. In just the first two days of September, I've already earned $0.06. So that means I'm on my way to beating August's earnings.
I also met some goals when it comes to views. Just in the past week I hit a total of 91* views over the past 30 days. Before, I had never broke 25. I also have a first-time record of 36 views on a single piece. I still haven't broke 20 on any of the other pieces I have published. However, the top-viewed piece only has a 47% read ratio, which means only around 17 people actually read the piece all the way through, depending on how Medium counts a read (some of my shortest pieces have the lowest view rates, which may mean that not having to scroll to the end of the page is lowering the read ratio).
Because my poems from my prompts for National Poetry Month 2020 are doing so well in The POM, I will submit all 30 to the publication, hopefully completing all of them in the next few weeks. Then I will work on branching out a bit more and find some new pubs where I can submit work.
The Road Ahead
My ultimate goal is making a nice chunk of cash from Medium each month with a minimum of posting at least two new pieces each month. What's a nice chunk? I certainly wouldn't expect to live off of Medium, but I don't think a consistent $40-$50 a month is out of the question. When it comes to views, read ratios, fans, and claps, I don't have specific numbers. If I keep exceeding the numbers from the last week or the last month, I'm a happy little writer.
*all stats in this post current as of 9/2/20
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