I Was Making $200–400/Month Writing About Sex on Medium
Here’s why I’m taking a break from that account
I haven’t made it a secret that I have two Medium accounts. One of them is this one, obviously. The other is under a pen name and I’ve written almost exclusively about sex. I have almost 300 posts on that account (it’s a little more than a year old) and the majority of them are either erotic stories or articles about sex and my sex life.
I was told that you couldn’t make money writing erotic stories on Medium. You can’t get curated (or wider distribution, as they call it now), so what’s the point?
Well, I’m here to tell you that not only can you make money, but you can make a lot of money. My success was minimal compared to others I know who are making $1000+ a month. They don’t even publish every day. And it only took them a couple months to get there.
The key is to pick the right niche and to get into one larger publication. But even getting into that one publication is not a totally necessary thing. One writer I know made almost $2000 last month just publishing stories. He doesn’t even have his own publication!
So, yes, you can totally make the smut bucks on Medium.
But here’s the thing…
I’m exhausted. I’m tired of writing about sex. I write erotica on Amazon, too, so adding the Medium erotica stories was totally wearing on my brain. No one can think about sex all the time. It’s emotionally exhausting.
I was trying to write for my pen name account and this account and write for clients and write ebooks and it was just too much.
So, I’m taking a break from the other account. I want to write more on this account for a while and see how it goes.
But there’s another thing…
I swear that there’s a Medium sandbox or something.
If you’re not familiar with the term “sandbox” it is when a platform (you’ll hear the term often on TikTok) buries your content for various reasons. Usually it is because they don’t like it. Your account just stops getting traction.
Last month I made just under $250 on my pen name account and it took me twice as much work as I had put into it in the past. 37 stories worth of work to be exact. Previously, I was making almost twice that for about half the content.
That’s another reason to put more focus on this account. I’ve been getting wider distribution on some articles lately, so I’m pretty sure this account isn’t sandboxed.
I don’t even know for sure that the Medium sandbox is a thing. It’s just a hunch.
And here’s the last thing…
I want to write about different topics. I might write about sex sometimes. I might even include my own experiences. But I don’t want to have to feel that sex is the only thing my readers want from me.
I want to write about what it is like to be 50(+ soon!) and widowed.
I want to write about writing.
I want to write about being a grandma of a crazy 9-year-old.
I want to write about being alone.
I want to write about being in a relationship and not sure if I should be in one.
I want to write about books.
I want the freedom to write for me. Because if I’m writing for me, it doesn’t matter how much money I make. Sure, I hope this account will become a source of income for me. But I want to take the pressure off. I want to rediscover the joys of writing again.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You’re not likely ever going to make a living from writing on Medium. Sure, it happens. But even if you follow the advice of all the writers here that are telling you how to make a living writing on Medium, there’s no promise that it will work.
Write for you. Then write for your readers.
