The First Article I Wrote In My Life Earned $34 on Medium
It Also Garnered 200 New Followers
I started writing on Medium about 2 weeks ago. My first article was published on August 19th in Write to Inspire publication. I had never written a single article for income before this. I was inspired to write after my daughter achieved considerable success writing for Medium publication. I discovered my daughter Natassha earned $2900 from Medium in July, before that I believed only a few writers actually made money on their craft.
Upon realising that writing actually pays I decided to write my first article based on that experience.
Published My First Article
I was first wondering what article to write. I wrote a few stories but I was not happy with it then it occurred to me that I should just write about the whole learning experience that took place between me and my daughter that brought me to Medium.
After completing the article, I left it for a while and did some mundane tasks before returning to polish the article further. When I was satisfied with what I had written, I started to figure how to add the article in a publication, I realised that I had to be accepted first by a publication.
Since the article was about Medium I approached Feedium to be enrolled as their writer. It took a little while to be accepted,I guess J.J. Pryor went on leave at that time. So when I was accepted by Write To Inspire, I immediately sent in the article. Everyday I checked to see whether my article was published. I think it was published in approximately 4 days after submission.
On the first day my article was published Natassha came up to me to say that the article I wrote was gaining traction. When I looked at the numbers it was still very disappointing. She insisted the response was really good compared to what she received for her first few articles she wrote on Medium.
One of the readers who gave me 50 claps was Natassha, it was a huge moral support. If you like an article in Medium I suggest you should give the author 50 claps, it makes the writer feel appreciated. She also shared the article in her linked in group which has over 5000 followers. She wrote a brief introduction about me on why I had started writing and encouraged her followers to read my article.
The Response Was Overwhelming
Gradually the article gained more views everyday. To date the article had 1600 views and 71 % of viewers read the content. It also had a lot of engagement from the comments column which was all positive feedback. It gave me a lot of inspiration to write more on medium. This is one of the greatest part of writing on Medium. It gives you a feeling of belonging to a community who share a common trait.
I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that the article was published in a small publication. I went on to write three more articles after this.The second article earned $1.80 and earnings from subsequent two articles were negligible. They were published in a different publication with larger follower base but all three did not perform as well as the first article.
Take Away
I think one of the reasons the first article was successful is because it touches on income and how a very young person made it in Medium. It was also revealing to know that smaller publications can give you a lot more exposure than larger ones because there are fewer articles published by them. The chances of your article being discovered in larger publication is remote compared to smaller publication even though they may have a larger follower base. If you are starting out and do not have as many followers, I believe smaller publications would work better.
