How I became a medium author at a hotel pool
Although I don’t need to make money with Medium, I want to be heard and perhaps gain more freedom.
To have the opportunity to write freely about your thoughts and be heard is a gift. This freedom is so valuable and often it is not appreciated enough.
I have a well-paying job and don’t need to make money from writing. But writing means more than money to many and to me. It means the opportunity to communicate, to be heard, and to integrate one’s words into the thoughts of others. I still want to write at Medium, even though I am aware that I can hardly earn money with it.
I have always had the urge to release my words into the world and see how they affect others. Even during my studies, I published websites and wrote countless articles. For the most part, I only made money from it to a limited extent. It’s not really easy to promote a site with only your own content in such a way that it ranks so well, so that you get a lot of visitors, and on top of that to realize a decent monetization that produces a significant income. So it was never enough to make money from writing my own website, why I discarded it at some point. However, my writing has taught me many things and the content I publish has opened many doors for me.
Last year I went on vacation to Gran Canaria. At the pool every day I saw two guys. A couple. They often had a notebook on their laps and seemed relaxed working for a few hours. They were enjoying the hotel, the food, the party, the weather and the sun — just like me. With one small difference. A few hours a day they wrote while their eyes roamed over the pool and they enjoyed their iced coffee by the pool. What a life!
I was totally curious every day to see what they were up to. I thought about digital nomads who make their money online and enjoy their lives. Then I googled how to become a digital nomad and came across Medium. I started reading there.
This year I’m in the same hotel at the same time. And who is at the pool? The two guys with the notebook. Did I ask them what they were doing? No. I just don’t want to bother them. Curious, I still am. But I have decided for myself what my guess is. To me, they are writers on a platform like Medium who still make a little money from newsletters and a little promotion just by writing about their travels.
Platforms like Medium have changed the situation for some authors. Especially for those who want to write sometimes about one topic and sometimes about another. Compared to a small self-hosted blog, the platform offers a very different reach for authors. Much like eBay has given reach to private sellers, Amazon to small merchants, AirBnB room renters, and UBER cab drivers, Medium offers authors the opportunity to be found.
Is that freedom? I imagine it would be wonderful if I could just take one more vacation doing what I enjoy. To write. Of course, I also have to sacrifice some of my vacation time to write, but that can be wonderful when you don’t have to and can also do it in a beautiful setting wherever you want.
These two guys by the pool with a notebook on their laps have been my inspiration for publishing my first story on Medium. Something I know a lot about and something I can maybe really help others with.
To this day, I don’t know what they do or if my hunch was correct. Nevertheless, they inspired me and I am grateful to them.
What will become of my journey at Medium, I don’t know. I would be happy to get some attention for my work and maybe some recognition that motivates me to continue with it, to share my knowledge and thoughts. Not necessarily to earn money with it, but maybe to be able to lie by the pool from it one day and just write.
