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Medium Gave Me What 12 Years of Publishing and 23 Books Couldn’t

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

And then it took it away again…

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

It’s coming up two years since I joined the writing platform Medium. For years, various author friends had mentioned it, enthused about it and encouraged me to join, but I resisted because I didn’t think I had the time. Almost two years ago a writer friend messaged me again after reading one of my blogs and finally persuaded me to join Medium by asserting that my blog topics and style were just the sort of thing that did well on Medium.

I gave in and joined and I quickly discovered he was right! Once I had joined the Partner Programme and was eligible to earn from my essays, articles, stories and poems, I found the boosts, the positive comments and the money came flowing in.

I was overjoyed. I felt validated. I felt like a real writer.

You’d think that after 12 years of publishing and 23 books released, I’d feel like a real writer, but the truth is, I don’t. Not much has changed for me during those 12 years. I have never had the spare money to throw at advertising my books, but I have done everything they tell you to do to get your books noticed. One of the main pieces of advice I recall reading at the time, was to get on with writing the next book, because once you have more books out there, it all gets easier.

I have never found that to be true. From the moment I published The Mess of Me in 2013, to the moment I released its sequel The Mess Of Us in 2025, I have made a few sales a month. Yes, some months are better than others, and I have never, ever had a month without sales. I am told that for an indie author with no advertising budget, that is not too shabby. And I do agree – with the billions of other books to compete with out there and the social media algorithms wanting you to pay to be seen, it is extremely hard to get sales and make it.

A few years back I reached out to some successful indie authors to ask what their secret was. The answer was not surprising – money. These authors were able to spend hundreds of pounds marketing their books at the start and now they don’t have to. They’ve made a name for themselves, and gained a loyal following.

I am constantly shouting into the abyss, despite how hard I work, despite how many books I write and publish, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews and a handful of awards… I cannot do any better. I am stuck right where I was at the start.

So, although I am still as addicted to writing as ever, and I will never stop as long as I have these ideas in my head, I am honestly hard-pressed to feel like a real writer most days. It doesn’t help that my close family and friends don’t give a shit and refuse to do the one thing they could do to support me in my life.

You can imagine how elated I felt when Medium started rewarding me so quickly. I was so happy! People were reading and commenting on my work. I was getting boosted regularly. Somehow, I was doing it right! And I was getting paid! I was making extra money, more than I had dreamed of to be honest. It made a massive difference to our finances and I even started thinking about putting some away and using it to better market my books.

Then in January, everything changed.

No one knows why and as far as I can tell, the answers are still not terribly forthcoming. Views, reads and earnings plummeted. At the same time, AI slop, bots, scammers and spammers were going through the roof and basically ruining it for everyone. Some say the drop in earnings is a reflection of Medium getting to grips with all that… But I don’t know.

I wasn’t too bad off in January because I’d been boosted a few times in December. January was awful. I barely made anything, and February was even worse. No boosts – which is a shame but not the be all and end all. I once made $15 on a short story that wasn’t boosted. It would take me a long time to make $15 from my books. No kidding.

By the time March arrived I felt like giving up. Millions of writers had jumped ship to Substack and I did the same, though I kept my Medium account. I still posted in February, but not as much. I suppose I had a crisis of confidence. I kept taking it personally. What had I done wrong? Had my writing declined in quality? Was the stuff I wrote just not wanted anymore? I still can’t figure it out.

Substack is great, by the way, and is shaping up to be one of my favourite places to hang out. It’s newsletters, any kind of writing, and social media all wrapped up in one. It took me a little while to get myself settled in, but at the moment I am posting an end of the month author newsletter, an end of the week round-up, and any poems or short stories I would normally put on Medium, I now put on Substack first.

Substack is a lot of fun but it is not as easy to make money there. Money is raised from having paid subscribers. I feel grateful enough to have any subscribers, whether there or here on my trusty old blog. To ask them to pay seems a lot.

I’ve set mine up for paid but have no paid subs yet and I don’t expect to get any for a long time. Still, I am happy to have almost 100 subscribers who I really hope are genuinely interested in me and my books. Let’s see what happens.

Back to Medium – I am not ready to give up on it just yet. It was foolish to ever rely on it for an income, and I didn’t, not really. It was just very handy extra money that made life easier for a bit. I am hanging around to see what happens, and like everyone else, I guess I am trying to crack the code again.

I decided to up my game in March and my content has increased back to my usual levels. It’s not making a difference so far and at this rate it is soon going to be hard to recoup the $5 you pay to be a member.

It makes me feel sad, in all honesty. All I ever wanted in my life was to be a writer. I am a writer and on good days I am incredibly proud of myself, my books, and the work I put in. I couldn’t give up writing, if I tried. It’s just what I do. It’s who I am.

But for a while there, Medium made me feel like a real writer. You know, someone whose words get read by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Someone who uses writing money to pay the bills. It was nice while it lasted but now I am right back where I began.

There had to be an answer somewhere. I guess I will keep on looking.

Giving up is not an option. And for all its faults and ups and downs, I will continue to publish writing on Medium. Writing there has given me an outlet for other types of work, such as essays, articles and poems, and like I always tell the kids I work with, writing in many formats and writing as often as you can, is how you get better.

I’m in it for the long haul.

Medium A Year On – Unexpected Success Plus A Warning Not To Be Complacent

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments
Image by Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay

I’ve been writing and publishing on Medium for over a year now and thought I’d write an update post on how it’s going but first I need to highlight the biggest negative for me so far.

Not having enough time to write my blog!

To be fair, I can’t blame Medium entirely for that – although obviously it’s more tempting to publish stories, poems, articles and essays on a platform that pays rather than my blog, but Medium doesn’t mind pieces being republished so again, so I can in theory repost things here.

The trouble is time and the constant, never-ending juggling act that is being an indie author, or indeed, any author, I suspect.

Recently I’ve been updating all my old books and this has been very time consuming, but it needed to be done. Some have had new covers, some have had extra edits and some have just been tightened up and updated in other ways. I’ve done it now, although I’ve yet to finish uploading new paperback versions to Amazon, but all the ebooks have been updated there and on Draft 2 Digital.

This means I’m now free to get on with preparing the next three books for release. More on that another day!

The thing is though, there is only so much I can do. Being an author involves marketing, promoting, writing, editing, submitting, revising, rewriting and trying to build and maintain your author platform. These are all balls I need to keep spinning in the air – not to mention being a mum, running a house and having a day job – so inevitably, there is always a ball or two getting dropped.

Lately, that’s been this blog!

I hope to rectify that today with this Medium update and over the next few weeks I will probably republish some popular Medium articles, stories and poems here just to get me going again.

So, a year after I joined Medium, how is it going?

It’s going well. Very well. I joined the Partner Program in September 2023 and was paid in October for my first three paid pieces. I just about covered my membership fee! In October 2023 I got boosted for the first time so my November payment was a lot bigger. That month I published six pieces of writing and the lowest payment was $0.18 for an article about different types of writers, while the highest paid was $57.49 for my first boosted piece.

I posted fifteen pieces of writing in November 2023 and got boosted again. An article about a haircut, of all things, made me $127.32. The lowest paid that month was $0.27 for a poem. December 2023 was an even better month for me when I got boosted three times. These boosts make a huge difference to payments. My three boosted posts earned me, $69.11, $78.10 and $81.59, but my other pieces were well received that month too. For example, an article that was not boosted still earned me $7.13 and a few others earned me between $2 and $5 dollars. It all adds up!

By this point I was extremely grateful and excited to be boosted but I was starting to worry about it too. Obviously boosted posts are shown to more readers, so that boosts your reads and views, and hence your payment. It also encourages people to read your other pieces so I tend to notice views and reads go up for unboosted writing too. Even now, looking at my older stats to write this blog post, I can see that some of my first pieces of writing have earned me more money since I originally shared them.

Why was I worrying about the boosts? Well, for a few reasons. I currently have 936 followers but like most social media and writing platforms, those followers do no automatically transfer into reads and views. Often, I assume, people follow you in the hope you will follow back. Without boosts, my posts were varying between $0.18 at the lowest and $7.13 at the highest. Like I said, it all adds up, but the boosts seem to make a huge difference.

Obviously, getting paid for your writing is a dream come true. It makes you feel validated and like your writing is worth getting paid for. It made me feel really good to know these payments were going towards paying our bills and rent, for example, but I was wary of relying on it. Of course, I was tempted to dream; maybe if I really put the effort in, in years to come I could give up my day job and just be a full time writer on Medium and with my books. That was always the dream and it suddenly seemed almost feasible…

Luckily, I didn’t let myself get carried away. I was still relying on those boosts and I figured my luck would run out at some point.

However, January was another good month. I got boosted three times again. At the end of this post you’ll find a list of my boosted articles in case, like me, you’re trying to figure out what types of writing gain boosts on Medium! I think I’m starting to figure it out but that in itself brings its own issues. I didn’t want to start trying to write with a boost in mind, but it was hard not to!

My lowest paid piece in January was zero for a poem, closely followed by $0.06 for another poem! My highest paid was a boosted article, $90.04, and my highest unboosted article made me $8.01.

February 2024 was crazy! I responded to a prompt about pet ownership with an article questioning the ethics of it and detailing my own increasing uneasiness about pet ownership and it got boosted. It’s my biggest earner to date, probably because it was so controversial. It earned me $231.49 and the most amount of comments I’d ever had, not all of them nice! This was an eye opener for me. It demonstrated that relatable topics people agree or disagree strongly with are probably a good way to secure views and reads, but it also showed me that people will read an article, totally misunderstand it and then leave slightly unhinged comments on it. In the end, I started thanking the critics for making me more money!

I had another post boosted that month but it made me a mere $26.11 so it just goes to show that even getting boosted isn’t a guarantee of hundreds of reads.

March was another crazy month. I got boosted three times, making me $66.78, $92.68 and $107.73.

April was a wake up call.

It had all been going so well! My earnings had been increasing every month and I had started to factor them into our spending and outgoings, in other words, I’d started counting on them. In April I posted twelve times and did not get boosted. I earned roughly $50 and the highest paid piece was actually a piece of flash fiction I wrote in response to a prompt. That earned me $7.08 but everything else was dire that month.

I was worried. I feared the bubble had burst. I looked at my posts and tried to figure out what was wrong with them. I was really proud of some of them but they just fell flat, barely got any reads. I did see other people saying the same thing about April though, so I don’t think it was just me that saw things slow down. Weird.

But it was a wake up call I probably needed. I need to think of Medium earnings as bonus, extra money, not something to be relied on. I cannot take getting boosted for granted and I don’t want to write with boosts in mind. So I am trying to forge a way forward by posting poems and stories when they come to me, writing about anything I am thinking or experiencing at the moment and by responding to the many wonderful prompts and challenges.

May, so far, is going well. I’ve been boosted three times and I’ve published thirteen pieces of writing. My highest paid piece for May is currently on $151.43. Not bad! And I was really surprised the other pieces got boosted.

So, the update is that Medium continues to be a wonderful platform for writers and readers. Members are still overwhelmingly supportive and kind, and it is still well worth the time I spend on it. The downsides are of course, accepting that some months you will earn a lot less than others, and that dedicating so much time to Medium means I drop the ball on other things, like this blog!

Anyway, I will be back next week as there is lots of writing related news to share and plenty of posts on Medium I can repost here for you!

But as promised, here is a list of the articles that got boosted:

Less Is More – The Most Important Lesson The Perimenopause Has Taught Me

An Emotional Haircut – At Age 45 I Finally Like My Hair

I Was The All-Seeing Eye – But Who Saw Me?

Take It From A True Cry-Baby – It’s Far Healthier To Let It Out Than To Keep It In

One Toothbrush – A Tale of Days Gone By

I See You, Single White Eyebrow Hair – And You Don’t Scare Me At All

The Best Life Advice I Ever Had Came From A Character I Created – Prove Them Wrong, A Mantra For Misfits

Why Do The Women In My Family Insist On Talking About Weight? – Breaking Free From Focusing on ‘Fat’

I’ve Been An Animal Love My Whole Life But I’m Not Sure I’ll Own Pets Again – Getting To Grips With The Ethics of ‘Owning’ Animals

All We Can Ever Strive To Do Is A Better Job Than Our Parents – On Loving Ourselves and Our Children

Does Losing our ‘Stuff’ Mean We Are Less Us? – On downsizing our lives and letting go of the past

Why Do I Write? – Because In Many Ways It Feels Like A Rebellious Act

Child’s Play or Telling Stories? – Children’s Play Proves We All Begin As Storytellers

Mental Health and The Perimenopause – A Second Puberty But With Far Less Support – mental health challenges at either end of my life and the difference in support available

Being A Mother Saved Me From Myself – Parenting Made Me A Better Person

Standing At A Crossroads In My Life Is Not Terrifying Anymore – when middle-age gives you the gift of trusting yourself

These boosted pieces all have a few things in common, which is interesting:

They are all articles or essays, rather than poems, stories or flash fiction.

They are all personal and emotional stories where I am extremely honest.

They are all about universal and relatable topics, such as ageing, womanhood, parenthood, childhood, body image, life lessons and life changes.

Something to think about anyway!

See you next week!

My Medium Experience Updated Plus Top Tips For Success

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments
Image by Anna from Pixabay

Two months ago I posted about my experiences on the writer’s platform Medium, so far. To briefly recap, I first joined the site in April – finally giving in after other writers had been suggesting I try it for some time. I signed up to the paid membership because I knew if I didn’t fully commit, it would fall off my radar and get ignored. Knowing I was paying five dollars a month to the platform would, hopefully, encourage me to be active.

It did, though for April and May I was very quiet – time was spent just adding my About Me story and reading and researching publications that would be a good fit. You need to reach 100 followers to meet the Medium Partner Programme criteria, so that was another incentive to read, follow and comment on other writer’s work. I was pleased to discover there are many excellent writers on the site and it was not the chore I had envisioned reading and enjoying articles. I got to 100 followers by August and received my first payment from Medium in October. This was just over two dollars and was payment for what I had written in September.

In November my payment was just over eight dollars. At this time, I was enjoying the platform so much, I hadn’t actually examined my stats page yet. However, when I received a payment in December for $189 dollars, I was astounded! Luckily for me, I had been boosted in October, and again in November. Your story, if written well and received well, may be chosen to be boosted by the editors of the publication you had it published in. Looking at my stats, it’s obvious that while some of my poems and pieces of flash fiction have made me a few cents or a few dollars, my boosted pieces have made me a lot more. So, the trick is to get boosted if you can, but I’ll come to that in a bit.

I didn’t expect my January payment to be the same but it turned out to be even more. I was paid $249 dollars which is around £193. Amazing! Looking at my stats, I was reminded that in December I was boosted three times.

So far in January, I have published eleven pieces and obviously, my aim was to get boosted again if I could. I was delighted to discover I was boosted just last week! Now, that doesn’t automatically secure me a large payment. It still needs more reads and responses and at the moment it has less than my other boosted pieces.

The stats page is fascinating and I am learning more about Medium every day, but here is a quick run down of my top tips so far!

  • Once you’ve reached 100 followers and posted a certain amount of content, you can start getting paid so this is when you need to start paying attention to your stats if you haven’t already. It shows you how many reads, views and responses each published piece had and it shows you how much each piece earns you. This should help unravel the mystery of why some pieces make you more money than others.
  • I suggest submitting to publications. That is what has worked for me so far, but I am sure other writers might say different. There are millions on there so it’s just a case of looking for writers and content that are a good fit with your own. For example, I like writing about women’s issues such as motherhood, family relationships and the perimenopause, so Modern Women is a great fit for me. There are other similar publications and you can ask to write for as many as you like. In terms of poetry, I am a writer for three poetry only publications, and two that are a mix of poems, stories and articles. I submit to particular ones depending very much on the style, format and content of my poem.
  • Research the publications! Very important. Read as many of their published pieces as you can. Get a feel for their writers and their readers. Check their submission guidelines very carefully. Once you feel your work would fit in, ask to be a writer and hopefully you will be added. Some are stricter and fussier than others. Very large publications obviously have a bigger readership but I assume that makes it harder to be boosted, I’m not sure. At the moment, I am satisfied with how it is working out for me in the eight smaller pubs I write for. At some point, I may try getting added to bigger ones but at the moment, its not a high priority. I am still finding my way and don’t want to give myself too much pressure.
  • Make sure you format correctly! Publications have specific requirements but formatting your title and sub-title correctly are universal, so remember to do that. You simply highlight the first letter of your title then click on a big T to make it a title. For the sub-title, you do the same but click on the smaller t. You then need to add a main image and it gives you an option to upload one of your own, one from Unsplash or one from elsewhere. Make sure you credit it and make sure it fits with your piece and draws the reader in.
  • Pick alluring titles that make people curious to know more. My boosted titles so far have been: Less Is more: The Most Important Lesson The Perimenopause Has Taught Me; An Emotional Haircut: At Age 45, I Finally Like My Hair (my most read and highest paying piece!) I Was The All-Seeing Eye: But Who Saw Me? ; Take It From A True Cry-Baby: It’s Far Healthier To Let It Out Then To Keep It In; One Toothbrush: A Tale of Days Gone By (previously published on this blog!); and finally, I See You, Single White Eyebrow Hair: And You Don’t Scare Me At All (again, previously published here, updated, shortened and reworked for Medium.)
  • Make sure you send your piece to the right publication! Know your pubs and know them well.
  • Leave it overnight before submitting – I’ll write a piece, read it through, edit a bit, read it again and then leave it overnight. The next day I will always find bits I want to sharpen up or edit.
  • Be authentic and write from the heart – This is just what has worked for me so far. When I look at my boosted pieces, and other articles or poems that have done well on Medium, I can see a common thread; writing from the heart. I would say my style and content on Medium is exactly the same as it is here on my blog. My essay style pieces are usually about life, relationships, obstacles, mental health, parenting, etc. I write from the heart, I write as me. I don’t try to be anything I am not. I don’t try to impress anyone. Writing advice style articles are popular but there are so many… I’ve earned a bit from these sorts of pieces, but the ones that have got me the most views and earned me the most money are the universal ones, the ones people can relate to. It works both ways. The pieces I am more likely to comment on or highlight are the ones I can relate to. Everyone wants to feel understood, after all. So, if you’ve got something to say, a point to raise, a life obstacle to discuss, then do it.

I am still learning a lot about Medium and I’m sure I’ll update my progress again at some point. I can definitely see it as something I want to stick with though – something I am happy to devote time and energy to.

My Experience On Medium So Far

~ ChanAtkins ~ 16 Comments

I first became aware of the writer’s platform, Medium, a few years back when an author I follow on Facebook started posting about it. This author would share pieces he had published on Medium and suggested it was a worthwhile platform for writers to invest in if they fancied getting paid for their work. At the time, I thought, good for you and moved on by. So often in this industry, authors are bombarded with ways to make money out of writing and it often becomes too much. There are only so many hours in a day, and most of us have full time day-jobs and families to contend with too.

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Over the next few years I noticed a few other authors I respect had started publishing on Medium. They too often mentioned how good it was. Again, I thought, good for you, but I don’t have time. Too many books to write and promote and not enough hours in the day was my excuse.

Then, back in April, one of these authors messaged me privately to urge me to give it a go. He had just enjoyed one of my blog posts and pointed out that similar types of articles, essays and personal pieces could be making me money on Medium if I gave it a go. He told me he was on average earning around $200 a month which made a nice little side hustle and finally, I was intrigued. I decided to sign up and give it a go. I went all in, rejecting the free option for the paid one. You pay $5 a month to be a member on Medium and that gives you access to all the work published on there, plus it gives you a chance to apply for the partner programme. Being part of that, I was told, was how you eventually started earning money.

To start with, I set up my profile and on the advice of my friend, wrote an ‘About Me’ article. This is apparently the best way to begin to get follows. Life took over after that and I neglected the site until a few months later. By now, I was aware that another author friend of mine was also doing well on Medium, making an average of £200 a month to supplement her other income streams. There are, of course, many writers making even more than that per month, and this knowledge gave me a new determination.

If you’re not aware of how Medium operates, I will try and break it down for you.

You can sign up to the free version, post anything you like and read other posts that don’t have a paywall in front of them. This is not a bad way to get started and get a feel for the place.

Or, like me, you can sign up to be a member. You can then start posting whatever you like. Poems, stories, flash fiction, articles, essays, personal pieces and more. You can post by yourself or you can submit to write for publications. Luckily for me, one of my friends was already an editor on several publications that were a good fit for me, so I joined all of those, read the submission rules and got started. The aim is to get to 100 followers, as that is one of the criteria for being accepted onto the partner programme, which will then enable you to get paid.

I found it really easy to get 100 followers. I started following, reading, commenting and clapping on other writer’s work and they would do the same for me. I found people were following me after reading and responding to my About Me piece, and again, whenever I posted something, I’d get a new little burst of followers. It was exciting and felt a lot more worthy of my time than other social media platforms. Plus, I was really enjoying following and reading the work from other writers!

Once I got my 100 followers, and had posted enough articles, I applied for the partner programme and got in. A month after that I got my first payment! I was thrilled to bits. It was for just under $3 so didn’t quite cover my membership fee, but it spurred me on. This was starting to look really doable. And I was enjoying it!

I still am. I think Medium is a great platform for all kinds of writers. I just got my second payment the other day and it was just over $8 dollars. Again, I was absolutely thrilled. I’ve made a little profit and covered my membership fee. I now feel even more determined to write and post more quality pieces to up my earnings again for next month. In fact, I now have a goal in mind of £200 a month. That would be a really nice extra income stream for writing things I would have written anyway.

If you are interested, here’s a short breakdown of the pros and cons I’ve found so far!

Pros

  • you can post anything, though of course there is guidance and some rules so make sure you read these first. Some writers only post poetry, some only political articles, some lifestyle pieces and so on. It’s totally up to you.
  • There is a publication for everything! I am currently a writer for 7 publications which gives me a good choice of who to submit it to whenever I write anything. Some of them are really niche, so you will definitely find one to suit your writing style and topics.
  • people are overwhelmingly positive and supportive. I’ve only had one critic on there which was a bit odd but we’ve unfollowed each other now. Everyone else has been absolutely lovely. Writers are keen to support each other as it increases the chance of the favour being returned
  • it’s like a co-operative of writers all helping each other and I love that!
  • editors can pick pieces to ‘boost’ which gives you even more visibility. This happened to me recently!
  • publications offer lots of prompts and challenges so you will never be without something to write about
  • Medium promotes the writers with ‘daily digest’ emails tailored to suit you. I try to read this every morning, a bit like reading a newspaper. I read as many as I can and clap and comment as much as I can too. It is a reciprocative platform so make sure you are helping out other authors too.
  • It’s super fast to gain genuine followers, unlike other social media sites!
  • You can get started by reusing old blog posts. Medium doesn’t mind if something has been published elsewhere before, but some of the publications do, so check first.
  • There are some very talented writers on there and I genuinely enjoy reading the Medium Digest each day!

Cons

  • It can be time consuming but I have managed to fit it in. In order to be supportive to others, you do need to follow, subscribe, clap, comment and share as much as you can. You can’t expect to help no one and still gain followers and views.
  • Like all internet platforms there are going to be some trolls, and some people who let you know they don’t like your writing, but overall, it is completely the opposite.
  • It leaves you with less content for your blog! I like to post on here weekly if I can, but it’s been less lately because every time I have an idea, I choose to put it on Medium instead!

That’s it. I can’t think of any other cons so far, but perhaps, further down the line I’ll feel differently. I think I will write an update post maybe six months from now and let you know how close I am to my payment goal and whether I have come across any other negative aspects to the site.

For now, I’d definitely recommend it. Facebook and Instagram have become such an echo chamber lately. Social media can be very depressing at times but so far, I am thoroughly enjoying being a part of the Medium community!

If you want to follow me, I’ll gladly follow you back: @chantelleatkins_17828