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!