My 1st Medium Anniversary — It Wasn’t Supposed to Be Like This

My month-by-month account of how it turned out

I published my first story on Medium on 30 October 2021. I’m writing this on 30 October 2022. It’s been a real rollercoaster of a ride. Here’s the month by month account of the highs, the lows, and everything in between.

Will there be a 2nd Anniversary update at this time next year? I doubt it very much.

At the time of writing this, I have 420 stories published on Medium. No, that wasn’t planned and doesn’t have some hidden meaning.

I have deleted quite a few stories recently, so I’ve actually published more than 420. I will delete many more over the coming weeks.

So, let’s get started.

October 2021

• Stories published: 2
• Views: 36
• Earnings: $0

I didn’t know what to expect when I first joined Medium. I had read that you could earn good money, so decided to give it a go.

November 2021

• Stories published: 38
• Views: 6,635
• Earnings: $92.88

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I gained followers and how many views my stories were getting. I reached 100 followers on 12 November. I applied to join the Medium Partner Program right away and was accepted on the same day.

On the first day, my stories earned over $3. I was astounded. I was very happy with my first month’s earnings and decided to write and publish a story every day until at least the end of the year.

December 2021

• Stories published: 38
• Views: 16,045
• Earnings: $468.28

The good times kept rolling. I earned almost $500 in December. This was the first time I started thinking that I could earn a very decent income on Medium. I started seeing the potential of making $1,000+ per month.

January 2022

• Stories published: 34
• Views: 14,113
• Earnings: $431.97

Although my earnings dipped slightly this month, I was starting to understand how the platform worked. I saw other writers that were making $1,000 to $3,000 a month and thought I could easily get there as well.

In fact, I was so optimistic that I wrote a post entitled By The End Of This Year, I’ll Be Earning Over $3,000 A Month On Medium.

Read on to see if I got there.

February 2022

• Stories published: 52
• Views: 19,817
• Earnings: $400.70

I managed to publish 52 stories in February. That was 37% more than the previous month, but it wasn’t reflected in the earnings. My earnings were pretty flat for three months in a row. Maybe this was as good as it would get. Could I really get to $3,000 a month? I was starting to have doubts.

March 2022

• Stories published: 47
• Views: 28,390
• Earnings: $684.01

March was the best month so far. I was back on track toward my target of $3,000 a month. The number of views was the best ever and I was really enjoying writing every day.

April 2022

• Stories published: 58
• Views: 56,181
• Earnings: $1,695.06

This was my best month ever. Views were almost double what I got in March and my earnings were almost 150% higher.

At this point, I was as certain as I could be that I would eventually earn $3,000 a month.

SPOILER ALERT: This was as good as it got. Everything has been downhill since April.

May 2022

• Stories published: 34
• Views: 31,445
• Earnings: $1,081.01

My earnings dropped a fair amount in May, but that could have been because I wrote fewer stories. I heard many writers talk about a summer slowdown, so it’s also possible that my stats drifted lower because of that. However, I was happy that I still earned over $1,000 for the month.

June 2022

• Stories published: 34
• Views: 32,218
• Earnings: $955.33

June started very well indeed. On 3rd June, I earned over $100 in a day for the first time ever. If I could keep that up, I’d earned $3,000 a month, which was the target I’d set back in January. My views on 3rd June were 4,095, which was also the highest ever. Where’s the summer slump?

But June turned out to be a month of two halves. During the first half of the month, I was on target to make $1,500 for the month. The second half of the month got worse and worse though.

On 30th June my stories only got 398 views. That’s 90% down from 3rd June.

I ended the month earning $955.33. I was hopeful that if I could earn that in what seemed like a bad month, I’d do quite well when things improved.

July 2022

• Stories published: 32
• Views: 18,814
• Earnings: $360.98

July felt like a disaster. Maybe this really was a summer slump. My earnings dropped 62%. This was my worst monthly earnings since I joined Medium, excluding the first month.

August 2022

• Stories published: 37
• Views: 30,069
• Earnings: $384.47

August was another disappointing month, although my earnings rose slightly. If this was a summer slump, as most writers were claiming, it looked like earnings of around $400 could be the bottom. It wasn’t great, but it was a little comforting that I could make this much in a bad month.

September 2022

• Stories published: 19
• Views: 10,138
• Earnings: $228.95

September started so badly that I lost the will to write. I only published 19 stories and had my lowest views and earnings since November 2021. It started to feel like something had fundamentally changed. This seemed more than a summer slump.

Stories just weren’t gaining traction like they used to. Many times, I thought about quitting. I decided to keep going though.

October 2022

• Stories published: 22
• Views: 10,896
• Earnings: $225.66

There is still one day of the month left, but the figures above won’t change much. October has been almost identical to September.

Conclusion

I published four travel stories and three of them earned under $1 each. It’s very rare for that to happen. It might be because my followers aren’t interested in travel stories, so I won’t be writing any more of them here.

I’m still thinking of quitting, but I still feel like there’s some hope that the situation will improve. Medium has a new CEO and has made many changes to the platform. I assume it’s these that have caused all the problems that many writers talk about.

I will try to keep publishing until the end of the year at least.

But I’ve started my own side hustle blog where I’ll be publishing more often from now on. I’ll also be transferring my side hustle articles from Medium to my blog. Most of my older stories no longer make any money here, so they’re completely wasted. They should do better on a dedicated blog. As most currently earn $o, they can’t get any worse.