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  • Yes, Cash is Still King

    Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/ja/@nate_dumlao?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Nathan Dumlao</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/stacks-of-cash?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>
    Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

    Back in May, I wrote about how I’m hoarding cash, even as it’s losing value. Some people have called me mad, but that’s ok. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. After all, I’m not telling anyone else to keep their net worth in cash. I’m just telling them what I do.

    Around five months have now passed, so have I changed my mind?

    Hell, no!!!

    What’s happened since then?

    I sold all my stock and index fund investments around February this year. I should make it clear here that I’m not trying to time the market. I have no idea where or when the top and bottom of the markets will be.

    What I’m doing is attempting to preserve my wealth. I’m in my 50s, so wealth preservation is more important to me than growing my wealth. In dangerous times like these, it’s best (in my opinion) to be out of the markets.

    Traditionally, financial advisers suggest being invested more in bonds as you get closer to retirement age, but even bond prices are collapsing.

    Being out of the stock market is like an insurance policy for me. Even if the market goes higher, I don’t care. The risk/reward ratio at the moment is to the downside. I wouldn’t be surprised to see prices crashing another 20–30% from here. Valuations are still sky-high, even after recent drops.

    Interest rates are up, up, up

    I’m now getting decent interest on the cash I’m holding in my stock and index fund accounts. This makes up for what I’m losing to inflation.

    I’m also getting much higher interest rates on the cash I hold at other institutions. There are now UK savings accounts offering over 4% interest rates for a 2-year fix. I expect those rates to get higher.

    The Fed and the Bank of England will continue t increase interest rates into next year. Inflation needs to be crushed. I don’t see either the Fed or the BoE pivoting any time soon. They have both said that getting inflation back down is critical, even if it causes a recession. It will.

    Property prices are starting to crash

    In many areas of the world, there are already big drops in property prices. Toronto prices are down 18%. Many US cities are seeing drops of 10–20%. The UK has had price drops in two of the last three months.

    The UK mortgage market is also seizing up. Thousands of mortgage products have been withdrawn. Some have been reinstated at higher interest rates.

    Many would-be buyers have given up looking for homes because the increased interest rates mean they can no longer afford to buy. And this is even before the interest rate rises have finished.

    It’s going to get much worse. Many are still in denial. They think this is a blip and that we’ll get back to low-interest rates. That’s just not going to happen. This is the new normal. We need to get used to it.

    Higher interest rates will crash the property market. It’s simple math. Property is so expensive at the moment because interest rates have been low for so long. Property prices cannot stay at these levels as rates rise. People just can’t afford to pay these prices.

    Many homes will be repossessed and people will become homeless. Make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

    Bargains will be appearing soon

    Even in the UK, I’ve seen a few home sellers drop their prices by 20% to get a quick sale. If you’re a cash buyer, there are already opportunities appearing. More will come.

    I plan to buy property, but not right now. There will be real bargains available in a year or two. I already saw it during the property price crash in the 1990s. It was when I bought my first property. The price was already a bargain but I managed to get an extra 21% off the price.

    Those days are coming again. At the moment, property prices in the UK are at insane levels. Some are still buying, but I think they’ll live to regret it. When prices are crazy, don’t buy. When prices come back to earth, then is the time to step in.

    That’s why holding cash is so important.

    Buying a website

    I have plans to build a website but am also looking to buy one that’s already profitable. These can give returns of 30–40% annually, although they are riskier than traditional investments.

    If I find a good deal, I’ll consider switching some of my stock funds to buy one.

    What am I invested in other than cash?

    I have around 5% of my net worth invested in crypto. I think this will do phenomenally well during the next bull run. I could easily 10x my money there.

    Crypto isn’t for everyone. It can be very risky and it’s a real rollercoaster ride. I’m in it for the long term. I don’t buy meme coins or anything shilled by influencers. I only buy projects will solid fundamentals.

  • How to Easily Make £7,500 Tax-free in the UK

    This is a fantastic way to help you get through the cost of living crisis

    Photo by Spacejoy on Unsplash

    Not only will you be making money, but you’ll also be helping others out at the same time. This will only work if you have a spare room in your home.

    You also need to be willing to share your home with either friends or strangers.

    It’s super-easy and beats working a second job. What you need to do is rent out a spare room in your home. The best part is that any rent up to £7,500 a year is completely tax-free. You don’t even need to declare the income to HMRC, the UK equivalent of America’s IRS.

    Eligibility

    To be eligible, you need to follow a few simple rules.

    • You need to be a resident landlord — this scheme doesn’t apply if you’re renting out an entire unit
    • You can join the scheme whether you own or rent your home — if you rent, check with your landlord to make sure sub-leasing is allowed
    • You are also eligible if you run a bed and breakfast or a guest house

    Note that you cannot use the scheme for homes converted into separate flats.

    See full details on the following HMRC website:

    HMRC rent-a-room details.

    How much tax will you save?

    If you’re on the basic income tax rate, you’ll save 20%, or £1,500 a year. If you pay the higher tax rate, you’ll save 40%, or £3,000 a year. These figures assume you’re getting a rental income of £7,500 or more.

    You’ll need to pay tax on rental income above £7,500.

    An annual income of £7,500 a year is equivalent to £625 a month.

    You’d be able to rent out a spare bedroom for £625 in many parts of the UK.

    But wait, there’s more

    As all those corny late-night shopping channels always say…

    But wait, there’s more

    Imagine you rent out a room in your home at £625 a month for 10 years and invest that money. At an 8% rate of return, you’d end up £198,000.

    Over 20 years, you’d end up with £357,000.

    Investing over 20 years with a 10% annual return would leave you with £452,000.

    You’d be almost halfway to becoming a millionaire. This is a fantastic way to build wealth if you’re someone that doesn’t mind sharing their home.

    If you invest via an ISA, much of this could be tax-free.

    Use the investment calculator below if you want to input different figures.

    Investment Calculator.

  • September Earnings Disaster — Time to Quit Medium?

    September was the worst month ever

    Photo by Mikhail Nilov

    All my stats for September were a disaster. Partly my fault, but is writing here a good use of my time? I’m beginning to think I’m wasting my efforts.

    Let’s get into the stats first. After that, I’ll compare my earnings here to some of my other projects from the past. Starting a new project could be a better use of my time.

    Stats

    Medium views for Sep 2022 — Screenshot by author

    Views came in at just over 10,000 for September. That’s down from almost 30,000 in August. It’s my worst month since November last year, which was my first fill month on Medium. My best month was last April when views were over 50,000.

    Medium audience stats for Sep 2022 — Screenshot by author

    My number of followers grew by 227 to reach 4,466. That’s the lowest month ever for new followers. I’ve also realized that the follower count is a bit pointless. Most have probably left Medium. Most of the remained probably aren’t interested anyway.

    I gained another 5 subscribers, so now have 137. This is also the lowest month ever for new subscribers.

    I got one extra referral. I now have 15.

    Medium earnings for Sep 2022 — Screenshot by author

    My earnings came to $228.95, which is pretty disappointing. July and August earnings were both almost $400. This month is the second worst month since I started writing here. I earned almost $1,700 in April, so it’s quite a big drop for there.

    What went wrong?

    I only wrote 19 stories in September. That’s around half the total of August. It’s the lowest number of articles I’ve written in any month. On average, I’ve published around 40 stories a month.

    If I’d written 40 stories in September, I don’t think y earnings would have reached much more than around $300, so it would still have been a bad month.

    I don’t feel like my stories are much different from what I usually write, so I can’t figure out why my stats are getting worse every month. I’ve gone from over 50,000 views and $1,700 in April to 10,000 views and $220 in September.

    I’m a great believer in doubling down on what works and ditching what doesn’t work, so that’s made me consider quitting this platform.

    Although I’ve done better than I expected to over the last year, I expected things to improve not deteriorate.

    When I compare where I’m at with some of my past projects, it seems like I’d be better off starting a similar project to one of those.

    My past projects

    I had success with three main projects in the past.

    The first one was my ecommerce store. It earned me around $100,000 a year for the three years that I ran it. I then sold it for around $250,000. So I made $550,000 over three years.

    I built an ecommerce store that earned me over $500,000 in 3 years.

    Ecommerce was easier back then, so I doubt I’d have the same success today. But even if I had half that success, I’d be happy.

    Another project that produced great results was my travel blog. I earned a total of around $60,000 over 3 years. That’s an income of around $20,000 a year, which is about 3 times what I’ve earned here in the last year. I plan to go traveling for 6–9 months soon, so this could be a good option for me to try again.

    I built an ecommerce store that earned me over $500,000 in 3 years.

    The third project that worked well was building websites, getting them to earn income from AdSense, and then selling them. I earned around $12,000 in six months. There have been many Google algorithm updates since then, so this has become super-tough these days.

    So, the idea of starting another ecommerce store and a travel blog are two things I’m considering. If I did both, it would leave little time to write on here.

    What I like about building my own websites is that they can be sold for good money. A travel blog earning $1,000 a month could be sold for around $40,000. If I could get to $1,000 a month in a year, I could sell the site if I wanted to.

    If I earned $1,000 a month on Medium, I’d need to write for 4 years to make a similar amount.

    The bottom line

    The bottom line is that I feel like it’s hardly worth my time to be writing here for what is often $1–2 an article when I could be earning much more writing elsewhere.

    Comparing Medium to owning my own blog is like comparing being a low-paid employee with owning my own business.

    I won’t leave just yet though. I enjoy writing here and interacting with other writers. I will make a big effort this month and see how things pan out. If I have another disaster month, I’ll probably call it a day.

    I likely won’t leave completely, but maybe just write the odd article here and there to keep you updated on what I’m working on.

    ,

  • I Made $1,000 a Month From My Travel Blog — You Can Too

    Stari Most, Mostar — Photo by the author

    Back in the day, I had a successful travel blog that averaged around $1,000 a month profit in years 2 and 3. I also know other travel bloggers who earned much more than this.

    But for every one who makes money, there seem to be a whole bunch of others who make nothing or close to nothing.

    What separates these two groups of people?

    I have noticed 3 main mistakes that unsuccessful travel bloggers make.

    Mistake #1 — They aren’t travelers

    This may sound obvious but it’s not. You’d be surprised how many travel blogs are written by people who don’t travel.

    They may have been to a few places and written about them, but that’s usually a vacation not traveling long-term.

    As they’re mostly not traveling they end up writing generic blog posts about places they’ve never visited. They’ll write posts like “6 Things To See in Paris”. It’s just generic crap that no one is interested in.

    Because they’ve never visited the places they write about, they only have generic photos to show. It’s just a waste of time.

    Meanwhile, genuine travelers write about their personal experiences. That makes their stories way more interesting and useful. They also have their own photos, so you can see what a place was really like. Generic travel images don’t give you much idea at all of what to expect in a city.

    If you want to run a successful travel blog, you need to go traveling for a year or two (or more). You’ll build a following that is interested in your journey. You’ll have readers waiting for every post you publish.

    Mistake #2 — They don’t get off the beaten track

    Long-term travelers will visit popular destinations just like everyone does. But they’ll also get off the beaten track and visit lesser-known places. Also, in popular destinations, they’ll go out of their way to find interesting backstreet cafes, restaurants, and attractions that the masses miss.

    This makes their travel adventures worth reading. It makes readers look forward to their next post to see what they’ll discover next.

    They’ll also share detailed advice on how they traveled to these places and all the mishaps they had along the way.

    Mistake #3 — They try to compete with big industry players

    This is related to the above mistake. If you only write about what to do in popular cities such as Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Bangkok, you’ll be competing with companies that have vast resources.

    If I do a Google search for “things to do in Bangkok”, there are 113 million results. There are ads from large corporations shown at the top of the search results. Below those, there are mainly articles from large media companies.

    If that’s what you try to compete against, you don’t have any hope of succeeding.

    If I search for “things to do in Ubon Ratchathani” there are only 172,000 results. There aren’t any ads. It’s not too difficult to rank well if you have a few in-depth articles about that city.

    Spend a year or two traveling that includes visits to these smaller cities, and you can build a big following as well as rank well on Google search.

    I eventually sold my travel blog.

    If you want to create a blog, I show you how to set one up for just $33.

  • Follow-for-follow Will Get You Banned From the Medium Partner Program

    This is what the new CEO says

    Photo by the author.

    I’ve been writing here since October last year. I got my first 100 followers by writing articles that people wanted to read. I didn’t use the follow-for-follow tactic that some use because I think it’s just plain stupid.

    I even wrote why I think that back in November last year.

    But I still got requests in comments asking me to follow other writers because they had followed me. I got so fed up with it that I started blocking people that asked me.

    The cold, hard facts are that if you’re not capable of getting 100 followers organically, you’re not going to make much money anyway. That makes it pointless to even bother joining the Medium Partner Program.

    Back in March this year Vritant Kumar wrote a story about his take on follow-for-follow.

    And guess what? 5 days ago, the new CEO, Tony Stubblebine, commented on his story. He said:

    We will clarify shortly that follow for follow is bad faith and disqualifying.

    The comment was in reply to the following statement by Vritant:

    I know Medium’s recent Partner Program policies mandates having at least 100 followers to monetize your stories.

    So, I assume Tony means that using follow-for-follow will disqualify you from the MPP. You may also get banned from Medium, but it’s not entirely clear from what he wrote.

    As most that write here want to earn money, it amounts to the same thing.

    And here’s the funny thing. Or maybe it’s the sad thing. Or maybe the annoying thing.

    The next comment after Tony’s says:

    Follow me

    So, even after the new CEO comments that follow-for-follow will get you banned from the MPP, someone asks to be followed.

    Some people deserve to get banned.

    Another interesting point to note is that Tony commented on a story from March. That means that the new CEO is paying attention to older stories here. That’s very interesting.

  • The 3 Differences Between My Rich and Poor Friends

    Do what the wealthy do if you want to build wealth for yourself

    Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

    I’ve gathered a variety of friends over the years. Some are rich, some are poor, and most are somewhere in between. But what’s the difference between those that made it and those that didn’t?

    If I think of my rich and poor friends, the differences between them are quite stark in many ways. I can clearly see why the former became rich while the latter remained poor.

    These are the three main differences I see.

    Difference #1 — Mindset

    I know that this has become a bit of a cliché these days, but mindset is the main difference between my rich and poor friends.

    My rich friends almost all mention mindset when I ask them how they managed to get wealthy.

    In contrast, my poor friends all blame others for their lack of wealth. If I mention mindset, they think it’s BS. They think people get rich because they were either born rich or got lucky.

    I have a schoolfriend that was the first in our village to become a millionaire. He’s now a multi-millionaire. Almost everyone thinks he got lucky.

    But here’s the thing. He didn’t badly in school and was always near the bottom of the class. His family was relatively poor. He left school at age 16 and got a job as a laborer. Yep, he worked a minimum wage job.

    So, how did he end up a multi-millionaire? He decide he wanted to be one. He watched and learned. He networked with other builders. He started putting together small teams to bid for small building jobs.

    His first project was building a wall for someone in the village. He did the laboring and he paid a bricklayer to build the wall. He earned more for the job than the bricklayer did.

    From there, he expanded over the years until he was building whole houses, and eventually whole estates.

    It was all due to his mindset. His building buddies weren’t interested in doing what he did. They just wanted to be paid an hourly wage.

    #Difference #2 — Intentionality

    This is another huge difference between my two groups of friends.

    My rich friends are always intentional about what they do. If they decide to invest, they make a plan and stick to it. That builds wealth over the longer term

    My poorer friends often mean to invest, but because it’s not intentional, they rarely get around to it. They’ll do it someday. But someday never arrives.

    The same is true with work. My rich friends mostly built good careers for themselves. They chose a career and then worked toward making it work.

    My poor friends just want a job to pay the bills. They didn’t give any thought to the long term.

    When I went to university, most of my poor friends told me I was an idiot. Why would I live on a pittance for three years when I could get a job that paid more?

    When I replied that it was because I wanted a better life, they just didn’t understand. They claimed that getting a job would give me a better life.

    Those that build their lives intentionally are more successful than those that don’t.

    Difference #3 — Thinking Short-term

    This is related to the point above.

    My rich friends always take a long-term view. They ask how a decision they make today will affect their life in the next 5, 10, or 20 years.

    My poor friends ask how a decision they make today with affect them today, tomorrow, or next week. They simply don’t care about next year.

    Years ago, one of my (very) poor friends ask me how he could get $20,000. I can’t remember exactly what I told him, but I gave him a solid plan of how he could have $20,000.

    He listened intently. He seemed to be taking it all in. I thought I was making some progress and might help change his life for the better.

    He said it was a great plan. Wow, I thought, he’s changing for the better.

    But then he mentioned that there was one problem with my plan. He said that while the plan was great, he wanted $20,000 now and not in a few years’ time.

    So, what happened? He ended up with $0 both at the time and in the future. He could have made $20,000 in a few years but chose not to. His thinking was too short-term.

    More from me:

    Average Net Worth By Age — How Do You Compare?

    My 5 Side Hustles That Will Earn $8,000 a Month by 31 December 2023

    Financial Lockdown Is Coming — Are You Prepared?

    5 Things I Had To Give Up To Become Wealthy

  • 4 Reasons a Massive House Price Crash is Coming — Followed by a Fantastic Buying Opportunity

    If you’ve been priced out of the housing market, your chance to buy may be close

    Photo by Belle Co

    This is not financial advice. It is just my personal opinion. Do your own due diligence and don’t risk any money you can’t afford to lose.

    At the moment, property prices worldwide are at unaffordable levels for many people. In the last decade or so, governments have printed money at unprecedented levels. That has led to insane property prices in many locations.

    I’m expecting to see 15–25% price drops in places like the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Europe.

    But what will cause these drops? I see 4 main reasons that property prices will drop over the next 2–3 years.

    #1 — High energy prices

    Due to the war in Ukraine, energy prices in Europe have skyrocketed. In the UK, the energy price cap will rise to £2,500 from 1st October. Last winter it was just over £1,000.

    That means that the average family will be paying around £125 extra for their energy bills this winter, compared to last year.

    That’s £125 less that they will have to spend on their mortgage payments.

    #2 — Mortgage rates are rising

    With central banks around the world raising interest rates to tackle inflation, interest rates on mortgages are also rising.

    The Bank of England raised interest rates by 0.5% to 1.75% in August. That pushed up the monthly payment on a £405,000 property by around £120. This is assuming a 10% deposit.

    Many economists are predicting that interest rates will keep rising and probably peak at around 4.25%. If that happened and the same rise occurred with mortgage interest rates, that would add another £600 to the monthly costs of the above property.

    It should be noted that these rises won’t affect all mortgage payers right away. Many are on 2–5-year fixed-rate mortgages. They won’t be affected until their fixed rates come to an end.

    #3 — Inflation

    Inflation around the world is very high. As well as energy and mortgage costs, consumers are having to pay extra for food and other products. Inflation is 10% or higher in many European countries.

    That means that extra cash that could have gone towards a mortgage isn’t available. It also means that many people are having to use their savings for their general monthly spending. That means less money is available to use as a deposit for a property.

    #4 — Recession

    This is the big one. Many economies aren’t doing so badly at the moment. Unemployment is still low. People are still out there earning money.

    Unemployment in the UK is expected to rise from 3.7% to 6.3% over the next 3 years.

    When unemployment starts rising, people will put off buying property. Many may even be forced to sell their properties if they’re out of work and can’t afford the monthly repayments.

    What does this all mean?

    If you take all four of the above reasons together, I don’t see any way that the housing market can not crash. Many cities in the US already have falling house prices.

    Black Knight recently reported that house prices in the US had fallen 0.77% from June to July. That’s the second biggest drop in prices in July since 1991. It’s only beaten by a 0.9% drop in July 2010 during the Great Recession.

    The report from CNBC also claims that…

    Some local markets are seeing even steeper declines over the last few months. San Jose, California, saw the largest, with home prices now down 10% in recent months, followed by Seattle (-7.7%), San Francisco (-7.4%), San Diego (-5.6%), Los Angeles (-4.3%) and Denver (-4.2%).

    And that’s just the start. We could have 2–3 years of falling prices. Once prices start falling, buyers tend to put off buying property, as they think prices will continue lower.

    Every cloud has a silver lining

    As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. House prices dropping from the current insane levels is a good thing. It will make property more affordable.

    While some locations will have more resilient prices, other areas could suffer a big collapse.

    I wouldn’t be surprised to see house prices crash 40–50% in places like Arizona.

    If you’re patient and keep an eye on the market, you’ll be able to pick up some real bargains in the not-too-distant future.

    I was lucky to have bought my first property in the depths of the 1990s house crash. I bought a property in London for £50,000 in 1995. I sold it for £150,000 a few years later when I upgraded to a bigger property. In 2005, the property sold for $550,000. That’s the sort of bargains that you can find during price crashes.

    Of course, not all properties will do that well after a crash.

    But you should prepare yourself now for the bargains that will be coming your way.

    After property prices have crashed has historically been a great time to build wealth.

    Once interest rates have peaked and inflation has settled back to nearer 3%, governments around the world will start stimulating their economies. This is the time we start to see property prices start to go up again.

    What do you think? How deep will the property price crash be in your location? Or do you think that prices won’t crash at all? If so, what do you think will prevent prices from falling?

  • 4 Google Chrome Extensions to Supercharge Your Medium Stats

    Use these to get a better understanding of your stats

    Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

    A few of my followers have asked where I get all my Medium stats from. While Medium does a decent job of showing the stats related to our accounts, there are Google Chrome extensions available that will show you additional metrics.

    If you don’t use Google Chrome, I don’t have any other information on what software, if any, you can use. Maybe others can leave a comment if they know how non-Chrome users can access similar stats.

    I usually use 4 Google Chrome extensions to analyze my stats. I don’t use them every day though. Some I will just take a look at once a month. Some of them tend to mess up your main stats page, so I keep them switch off most of the time.

    So, let’s get started.

    The extensions are available on the Google Chrome Web Store.

    #1 — Medium Enhanced Stats

    Medium Enhanced Stats — Screenshot by the author

    This awesome extension was developed by Tomas Trajan, so be sure to follow him on Medium.

    Just click on this extension and you’ll have a nice-looking pop-up with an overview of your articles and comments. I particularly like the Total Reach figure. This is an easy-to-read overview of how you’re doing on Medium.

    The buttons on the right will download an image of your stats and download a .csv file of your data. Mine only shows my last 294 articles. I’m not sure if that’s the limit or if there’s some glitch or a slow internet connection.

    As a bonus, you’ll also see the following overview of your total earnings to date on your Partner Program Dashboard.

    Medium Enhanced Stats — Screenshot by the author

    #2 — Medium Distribution Info

    Medium Distribution Info — Screenshot by the author

    You can thank Martin van Soest for this fantastic extension. He explains the distribution process in this post.

    If you want to know if your stories have been chosen for further distribution (curated), then this is the extension you need. The overview shows the latest 5 articles that have been chosen for further distribution.

    It will also show under which primary topic they were chosen. These will usually be different from the topics you chose when publishing the article. Note that an article can be chosen for further distribution under more than one topic.

    If you click the Dive deeper button, you’ll see an overview of all your articles at the top.

    Medium Distribution Info — Screenshot by the author

    Below that, you’ll see all the stories that have been chosen for further distribution. These will be listed by date.

    Below that, they’ll be listed again, but this time by primary topic.

    You’re also able to sort the data by data, article, total views, internal views, and primary topic.

    This extension will also add an extra column to your main Medium stats page. It will show whether stories have been chosen for further distribution or not. If you see a topic in the right-hand column, it means that your story was distributed. An “x” means it wasn’t. A “?” means it’s still under consideration.

    Medium Distribution Info — Screenshot by the author

    If you click to see the story details, it will show if it was chosen for further distribution or not.

    In the main image at the top of this section, you’ll also notice an Earnings button. To activate that, you’ll need another extension — Medium Earnings Info. See more about that below.

    #3 — Medium Earnings Info

    Medium Earnings Info — Screenshot by the author

    This is another extension from Martin van Soest. Thanks, Martin.

    The main page of this extension will show an overview of earnings per month, along with other useful data. Not that these earnings exclude referral income.

    Click the Table button at the top and you can see your earnings for individual stories, broken down into days, weeks, and months.

    This information is very useful. You can also export the data and analyze it yourself if you have the required skills.

    #4 — Fractions

    Fractions extension — Screenshot by the author

    This great extension was developed by Can Durmus. In this post, he talks about the extension and mentions that it’s also available for Edge, Opera, Brave, and Firefox.

    I love this clean design. You get an immediate look at your total earnings to date, along with today’s reading time, yesterday’s earnings, and the estimated earnings for this month. As you can see, this month is turning out to be my worst ever.

    If you click the small circle in the upper left, you get to see daily earnings info.

    This is the easiest way to see what you earned yesterday. Before I started using this extension I had to calculate the daily earnings by manually subtracting yesterday’s total from today’s.

  • I’ve Earned an Average of Over $650 a Month on Medium

    I’m more than happy with that

    Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

    Before I started writing here, I didn’t consider myself to be a writer. I’d written a few Kindle books but saw that as more of a side hustle. It sounds weird but that’s how I felt.

    Even when I started earning money here, I still didn’t think of myself as a writer. Now that I’m 10 months into my writing journey, I feel more like a writer.

    I thought I might earn $100 a month or so if I was lucky, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at the amount I’ve made so far.

    In the last 10 months, I’ve earned a grand total of $6,560.19. That averages out at $656.02 a month. The worst month was July ($364.94) and the best month was April ($1,695.06).

    Medium earnings in the last 10 months

    I wish all months could be like April, but that’s not the case. We have to take the bad months along with the good months.

    Summer Slump?

    I’ve been assuming that the low-earning months of July and August have been due to a summer slump. After all, the vast majority of writers I’ve talked to have also had a lot few views, as well as lower earnings.

    However, September has gotten off to an even worse start than the last two months. Yesterday’s views were the worst since January. And yesterday’s earnings were the lowest of any day since since last November.

    I’m hoping this isn’t a sign of bad things to come.

    I will keep writing though and plan to publish around 40 articles this month. When views are low, I tend to lose motivation, but that’s the time to knuckle down and put in the work.

    Even if September is another bad month, I hope to reach $7,000 in earnings for my first 12 months on the platform. I will count that as a big success. It will set me up nicely for my second year.

    Going forward, I plan to schedule my posts to ensure I publish at least one a day. In the past, I’ve had many occasions when I’ve published 3 or 4 in one day and then none for the next couple of days. Some of that is down to not knowing when publications will release my articles. I aim to get around that by publishing more in my own sub, Build Your Wealth, as I can control the time and date of publication.

    , ,

  • Fridays and Sundays Are the Worst Days to Publish

    Read the small print

    Photo by Hansjörg Keller on Unsplash

    If you follow me here, you probably already know that I love to analyze data to see if I can find an edge. A few days ago, I read a great article by Cedric Boogaerts in which he concluded that publishing on weekdays had a huge benefit over publishing on weekends.

    I decided to dig into my data to see if I could find any pattern that showed which days are best to publish on.

    Data deficiencies

    Before I share my results, you should be aware of the following deficiencies in the data.

    • The sample size is too small to be statistically significant.
    • I only analyzed data for August & September 2022 — I planned to analyze all my data, but it’s far too much work.
    • I published in different publications — the differing number of views per story could be down to that and not the day of the week.
    • The time of day isn’t taken into account — publishing one minute before or after midnight is essentially the same, but will show as different days.
    • This is for my own amusement — don’t take it too seriously.
    • There are other deficiencies in the data.

    If you think the above makes the results unreliable, you’d be right.

    The results

    The number of stories published on each day was as follows:

    • Mon — 10
    • Tue — 2
    • Wed — 6
    • Thu — 8
    • Fri — 1
    • Sat — 9
    • Sun — 3

    I excluded one outlier from the data. This was an article that got 9,500 views and was published on a Sunday. Over 90% of views were external. This one story would distort the data. I’ll come back to this later.

    The average number of views per story were as follows:

    • Mon — 250
    • Tue — 169
    • Wed — 245
    • Thu — 195
    • Fri — 90
    • Sat — 165
    • Sun — 89

    Based on the above figures, my data suggests that the best days to publish are Monday through Thursday. Saturday is the next best, with Friday and Sunday the worst.

    Average views for Mon-Thu and Fri-Sun were as follows:

    • Mon-Thu — 226
    • Fri-Sun — 146

    This means that stories published on Mon-Thu got 55% more views than those published on Fri-Sun.

    A complication

    Analyzing data is never easy. As well, as the data deficiencies already mentioned, here’s another one.

    One of the stories published on a Thursday got 80% external views. If I exclude those, then the average views for Thursday drop to 108. The average for Mon-Thu drops to 199. That still makes the Mon-Thu figures 36% better than Fri-Sun.

    But here’s the BIG complication.

    If I included the story that got 9,500 views but only count the internal views (739), it increases that Sunday average to 305. This makes it the best day of the week to publish, based on my data.

    It also increases the Fri-Sun average to 191, which is pretty similar to the Mon-Thu average of 199.

    So, what does that all mean?

    That’s a good question that doesn’t have a definitive answer.

    I would summarize it as follow: Monday through Thursday are reliable days to publish. You generally know what’ll get. Friday through Sunday tend to be more hit-and-miss. Most story views seem lower but you can make up for that by a story going a little viral.

    I think that for stories that get many thousands of views, the day you publish doesn’t matter. This is because the bulk of the views can come weeks or months later.

    For the average story that gets most of its views in the first few days, I’d guess that publishing Mon-Thu is a better bet.

    Will I be changing the days I publish on?

    Not at the moment. I’m going to see if a similar pattern holds true for this month. I’ll then decide what to do.

    I doubt I will change anything though. There are simply too many variables to be able to make an informed decision. The biggest factor that affects the number of views is the story itself, especially the headline.

    There is more to be gained from writing great stories with great headlines than there is from worrying about which day of the week to publish. If you publish in publications, you can’t usually control the day of publication anyway.

    I’m submitting this story to a publication on a Sunday. It might get published today or tomorrow. I have no idea if that will make a difference to the number of views or not.