I Only Published 4 Stories in December but Still Earned $77

But that’s over 95% less than my best month when I earned $1,695

On 14 November, I wrote my last regular story on Medium. After a year, it was no longer worth writing regularly. My views and earnings have kept dropping every month since last April.

But I still write and publish the odd update here and there.

In December, I only published 4 stories. So, it’s heartening to have earned $77.43 for such little work.

I suspect that January’s earnings will be even lower though.

Views

In November, my stories were viewed 8,617 times. In December, that dropped over 58% to just 3,564. That’s the lowest ever.

The 4 stories I published in December only got 501 views. So, over 85% of views were from stories published before December.

Audience

My number of followers rose 165 to reach 4,901. I am surprised about this. It seems weird that people are still following me when I write so infrequently.

I also gained one email subscriber. I’m now at 141.

I didn’t get any new referrals, but I didn’t lose any either. The 15 referrals I have contributed $31.19 to my earnings.

Earnings

My earnings came in at $77.43. That’s a drop of over 50% from November’s $155.98.

It’s a drop of over 95% from April’s $1,695.06

December’s earnings were made up of $31.19 from referrals, $13.69 from the 4 stories I published in December, and $32.55 from stories published before December.

December’s stories earned an average of $3.42 each. I could earn more writing for a content mill. I don’t have any plans to do that though. I have bigger fish to fry.

You may think I earned so little because I only wrote 4 articles. What if I’d written 40 instead? I’d likely have made $136.90 for the new ones. That would take my monthly earnings to around $200. Maybe readers would also have read some of my older articles more often, but it would still be a lot of work for next to no return.

I need to focus on my blog, which is giving a higher return at the moment.

438 stories earned $46.24. That means that each story earned an average of $0.10. That’s pretty pitiful.

In complete contrast, my Side Hustle Monkey website earned $65 from 17 posts. That’s $3.82 per post. It’s even more amazing because only one of those posts has an affiliate link that made the money.

What lies ahead?

I’ll probably continue to write a handful of articles every month. These will likely be monthly Medium updates and monthly blog updates.

My blog earned another $65 in December, and I’m hopeful of increasing this over the coming months. I’ll post a longer update on that in a few days.

I wrote about how the Medium subscription fee is likely to rise soon. If this means writers start earning more money, I might consider writing a few extra stories to see if it’s worth it. No promises though.

Apart from that, most of 2023 will be spent traveling. My wife has her visa sorted out, so we’ll be starting our travels around mid-January. We’ll be booking the flights next week.