If you’d told me 16 months ago that I could earn almost $8,000 from writing on Medium, I wouldn’t have believed you.

But here I am 16 months later and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve made so far.

It’s been a bit of a wild journey

I published my first story on 30 October 2021.

I got to 100 followers on 13 November and applied to join the Medium Partner Program. I got accepted within a few hours.

Something to note is that once you join the MPP, you need to go back over the stories you’ve already published and make sure they’re metered. If they’re not, you won’t earn any money from them.

I was blown away by how much I earned for November. I earned $92.88 for just over half a month. Things were looking good.

In December I earned $468.28. I was already dreaming about how high my earnings could get.

My earnings stay around that level for a few months and then started shooting up.

I earned $684.01 In March and a whopping $1,695.05 in April.

I was finally a “real” writer

At this point, I started to feel like a “real” writer. I thought I had a good understanding of how the platform worked and was pretty confident that I could get to $3,000 a month.

That’s when it all started to fall apart. A new CEO took over and what used to work slowly stopped working.

What goes up must come down

My earnings dropped almost every month until they reach a low of $78.36 in December 2022. This is when I almost gave up.

I stopped writing for a few weeks and wrote a few articles after that.

I finally got a bit of a viral article in February and ended up making $182.83 that month. Maybe the good times were coming back.

Or maybe not. Up to yesterday, the 23rd of March, I’ve earned $123.68 for the month. But in the last few days, I’m back to earning $1–2 a day.

Unless things pick up soon, I guess April will be my lowest month ever. Even lower than the $78.36 I earned last December.

It would be kind of funny if April turns out to be my worst month, because April last year was my best month.

$7,648 is a decent amount to earn on Medium

While I’m happy with my overall earnings of $7,648, I’m also disappointed that they have dropped so much from their peak.

I’ve written over 500 stories on Medium altogether. I’ve transferred the majority to my own blogs and will also transfer most of the others in the coming weeks and months.

The vast majority of my articles on Medium no longer earn anything at all.

I’m confident that they will earn more on my own blogs. I will also have the option of selling my blogs once they are earning a regular income.

$50,000 target for my blogs

My target is to get them to earn $1,000 a month in the next year or two and then maybe sell them for around $50,000. I might not get there, but I love the challenge.

In the past I earned $60,000 from a travel blog, so earning $50,000+ from three general blogs seems doable.

I would still recommend giving Medium a go if you like writing. Many still earn good money from the platform and it’s a great place to start as a beginner.