A Writer’s Life
I Earned $11 Yesterday and Didn’t Publish a Story. Here’s Why.
Plus—A Medium Top Writer’s 3 Tips to Boost Your Earnings
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Yesterday, I celebrated Valentine’s Day with my wife.
So I took the day off from writing.
And what I realized is that taking a break from writing is okay. We all need a break sometimes, don’t we?
Since last November, I’ve been writing and publishing at least one new story a day. Sometimes 2–3 stories if I’m having a rockstar day.
Another thing I realized is that once you build up a decent following on this platform and write enough stories, you can still earn passive income.
With 222 stories published on Medium, I’ve finally built up a library of content that earns while I sleep or even take days off.
I’m averaging about $8–12 per day from the Medium Partner Program. I even had one day where I nearly made $20 in a single day.
For the month of February, I’m on track to hit $300 in partner earnings.
But even with these realizations, I know I can’t take too many days off from my writing schedule. At least not yet.
As I experimented last year, I didn’t write for a month and all my story views and read counts tanked.
You can read about my experiment and the lessons I learned here:
Which means I can’t stop writing entirely.
I must keep a schedule and stick to it.
It’s not all about the money, though. Because I love to write.
With every new story I publish, I learn something new about myself, my audience and this platform.
If you’re a new writer on Medium or aspire to be one of the platform’s top writers, then here are a few things I think we both need to do.