If you play it right, Medium can be the foundation to not just an extra source of income, but to build an amazing life and writing career in general.

Without Medium, I honestly don’t know how my writing career would’ve turned out.

Before Medium and the Partner Program arrived, I was flailing around with the old blogging model:

• Doing a bunch of guest posts
• Self-publishing books (which did work well, but not nearly as well as Medium)
• Trying and failing at SEO
• Cobbling together an email list so that I could eventually make up some product to sell them to support my writing

I found Medium by doing what I constantly preach to others. Search for and seize opportunities.

I randomly saw a woman on Twitter who talked about her blog post going viral on this website called Medium.

I started publishing my work on the site in November 2015. Here’s the key — I never stopped.

I just talked to a writer who is hitting the growth curve I always talked about.

After a year of consistently publishing on Medium, she made essentially the same amount of money in January as she did in all of 2019.

Stick with the process and results like this can happen for you. On top of the money, you’ll get to experience these other amazing benefits on your path to becoming a Medium superstar.

You get to meet cool ass people.

I now have writer friends all across the world. We talk about more than just writing strategy. We talk about life.

The world of a creative is often lonely. Most people aren’t like us. We have a hard time relating to people who don’t see the world like we do. That’s why finding other like-minded people is key.

I’m in a private group with many of the top writers on this platform — names you’d definitely know. Guess what? We’re all struggling in our own ways, have our own insecurities, suffer from impostor syndrome, and have our doubts and worries about the platform. But, we still write.

Being around other people who are pushing themselves to get better in spite of their doubts helps you become better.

As far as meeting other writers on here goes, I wouldn’t necessarily go the Facebook group route.

Just focus on becoming an amazing writer and other writers will reach out to you. Trust me on this.

You can build your email list to help you launch other products and make income outside of Medium.

I’ve built my email list to 18,000 people. 90 percent of those subscribers came from Medium. As long as you’re not obnoxious about it, you can add a short call to action at the end of your blog posts to get people to sign up for your email list.

You want to do this.

Why?

Even if email isn’t your primary marketing channel, understand that platforms come and go. My 50,000 followers on here can disappear overnight, but nobody can take my email list from me.

Do you think it helped my book launch to have an email list of my size?

Yeah, just a tad.

Is email marketing the end all be all? No.

Should you definitely still do it anyway? Yes.

(If you’re a good writer) opportunities will come to you.

My buddy Anthony Moore got a traditionally published book deal from publishing on Medium. Publishers and agents source talent from Medium all the time.

Publications like Business Insider, CNBC, and Inc Magazine often source Medium to find articles to syndicate. Many other indie platforms do the same thing.

I have an army of republished articles around the web that help me build my audience with no additional effort on my part.

I don’t actively do any freelancing, but from time to time, I get a request from someone for a project because they liked my Medium writing.

By just focusing on becominga good writer, you can attract outside income and attention into your life without having to beg for it.

Build a following on here long enough and people will start to reach out to you instead of the other way around.

You can become a fake internet celebrity.

Almost nobody knows who I am, but some people know me from Medium and treat me like a celebrity.

Guess what? I like it.

I don’t know why people pretend they don’t like attention. We all like attention.

Mind you, you don’t have to be an attention whore to get attention. Just write your heart out. People who resonate with your message will look up to you and admire you.

This will feel good because you’re getting that admiration for something you enjoy and care about.

It trips me out that anyone cares what I have to say at all. And I’d be lying if I said the praise doesn’t feel good.

Grow your Medium following and you’ll notice that you start to have dedicated fans who comment on your articles all the time. You’ll get to know them and they’ll feel like your friends. It’s dope.

Your fans keep you going. You, of course, write for yourself, but knowing that other people look forward to reading your work can take it to an even higher level.

You can have something to point to when people question whether or not you’re a real writer.

Guess what?

If you make money from your writing, even $1, you’re a professional writer.

As soon as someone gives you money for something you make, you’re a pro.

Celebrate that.

I know you want to make more money and I know you want to make it faster, but understand that with Medium you have an opportunity you just can’t find anywhere else.

In the past, writers had to scramble, shuck, and jive to even make a dollar.

Back in the pre-medium days, the idea of making $1,000, period, as a writer was extremely difficult — even traditionally published authors failed to make this — now it’s doable by anyone that commits to doing it.

Some people don’t consider bloggers real writers.

Well, guess what? Fuck them.

You’re a real writer.

Now go write.