How I Made $0.59 Cents On Medium In My First Month
A Step By Step Guide But Also A Memoir
Many people ask: “How’d you do it? How’d you make $0.59 cents on Medium in your first month?” Occasionally (often, if I’m being honest but not so humble), people will stop me on the street and ask me for my secret to making it *big* on Medium.
So, to my dear fans: to my worried aunts and uncles, Mom, Dad, and my greedy little landlord elf-man who’s asking why I “lied” about my source of income, and who demands that I pay him my 2020 rent “literally right now.”
To everyone really. This article’s for you. Here’s how, in my first month of writing on Medium, I managed this:
Something About Headings
You know that friend that — when you’re about so start watching a movie, tells you, oh I don’t know… that Dr. Crowe in the Sixth Sense is actually dead for the whole movie?*
Don’t be that guy.
Headlines are spoilers. If you give away all the good stuff in the heading, your readers are going to just skim-skim-skim done! All the way through your article. Headlines should at least be vague, and at best, tell a completely different, fully irrelevant story.
Write “Something” (Almost) Every Day
It literally doesn’t matter what it is. As long as you write something. Or “something.”
Yesterday, I was feeling like a little shit, so I just wrote “I am a little shit” in small cursive lines to form the shape of a tiny poo. Like when someone writes “I love you” 100 times in the shape of a heart for Valentine’s Day. Same thing.
Bottom line? You’ve got to do it everyday. No exceptions. Except Saturdays. Saturdays are for having fun.
But also don’t write on Tuesday — Tuesday being the antichrist to Saturday, making it the worst day of the week, which means! You can take a self-day on Tuesday.
Actually, though. Every other day has a thing. Friday’s Friday, Thursday is Friday-eve, Wednesday is hump day. Monday’s suck, but that’s it’s thing. We complain about how bad it is, which fosters community and makes Mondays actually? Not so bad.
Tuesdays, on the other hand, are grey and vaguely unfulfilling. So eat a Klondike and don’t get out of bed. You don’t deserve it, but loving yourself isn’t about being enough. It’s about recognizing that you’re not enough and loving yourself anyways.
Clarity is Key (But So Is Mysterious Symbolism)
When I was five, I used to go to the stream every day to look for crawfish. My parents told me that, as long as I came back before the street lamps came on, I could spend the whole day by the water. So I’d hike up my pant legs and spend the afternoon lifting rocks in the hopes of finding some of those little aquatic cockroaches.
Somedays, I found more crawfish than I could carry back home in my little red crawfish bucket.
Somedays I found nothing at all…
I still have that red crawfish bucket, and when I’m back home for a visit, I’ll spend an afternoon down by the gurgling water.
I’ll search for crawdads just like the other kids playing in the summer creek, each with their own little buckets. And when one of them breaks free from the group, and tries to jump off the waterfall that’s actually been there the whole time (even though I’m just bringing it up now), I’ll stop them, hold them in my arms, then send them back to the safety of the stream, where the crawdads are. And on my way back home, I’ll hum a tune, knowingly, to myself:
“If a body catch a body coming through the rye.”
Don’t over-explain. Some stories tell themselves.
THIS IS REAL LIFE
This is real life. You have to do this shit on your own. You’re not in “Full House” anymore. This isn’t “Friends.”
No.
You’re Shia LaBeouf in front of a green screen.
You’re the Tenant.
You’re also the Revenant.
What’s that mean? It means you’re about to get mauled by a bear, and live.
It means you’re Jason Bourne and when you have friends, they get shot by mysterious men in black cars. Which is why you don’t have friends.
Some people say you’ll make “way more money” by publishing through scamholes like “The New York Times” and “The Guardian.”
(What are they Guarding anyway?)
The quickest way to make money on your own is by doing it on your own.
And also through Patreon.
Pablo Picasso’s Routine IS Art
If you’ve made it this far, I’ve probably already earned my $0.59 cents, which means it’s time to get down to business and give you the practical advice for which you came in the first place. Want to start making big cash fast? Here’s what you need to do:
Get up no earlier than 11am. Rather than going to the gym or eating a big breakfast, smoke a cigarette in bed and slowly drift into an existentialist haze.
Spend 30 minutes to 3 hours on TikTok to conjure the motivation to get out of bed. Once you do, congratulate yourself by going to brunch, or, more likely, just lunch. While you’re there, socialize with a friend by venting to them about all the different stressors in your life.
After lunch, you’ll need a little 2–5pm catnap, a key ingredient to set you up for a successful night of drinking and staring at your computer. Which brings us to!
Don’t Exercise. Drink.
Yeah yeah yeah everybody says that exercising is the best way to boost neurotransmitters like endorphin and dopamine and all that good stuff. You know what else triggers dopamine? Everclear. You’ll get a hit of feel-good chemicals without the pre-pain of a workout. So put down the weights, Jim, and pull out the ole Trotsky shot ski.
Stare at Your Computer Until You Hallucinate Words
Have you ever done that thing where you stare at your computer and wonder whether or not your a worthless piece of shit? Don’t stop doing that. It actually works.
When I started writing this very article, I had that exact thought:
You’re a piece of shit.
You’re bad at sports.
You smell and your memes have no game.
I spent the next 4 hours just sitting in my chair. But at the dawn of the fifth hour, when my eyes had become glazed, not only metaphorically, but also with the maple donut that I briefly face-planted into while I was lifelessly staring at the blank page — that’s when it hit.
The Zone.
Words started to magically appear on the page. My fingers moved as if possessed by a ghost.
It’s called rock bottom, but it’s also called The Zone. It’s the well-spring of true artistic expression, and, when you get there, the work literally does itself. The last time I was in The Zone, “I” wrote for four hours and ate the better half of a baker’s dozen.
Which is 7.
At the end of the day, remember that your goals are within your reach. You too can publish an article on Medium and have $0.59 cents deposited directly into your bank account. While that $0.59 cents will only account for the foam that’s left on the side of the 8oz latte you bought in celebration of being a paid writer; remember this: You’re just a body, with a red bucket, searching through a stream for crawfish alongside kids who are younger and more talented than you are.
So at least you’re at home visiting your parents while you search for a new job.
*Spoiler Alert
