How The Medium Flywheel Effect Explodes Into a $4,000 Article
It makes all your four-dollar articles worthwhile
Love it or hate it, Medium's Boost program can be a new writer's best friend.
A Boosted article can take off and give a new author something few platforms can - tens of thousands of views. It can also make you thousands of dollars for one article. I enjoy Substack, but I give Medium the edge for building an audience and making money when you're new.
Here on Substack, you'd need 67 paid subscribers at $5 per month to make $4,000 annually. It's not impossible, but getting paid subscribers isn't easy.
Although to be fair, writing a Medium article that makes $4,000 isn't easy.
I've only had two hit that mark and a third that made over $1,500. Those four-figure articles came via what I've dubbed the Medium flywheel effect. What the hell is the Medium flywheel effect?
I'm glad you asked.
Let's get some basics out of the way. Medium pays you based on a combination of (changing) factors. We're not privy to all of them. At a basic level, the Boost distributes your articles far beyond the normal distribution level, leading to far more views.
A Boost also adds a multiplier for how much each view pays you. Other factors such as your read rate, comments, claps, and number of followers gained after reading your article all factor into how much your article makes.
The flywheel effect starts with a Boost. That Boost gets more eyes on your work, leads to more followers, and gets you more engagement.
Now here's where things can get crazy.
Have an article or two tucked away that you can post shortly after that first Boost to make the most of the new traffic.
That can lead to another Boost within that same month. Some of those additional eyes will be Boost nominators. Repeat the process, and you can get a third. It's uncommon, but it does happen. And when it happens, the algorithm feeds off of itself.
Assuming you're tagging articles correctly, you'll quickly become a Medium top writer and have your profile featured under "who to follow" for several topics.
Medium then drives absurd amounts of traffic to your articles, dramatically increasing engagement, followers, and pay. I had one month when three articles were Boosted, and the flywheel effect took over. It gained my account 5,000 followers (I only had 1,000 at the time) and paying over $4,000 for the month.
That same process also led to one article that wasn't Boosted, getting 50,000 views instead of my usual 200.
The key to the flywheel effect is obtaining the first Boost paired with either the availability to churn out more solid articles in the coming days or to have several good articles already completed and ready to be published.
Part of it is luck, but the other part is being ready to strike while the iron is hot. When you get a Boost, that's not the time to slow down. That's when you hit the gas.
Remember what they say about luck, it’s just where preperation meets opportunity.