Sometimes, when you look at people who are interested in creating content, you can’t help but have a bit of a laugh. It’s not because you’re trying to be mean-spirited, or rude. It’s because you know that these unfortunate individuals oftentimes have no concept of how much they have their work cut out for them. Content creation is no joke, and people underestimate how much effort takes to succeed at this job. It’s the kind of thing that’s practically impossible to win at without a massive amount of effort. It takes a lot of effort to create a tiny bit of content, and you often aren’t able to create much content without sitting in place for a few years. This is a lot of work, and a lot of people, including gurus are unwilling and unable to do this work. This has led to a lot of misinformation permeating the world of blogging. People say it’s hard, or even impossible to make a good living from writing online. This is nonsense, people just don’t write enough, and they aren’t consistent.
If you’re only going to make money from attention, you can’t expect to earn much more than $90 per article
Maybe you can make a little more. But generally speaking, how could you expect to make a ton of money from articles that aren’t attached to any products? It’s not really possible. And if you’re somehow able to make it happen it won’t be easy. If you want to earn your money solely from the attention economy, you’re going to find yourself having to work a decent bit. You’re going to need to have more and better content than everyone. That applies to writing on Medium too. When it comes to this website, I write blindly, almost without expecting a reward. Why? Because I know that with less than 400 articles, you aren’t likely to be saying much on the Medium partner program. Thank goodness people don’t have the work ethic required to be a good writer.
Content creation is easy, which means you’re competing in a globalized marketplace
Content creation is one of the easiest things you can do in today’s era. All you need to do is turn on your camera/phone or open your laptop. Get to talking or typing, and you’ve made something. Once you really get going, you’re able to get some attention. But unless you’re pretty lucky, you’ve likely noticed that monetization is quite tricky. This is because you’re competing against absolutely everyone on planet Earth. There’s no getting around this fact. The only thing content creators can do to succeed is outwork the competition. A lot of the people who are competing against you are from poor countries, and they’re willing to work for pretty much any type of income. This means that if you don’t pay your dues, you are certain to get swallowed up.
Good news, a lot of the gurus telling you to avoid content creation are totally wrong, if you live in most countries, or are looking to be location independent
Content creation is still the best way to become location independent. You just need to create the right amount of content. Right now, we’re in an interesting place when it comes to the content creation landscape. A lot of people haven’t gotten used to the increased competition and the AI. They’re dropping out of the game. Most of the content creation gurus are people from wealthy countries. If they can’t earn at least $3,000/month, they can’t survive. Good luck making that kind of money in today’s blogosphere. That’s the beauty of the situation for most people who write. The more stuff we create, the more our competition gets out of the way. There’s less competition than ever in the world of professional blogging, and people living in 3rd world countries have the potential to leapfrog social classes by learning the system.
Your favorite partner program authors may not have written enough articles to strike it rich
This is a very big problem with the Medium partner program. It’s full of amateurs from wealthy countries. They decry its benefits, because they don’t understand how valuable the Medium partner program is to writers in poor countries. The more of them quit, the more motivated I am to write good, long articles. I know what it takes. Most people haven’t done the work required to say be able to confidently say that writing for Medium doesn’t work, that much is certain. I would guess that your average “large” Medium blog has about 200 posts. This is pretty good, but you need at least 300 or 400 before you can say that blogging doesn’t work or fails to create passive income.
If you measure your earning potential rationally, you’ll be surprised by how far you end up going
I’m not going to name the author who I was studying, as there’s no point in making blatant comparisons. But I was looking at an author’s page and realized that I had released more articles in two months than he had in roughly 3 years. Now obviously, I knew that this author had been writing for much long than 3 years, and that this site is necessarily anyone’s main hustle nowadays. But by my standards, he hadn’t written much. It took me a little over a year to do what it took him 3 to complete. I know I’m going to become a writer, mainly because I put in the required work. The author who I’m talking about has over 5,000 followers on this platform by the way. He’s not a total slouch. So now I have a bunch of articles, which will probably continue to gain traction on Medium for the next little while. I’m confident in the fact that I’ve created so much content. I did that because I measured my potential earnings rationally, rather than by using pie in the sky figures. Know your numbers, whether you’re doing Medium or YouTube.
Consistency is what pays you in blogging
You want to write and keep writing. In order to make a full-time living from blogging, you’re probably going to need to keep your blog running for about 3 years. This is a lot of work, and most people don’t have the mental strength to do it. You’re also going to want to publish more than 400 articles in today’s world. 400 articles can bring you to $1,000 or $2,000 per month. How many bloggers have even published 400 articles? It’s not common. Put in the years if you want to see the real potential positive impact of your decisions. Very few people can say they’ve done that and failed to succeed.
The less you write, the less you get paid per article
This is why consistency really matters. Each new article you write pushes your old articles. This means that in order to make the most out of an article, an article has to be published after it. This means that if you’ve written 100 articles and are only earning $62.50/month, you shouldn’t necessarily be discouraged. Write another 100 and see how you’re doing. You might be onto something, and have the ability increase your earnings rate per article simply by publishing more.
Most people don’t write enough to say they’ve given blogging a fair shot. They don’t make enough videos to say that they’re real YouTubers. The unfortunate reality is that most people who are interested in becoming well-off as a result of the internet have no idea what it truly takes. To make matters worse, they get into making money online because they’re lazy. Their careers end up crumbling in disaster because they suck. You don’t have to be one of those people. You can create content and earn money. It’s just you’ve going have to work a lot more than what the gurus tell you. You’re going to need to take the time required to learn your craft and become skilled at it. You’re going to need to put out content like it’s your job. The good news is that the dream is still possible to achieve, it’s just people haven’t done the work. Be the excpetion and do the work. You can thank me later when you’re living your content creation dream.
Thanks for paying attention.
