Unlocking the Potential: How Much Can You Earn from a Single Medium Story?
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Chapter 1: The Power of Mathematics in Earnings
Mathematics can reveal profound truths, even if many find it tedious. While I’m not a mathematical genius like Good Will Hunting, I appreciate math for its ability to uncover facts about our world. The more we understand these truths, the more content we can be, all else being equal—a concept encapsulated by the Latin phrase "ceteris paribus."
Many challenges we face arise from mathematical misunderstandings. Take the Titanic disaster, for instance; it wasn't merely the iceberg that caused the tragedy, but rather the failure to accurately calculate stability in adverse conditions.
During my early days as an analyst on Wall Street, I often encountered math-based questions in interviews. These were purely theoretical; for example, interviewers might ask, "How many golf balls could fit in a 747?" The goal wasn’t necessarily the right answer, but rather to observe the applicant's reasoning process. An adept analyst would estimate the dimensions of a golf ball and the interior of a 747, working backwards to arrive at a solution.
In that spirit, let’s engage in another theoretical inquiry: What is the maximum potential earnings for a single story on Medium?
This thought experiment will focus on just one article—not an author’s total portfolio, nor their best or worst work, but an average story under certain conditions.
To explore this, we’ll establish a few ground rules:
- Each story is assumed to be read only once by each reader, preventing unlimited earning potential.
- We’ll take the average earnings per story to be 7 cents. (I plan to delve deeper into this topic in a future article.)
- We’ll assume there are one million paying users on Medium.
Determining the last assumption requires some back-calculation. As of 2021, the latest statistics indicated approximately 700,000 paying users. However, this user base had been growing by about 100,000 annually. Thus, we can project that by 2024, there will be around one million paying subscribers.
With these figures, we can now compute the maximum hypothetical earnings for a single Medium story.
The potential earnings for one story are calculated as follows: the payment per read (7 cents) multiplied by the total number of paying users (1 million). If every paying user read your story just once, the result would be astounding.
Are you prepared for this?
(You might want to sit down, as the figure could be shocking.)
The calculation yields:
7 cents per read x 1 million paying users = $70,000
Yes, you read that correctly. Seventy thousand dollars for just one story!
Not too shabby for a day's effort!
It's important to note that these calculations are merely estimates and are based on specific assumptions. The actual figure could vary—ranging from $50,000 to $100,000.
(Imagine being the writer who only earns $50,000 per story!)
Earning $70,000 per story is significant. That’s on par with what renowned authors like Clive Cussler or J.K. Rowling might achieve.
What are your thoughts on these projections? Do your estimates align with this, or do you believe they are higher or lower? As an author, do you aspire to reach the $70,000 mark with your stories?
Chapter 2: Real Earnings Insights
In this video, we explore the potential earnings for writers on Medium in 2024, providing insights into how much you can realistically make through your writing endeavors.