Hi,

you're reading Medium Mondays. In this newsletter, I share with you the in-depth lessons I learn by writing on Medium, studying articles and constantly talking with writers, editors and Boost nominators.

This week, an analysis of my earnings, to see how much more you can earn with the Boost.

Enjoy!

The Boost is driving Medium writers crazy.

My articles have been selected a bunch of times. Every time I received that magic notification email, I fist-pumped and screamed “yes!”.

But the results were not always aligned with my enthusiasm. Things keep changing. It’s a human-curation mechanism. New nominators and curators are added. The old ones change their preferences. You never know what to expect.

To help you know what to expect, I’ve collected the stats of my top 10 earners. Here’s what I learned.

I know the sample is small. Please forgive me, Medium analytics don’t help.

How much can you make with the Boost?

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As you can see, all the articles, except the last one, were published after the Boost program beta started. And they were all sent to publications. I don’t know if at the time all the corresponding editors were nominators.

And no article was published during the couple of crazy months when a Boost could mean 4 figures for a single article. It was the consequence of a stupid earning formula that has been changed.

You don’t see the views count on the table for two reasons:

• external views aren’t monetized, so they would skew the average incorrectly,
• only views lasting longer than 30 seconds count as reads, and only reads are monetized.

Engagement (replies, read time, and claps) weighs a lot. But it would have been hell to track all those figures. I’m using reads as a proxy.

So, how do they compare?

First, some Boosted articles have not made the list. The missing ones may earn something more over time. But I don’t expect it. They are already a few months old and Medium isn’t generous with old content.

And, another surprising fact: in the first and second place there aren’t Boosted articles. Why? I see two major factors:

• the target audience is very large,
• they talk about my personal experience, which is what the audience wants and what works for the Boost program, too.

The last column is the most interesting one. It shows the RPM, revenue per mille, which means “dollars earned per thousand reads”. You can realize the imbalance at a glance.

But the average makes it clearer:

• Boosted articles RPM average: 198,7
• non-Boosted articles RPM average: 63,17

So, a Boosted article makes 3,15 times more as much as a non-Boosted one. This number is aligned with what Neeramitra Reddy reported to me. He has 25 Boosted articles.

What does this mean?

For now, if you want to make money on Medium, aim for the Boost.

I found exceptions. But all those authors publish almost daily. And they write about very popular and/or trendy topics. You can read more about them here.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your Boosts!

If you need help to grow on Medium, for a limited time I'm providing free 30-minute calls to find the best strategy for you. Click here to book yours.

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See you soon!

Alberto