I Made a Small Fortune in My Very First Month — Here’s How I Am Going to Spend It
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In mid-April, I decided to resurrect my old Medium account from the dead. I had opened an account last year and after uploading two articles, I forgot about it. Well, I didn’t completely forget about it. I knew that it was there, in the back of my mind. Through the rest of 2021, even though the leaves had turned into beautiful reds, oranges, and yellows, I still carried this burden.
It was only when those leaves started to turn green again that I decided that enough was enough. It was time to bring my Medium account back. I write a blog and have been doing so since the beginning of the pandemic. But I wanted to write more. I wanted to see what else I could write. I wanted more.
So, one day in mid-April 2022, I gathered up my courage and logged in to Medium for the first time in what felt like forever, though it was exactly a year. I quickly learned that you needed a hundred followers in order to join the Medium Partnership Program. I had about fifty followers so I was halfway there. Having hope, I read pursued articles like this one, or this one, or even this one. All of these articles help the newbie Medium writer to gain the necessary number of followers to join the program.
And it worked! After a few short days, I had a hundred followers. It felt great. It felt as if I was a “real” Medium writer. But I also knew that the number of followers I had was nothing and was not indicative of whether or not my stories would get read 100% of the time. All it showed was that I had a hundred people who decided to follow me because at that moment in time they liked what they read.
Once I had a hundred followers, the next step was to apply to join the Medium Partnership Program. I quickly read over the requirements. There were only three: 1) have at least 100 followers 2) be a citizen in one of the eligible countries and 3) have at least one published story. Realizing that I met all of the requirements, I submitted my application.
Not even twenty-four hours later and I learned that I had been accepted. I found out quite by accident. I wasn’t notified by email, as I expected (or maybe I was, but that email had gotten lost where all lost emails go). Instead, I was simply browsing my stats details…
