Why I write on medium
I enjoy writing a lot, but there is more to it.
While on the flight to New York for a model United Nations conference, one of my friends and I got talking, and somehow, our conversation took a turn towards medium. After a quick explanation of the platform and what kind of texts I usually write, he asked me a stinging question:
“Why do you write there?”
I paused for a minute because I couldn’t find a straightforward answer. To be completely honest, I was a bit taken aback by the question because I hadn’t asked myself that same question for quite some time. In order to answer it, I need to take a quick trip back to the past.
When I first heard about medium.com, it was the middle of May in 2020. I had just finished my boot camp in the Swiss army and had to fill my summer with something to do. While investigating options for creating money online, I stumbled upon a YouTube video explaining medium.com. The prospect of writing about stuff topics that interest you and earning some money while doing it was right up my alley. Just before I had to do my military service, I completed a six-month internship at a local newspaper. Furthermore, I had taken a few half-hearted shots at creating a YouTube channel, and writing requires significantly less time than shooting and editing videos. I decided to try it and started writing daily for the next 30 days.
So, starting out, I was mostly writing on medium to earn something on the side.
However, soon after starting to write on the platform, two crucial things occurred to me. Foremost, writing about subjects you care about is a ton of fun, and second, making money on a medium isn’t as easy as the YouTube video I saw made it seem.
During my time as an intern at our local newspaper, I wrote for paying customers that wanted to advertise their business in the newspaper. Even though I got the chance to write a lot and take on quite some responsibility, by the end of the internship, my love for writing had diminished. I wasn’t too sad to continue with another chapter in my life. However, writing on medium made me realize that writing is something I still enjoy and provides a lot of satisfaction. Writing about stuff I care about was not only refreshing, but it made me passionate about putting words on a blank canvas again.
While I rediscovered how much I actually liked writing, I figured out that making money off medium is not as easy as I imagined it to be. I remember seeing that one of my stories had earned me some cents and being ecstatic about it, but the first two months were not a lucrative undertaking. Even though I have had some success with my articles, it is not the passive income machine I hoped it could be when I started. However, in all fairness, that is also because of my sporadic uploading ever since I began to study.
Back in the plane, 37’000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, I figured I had my answer;
“At first, I wrote because I thought I could earn some easy money on the side, but now it is more because I actually like writing.”
Case closed.
We chatted for a while and afterward went back to our seats. However, his question was still on my mind because I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a bit that kept me attached to this platform. While we continued our journey over the pond, I once again drifted back into my thoughts:
Money on medium is not bad, but it does correlate quite directly with how many texts you write and how consistently you upload. Considering that my uploads have been sporadic, the topics I choose are not too consistent, and money really can’t be the driving factor for my Medium writing. When I decide to write, I do invest quite some time and do my research on the topics that require, so we’re back at the point that medium reignited my joy for writing. However, why do I enjoy writing on medium whereas I did not enjoy it anymore as an intern?
Medium allows me to write about topics that interest me to an audience with an open mind and probably similar interests. Medium allows me to create content I want to create and share it.
Back in my seat, I felt like I had a revelation. It’s not that I have never thought of it that way, but I did never articulate it that clearly. To be clear, the fact that medium allows creators to share written content about their subject of interest isn’t a revelation to most creators on the platform.
However, I realized that this is the main draw of medium, the thing that keeps bringing me back, back to the blank canvas with the blinking insert point, back to a community of like-minded authors and readers.
