Personal Finance Writer Monetizes Medium Posts

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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In today's story, hoping to pay off his debt, a policy analyst begins writing about personal finance. And this writing goes very, very well. It ends up making thousands of dollars a month. We're gonna talk about medium and sub-stack. I probably mentioned those once or twice, at least sub-stack, but not too often.

So if you're interested in writing, especially nonfiction, these can be great platforms to build an audience and get paid for it. As mentioned, this guy ended up doing very well, essentially creating a new career and achieving a full-time income. Though, as you'll also hear, because we do like to look at things that go wrong and the difficulties and challenges along the way, he also encountered a big problem at some point. So all that's coming up in this very short action-packed story, welcome to Side Hustle School. Story's called "Personal Finance Writer Monetizes Medium Posts." Coming right up.

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In an attempt to pay off his debt, Ben Lefort first tried cutting expenses. He was eating rice and beans every day, but it still wasn't enough. He knew money wasn't just gonna grow on trees. In short, Ben needed to diversify and increase his income. He decided to start writing about personal finance, or what Ben calls his obsession.

In 2018, he set up a profile on Medium. That would be medium.com. It was an ideal platform because it required no startup costs and no technical skills. Within five minutes, his account was ready, he could start writing and publishing his posts. Furthermore, people could start reading right away.

You see, unlike a lot of other blogging platforms, Medium distributes posts to a built-in audience. Ben describes it as part social media host and part blogging interface. Instead of starting from scratch with zero audience, like he would with another platform, people could be reading his posts instantly. However, Ben was not the only person on Medium writing about personal finance. So he needed to find a way to stand out.

To do that, he adopted a storytelling approach, relating his advice back to experiences from real life. For example, if he was talking about emergency funds, he would tell his readers about a time in his life when he didn't have an emergency fund and really needed it. Now, in terms of money, with Medium, every person who subscribes pays $5 a month. That's just to Medium overall, not to Ben. They get access to every article on the platform.

And from there, Medium takes the sum of the money and distributes it to authors based on how many people are reading their work. So basically, the more page views, the more you get paid. Now, in his first month, Ben made $15. He took those profits and quit his job, bought a new car, started planning a vacation. Well, not quite.

He did reinvest those profits into a low-cost index fund and mostly kept writing while working his job, of course. Ben consistently posts several long-form pieces each week. Since he's writing about an area of interest to him, he said that the work comes naturally. And the profits began to grow over time. From that first month of $15, eventually he was making close to $6,000 a month, just from writing on Medium.

Then in 2021, he created a Substack newsletter. Substack is a service used to send out subscription newsletters. Based on which articles got the most attention on Medium, Ben would take a deeper dive into that topic with his newsletter. He charged $10 a month, or $50 a year, for people to read all of his work. Not only that, but he didn't have to pay anything to start the Substack.

By launching when he did, Ben was able to transfer some long-term readers on Medium into his newsletter audience, which was better because then he could contact them directly. With the sense that he was onto something good, Ben decided to then take all of his most popular articles in newsletters and look for themes. And this led to his first self-published book, The Financial Freedom Equation. He used his Substack to promote the book and give sneak peeks to his subscribers. Now, unfortunately, this was all going so well, but unfortunately, as often happens, Ben was given a run for his money.

In the middle of 2021, the algorithm for Medium changed. What? Yup, and that can happen to Medium writers, just like with Google or Amazon or other platforms we've seen when your business is dependent on somebody else's algorithm, you might be in trouble. And this meant when the algorithm shifted, he went from making more than $5,000 a month to just $1,000 a month. Before that, Ben thought he had made it.

However, his hopes weren't dashed. Thankfully, he had diversified his revenue streams. He is especially grateful that he has Substack profits coming in because that can't be taken away so easily. Now, while those profits don't look exactly the same, Ben is still earning at least $2,000, $3,000 a month, writing and researching a topic that he was already fascinated by. He is less reliant on the paycheck he receives as a policy analyst.

And going forward, Ben is hoping to grow that newsletter further, sell more books, and even publish the next one soon. That's right, he's getting ready to publish his next book on Amazon. It's called "The Rational Investor." [Music]

So the problem that Ben had with Medium and the algorithm, that couldn't happen with Substack, at least not just randomly, because their people have actively chosen to subscribe. He's got their email addresses. They are paying specifically to read his newsletter.

It's very different from when they're just paying $5 a month to Medium. And if all of a sudden your articles aren't being read as much as they were before because of that algorithm change, then you're not getting paid. So it takes a lot of work to build a paying Substack audience that's substantial. But for the right person, there's definitely a path that can be followed. I mean, like we have seen this with other people as well.

Like if you are a good writer, if you like writing, if you're especially into writing like in-depth articles, that's what tends to go over well with people subscribing. They're in-depth, helpful, informative articles that you publish consistently. A lot of work, but thousands of dollars a month, sometimes for the most popular authors on Substack, tens of thousands of dollars a month. Something to think about for our writers out there and for everybody out there. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

Hope you enjoy these stories. I hope they get you thinking. To find the show notes for today's episode, including links to Ben's Medium, his Substack, and his website, I think it's just benlafort.medium.com. We're gonna link it all up on the notes page, sidehustleschool.com/2096. If you've got a comment or question for the show, you can leave that on the website as well.

Most importantly, thank you for listening today. Take care of yourself. Do something for yourself today. And of course, come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.