My First $10 on Medium (February Recap)
The text generated in the A.I images still freaks me out, like what the heck is “Eargiming”?? Horrifying…
Anyway,
I tell people now I’m a professional writer, even though I only made enough last month to buy a Wendy’s combo meal (pre-inflation…). But honestly, I think that’s pretty awesome. It’s $10 more than I would’ve had if I hadn’t sat down to write and share some silly poems and some no so silly political diatribes throughout this last month.
It’s been years since I last wrote anything, so my writing felt a bit stiff coming back into it. I’m definitely still trying to get back into the swing of things. But hey, $10 isn’t bad for just getting started again — it’s a good point to jump off. I have nice low bar set for March to try to best.
This past month, I figured out a bit about what I like writing, what my loyal fans seem to enjoy, and what kind of content gets a little more love from the Medium algorithm. I’m not totally sure about that last part, so I guess I’ll see how it goes this next month…
Deep down, I’d love it if I could make enough from this to really help out with my income — not to live off it, but enough to make a difference. Writing isn’t always fun, and sometimes I really don’t feel like sitting down to do it (right now is one of those moments to be honest haha). I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. Sometimes, you just have to force yourself to start typing, even if it ends up not being great. Eventually, the inspiration should find you.
It’s great having a platform like Medium. It’s nice knowing that there are a few people out there who’ll actually read what I write. And it's incredible to actually be able to make money off of it!
My highest earning piece of the month:
At a whopping $1.83 (so far) was the following. I felt inspired by the Democrat’s lack of direction so far this election and decided to write this as a “warning”, not that any Democrat operatives will see this. But I am truly concerned about the Democrat's whole strategy going into this next election and so far it looks like it is going to be a disaster and that is what I tried to capture when I wrote that.
https://medium.com/@brandonpwalker/democrats-without-direction-a-warning-for-2024-7294a39026da
My favorite piece of the month had to be the Fractal Cat:
This is actually my highest clapped-for piece of writing so far with over 400 claps. Kind of surprised me that it didn't earn more than $1, but I’m not going to pretend I understand how the medium algorithms work. My mom read this and actually said it concerned her how strange it was lol. The truth is I have a list of weird band-names on my phone that my friends and I have made up over the years and “Fractal Cat” has been on there for a long time. I had Chat-GPT generate me a bunch of physics, fractal and space-related terms and just went to town free-associating and rhyming. Some of the lines do actually make sense in a way, others are meant to be purposefully paradoxical, confusing, and nonsensical. It’s just something I had fun with and is not meant to be taken seriously but I think it is a masterpiece in its own right.
https://medium.com/@brandonpwalker/fractal-cat-6aa2c5ecea68
Thank you if you’ve taken the time to read this and any of my writing. If you do, I really appreciate you, and if you don’t I still appreciate you! That’s all for now folks, see you in March. :D
