Make It Easier to Build an Audience Online by Becoming a Paid Member
Being a freeloader of the platform does not increase your chances of earning more
When I learned about how you can make money writing from Medium, my initial reaction was to join the platform and establish my online presence ASAP!
What made this an attractive opportunity is that you don’t even need to be a member to qualify to earn money. That means I have a chance to make money for free! If that doesn’t sound like a sweet deal, I don’t know what is!
But of course, making money for free sounds a lot simpler in your head than it actually is.
I (like every other opportunist out there who aspires to milk the system without giving anything) had a tough time making a dollar on the platform.
It stayed that way until I learned how to give — not just take.
Gary V even wrote a book about this. The idea is to give, give, give, then ask. And my idea of “giving” to the platform is to pay for its membership fee.
It’s only fair that I give them money, in exchange for giving me the opportunity to make more money.
But I gained more than simply having the opportunity to make more money.
The fact that you get access to read every article on the platform is a big advantage. It gives you the opportunity to observe and study the platform. The more you understand how it works, who’s in there, and what others are saying, the better you can position yourself to stand out.
In short, being a member allows me to do research.
This helped me realize how some of the ideas I wanted to write about were already written 1000 times before. And if you’re writing something that’s been written before, chances are, no one is going to read it (aka “a waste of time”). It’s also the reason why most publications reject your work — simply because everyone’s talking about the exact same thing.
The more you read other people’s work, the more you find ways to be unique — the key to standing out.
Not only that, but it also allows you to…
- Figure out which publications you…
