Member-only story
Christmas in July: I Finally Got the $500 Medium Bonus
And I totally deserve it
I guess I’m making progress. I did not get a bonus for April. For May, I got a $100 bonus. Today, one day after my birthday, no less, Medium informed me that my writing statistics for June earned me the big enchilada, the mother of all Medium bonuses, the big 5–0–0. Hallelujah! IMHO, I totally deserve it, not just because of what I wrote, but also because of what I read.
Why me?
I’ve been writing on Medium since February of 2020. In that time, I’ve published over 250 stories. Most of them were read by very few people and earned very little. A 20-hour week generally earns me somewhere in the vicinity of $25. Workers in China probably earn more stitching MAGA hats. But I’m not just in it for the money, so that’s okay.
In the nearly one and a half years of writing on Medium, I’ve had only a few stories reach lifetime earnings of over $100. This one, written on May 28 of this year, was one of the main reasons I got the $500 bonus for June. To date, it’s earned me $178 and has over 91 hours of member reading time. It also put me back up among the top writers in history, a pedestal I first stood atop over a year ago, but off which I subsequently slipped.
