Road to $100 a Day

For week 2 of this journey and learn how I got 7 pieces curated in 5 days without writing anything new, that is in this article:

Who I Am

My name is Aigner, pronounced like Kanye without the K or onyay. I’m a professional freelance writer and editor. I’ve had a Medium for a while now, but only just became a follower at the end of November.

I garner about 100–120 new followers a week. I publish a minimum of one story a day of quality and value. I follow and interact with other writers on this platform, but most importantly, I have a writing practice that kicks ass. I publish a ton outside of this platform with places like Tor Nightfire, Oly Arts, Discover Pods, and more. I currently make about $1–2 a day on here and have head over 30+ pieces published on my page and other Medium publications.

In my first week or so I got about 200 followers, published 10–20 stories, and made about 4 bucks.

I don’t have a capture of those stats and haven’t figured out if you can view weekly past stats, but below are my stats from this past week.

These are my views since I began my membership and started publishing on here frequently.

So, I’m not going into this totally from scratch, but I’m also not one of those people who shot right out of the gate with thousands of views or followers. I’m slightly above average at best, but I know how to move out of average into the top percent.

Experimentation, persistence, and outreach.

Why I Am Trying This

After reading Michelle Loucadoux, MBA’s article I Quit My Six-Figure Job Because I Made $5.80 on Medium, I got really inspired or obsessed with the notion of doubling my previous efforts through continued momentum and effort.

With the math of doubling what I make in a day ($1), I should be hitting $100 a day by July. Which is exactly when I want to hit it. And that’s only if I keep doing exactly what I have been doing without changing anything up or experimenting.

That’s not me, though. I like to work the system and figure out what is the best way for me to reach my audience and get the following that I want. Right now what works for me is scheduling a bunch of small posts (poems, stories, thoughts, and the like) on Monday to go up throughout the week and focus on two bigger stories to write on targeted days.

Of course I’m not just posting. I’m also commenting, submitting, responding, clapping, and interacting in Medium Facebook groups. So far, Medium Writers and Bloggers has shown me the best results. Plus, I’ve been able to find other writers to follow and read on there as well.

Doing that has given me the biggest returns on earnings. Actually interacting with other writers, so that they see me in the thousands of writers out there. My practice is usually to comb through my following list and see what everyone is working on. I leave claps and respond when something resonates with me.

The top earners supposedly do this everyday for hours. I usually do for a couple of hours a day, but don’t like to fall into a hole of clapping and commenting, so cut myself off when I feel like I’m detaching from myself.

By February, I should have 1,000 followers which, I’ve gathered, is part of the combination of three things you need to making big bucks on this site.

The 3 things:

a.) lots of quality content
b.) member followers who will spend time actually reading it
c.) a consistent daily publishing habit

My Commitment

It takes time to create something big and sustainable, which if you follow me, you know I’m all about. I don’t want to just be a writer now or tomorrow, I want to be a writer years from now and even long after I stop writing. I want to create a writing empire that I can live upon.

I also don’t want to just make $100 a day on this site once, I want to make it my norm. I want to build an audience of loyal subscribers who want to read my stuff and support me because they see that there is something great here.

Best Story This Week

Worst Story This Week

Further Reading of Mine

If you’ve stumbled upon this article and have read all the way to the end, here’s some more of my work on here that might interest you or that I think you should give a read because it’s damn good stuff.

In Conclusion

If you want to continue following me and getting notifications of my journey and when I post updates on how things are going, then follow the tag road to 3k. I’ll post a new report every Friday with links to my most popular and unpopular pieces for people if they want to cross reference.

Until next time,
Aigner

— — — — — —
Week Two: Engagement, Spread, and Tweaking
Week Three: Pull Back and Reflect

Aigner Loren Wilson is a queer Black SFWA, HWA, and Codex writer. Her work has appeared in Arsenika, Terraform, Rue Morgue, and more. She was listed on the honors list for the Otherwise Fellowship award for 2019. She also writes or edits for Strange Horizons, Nightlight Horror Podcast, Oly Arts, Discover Pods, and more.