1 main reason most fail at Medium (and YouTube) long-term
I completely blew up my YouTube channel this week.
As you may know if you’ve followed me for any amount of time, I spent most of my first two years on that platform filming, editing, and publishing videos about writing on Medium.com.
And while taking that tack and owning that niche for a while is what ultimately led to my monetization there, I knew it wasn’t sustainable for a few reasons:
I hated filming and being on camera, and I knew my passion for it was waning quickly
I knew the “writing on Medium” niche appealed to a passionate but very small potential audience
(…and probably most importantly) I knew the “make money online” niche was dying
Last week, I told the story of one Josh Mayo, who was one of the biggest names on YouTube back in 2022-23.
I wrote:
“At the height of his popularity, he was earning over half a million dollars a year from YouTube and associated affiliate marketing as his videos regularly drew in hundreds of thousands of views in a very lucrative niche at the time.
“But as with (a Medium) writer who wrote the same article every day, people eventually got tired of it, interests changed, and the algos changed with them.
“I checked out Mayo’s channel recently and, as recently as two years ago, he was posting videos with titles like “4 Side Hustles That No One is Talking About ($900+ per day) that were doing numbers like 5 million views, 3.3 million views, and 1.4 million views.
“Well, here’s what his last 6 videos have gotten:
“That’s not terrible, but it’s a far cry from 5 million, which may be why he has only posted once in the last few months.”
During and coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was looking to get rich in the online content game.
But as people were called back to the office and realized at the same time that content is a long, hard slog, they quit and moved onto other things.
And a lot of the biggest “make money online” channels have died off big-time.
Which brings me back to my own space.
I think I probably benefited as much from the era as I did my own success on Medium.
And while I think “writing on Medium” is still a viable small niche, it’ll never allow me to retire from my day job (my ultimate goal).
So what will my main channel focus on now?
Consider the following…
Here’s my most recent video about Medium:
And here’s what it has done, stats-wise, over the first 5 months:
And here’s a new investing-focused video (the theme of my faceless channel rebrand) that I published last week:
And here’s what it did stats-wise in just 3 days:
The big difference is in audience size and impressions.
YouTube showed my Medium thumbnail to 9,200 people in 5 months
It showed my latest investing vid’s thumbnail to 22,000 people in 3 days
Given my main channel is already monetized and actually getting paid is a huge motivator, I just decided to rebrand that one to an investing channel so I don’t have to start again from zero.
HOWEVER, because I don’t want to leave my Medium die-hards hanging, I’ve started a second YouTube channel as a tandem to this newsletter, where I’ll be posting earnings, trips, and tricks.
You can find that here:
My hope is that by not getting stuck in one niche and shifting my main channel to investing, I can start doing numbers closer to my significant Medium earnings (update on those at the end of this post).
Why I thrive on Medium while others quit
When I started out writing on Medium, I wrote primarily about my quest to finally quit drinking alcohol.
Eventually, I shifted to writing mostly about Health, with some make-money-online content on the side.
Now I write mostly about money, business, and finance.
What will I write about next week?
My answer is always: “It depends”.
Depends on what people want to read.
Depends on what the algorithm is serving up.
The difference between me and most people is that I’ve never allowed myself to get stuck in one niche … and then quit when that niche stopped paying out.
Succeeding long-term in content means constantly reinventing yourself to stay current and relevant.
It’s what I’ve done on Medium.
It’s what I’m trying to do on YouTube, which remains my White Whale.
So what adjustments will you make today to win at the content game?
Publish Every Day project update: 655
I’m trying to see if I can make enough money to quit commuter life within a year by publishing every day on various platforms and putting my earnings into passive income investments.
How much I need to retire: $250 CAD per day
What I earned this week (daily average): $441.53 (Medium) + $0.54 (YouTube) + $0.57 (Amazon Associates) + $8.99 (Substack) + $0.08 (stock dividends) = $138.51 total
What I’ve published recently:
Medium
Substack
The very post you’re reading right now
Is writing on Medium still worth it in 2025 (full earnings report)
YouTube
Hey friend, did you know my posts take 1-2 hours to compile?
Do you enjoy my work here and want me to do more?
Join an exclusive group of people who support me directly by making a small but mighty contribution:
Become a paid member of this newsletter
Buy The Power To-Do List, my cheap, mega-effective productivity tool for scattered minds like mine (I use it every day)
Thanks for reading! Have a great day!
Investing should always be a popular topic, especially at present, for an obvious reason: the downside is the difficulty getting a good foothold, as it's a competitive space.
Hi — you’re making $161K annually on Medium? Or have I got the math wrong? Thx!