I made $7.19 writing 78 articles in 2020

Then one article made half of that in November 2021

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Way back in January, 2021 I published this article about my meagre income on Medium. Despite the paltry cumulative payout, I was delighted that the decision to earn from my writing after a decade of writing for free on Facebook, had paid off. The incurable optimist in me had chosen to see the upside. I was doing something I loved, and I was getting paid for it. Although, the cost/benefit seemed lopsided at the time, the figures never bothered me. I had a day job, and writing wasn’t my main vocation so I wasn’t at all pressured by the number on the paycheck. My primary concern was growing the engagements. It was in this spirit of gratitude for a hobby slowly becoming an avenue for passive income, that I published the January post.

Then in November 2021, something weird happened.

I had just finished a meeting at work after a long day of deliberations, and I was tired. As I usually do when I’m tired and I need to destress, I opened the Medium app looking for something easy to read, when I saw the notifications. It was the most notifications I’d ever received since I joined in April 2020. An article I’d written about my disposition towards death titled: If You are Dying, Don’t Call Me seemed to have caught people’s attention. I was so excited…