You ever get the feeling Medium’s Boost system destroyed your chances of writing success? Destroyed your second income? Your first income? Any income!?

I did, until I wrote a story that went UnBoosted yet made me $1908, got 150,000 Views, 112K Reads, and over 12K likes. Those results shattered every perception I’d held about Medium’s Boost system.

So let’s walk through it to see how it happened.

Back when things initially changed on Medium in August 2023 and the Boost system was adopted, I hated it. Earnings, reads, views, and engagement all plummeted overnight.

The Boost had instantly managed to boot writers to the kerb and set up a gatekeeping system that turned the UnBoosted into lepers.

Simply put, if a story got Boosted, you were in the money. Not boosted? In the shitter collecting dirt. The discrepancy between the two was an immense source of consternation and angst. I hated the gap and the power placed in the hands of Boost nominators and curators.

The Big Change

Nothing changed those perceptions for 6 months. Until I wrote a story that turned my world upside down and inside out.

After writing, editing, and submitting it to the Publication, one of the editors notified me they were going to nominate it for a Boost. Happy days. As far as I knew, all my prior stories that had been nominated by editors had always been given the green light Boost, so I eagerly waited with greedy, bated breath for the little Boost icon to appear in my Dashboard.

And waited.

Refreshed the shit outta my app. No Boost icon arrow thing appeared. Hours became days. Days became a week. WTF? No Boost icon popped up next to my story. Had the higher-up curators rejected the editor’s Boost nomination? They must have. Fuck!

I fucking hate this gatekeeper system, I thought again. Three hours of wasted time writing.

I probably shouldn’t look at it like that but in my life, with two young kids and a full-time job, time spent writing literally is money. I love writing for the joy, but I’ve got a bank loan to pay off and Medium had been helping significantly with that before the Boost system was adopted.

Since that time of adoption? No Boost for a story meant a metaphorical kick in the guts and a literal kick up my bank account’s clacker. While Seinfeld’s soup nazi says, “No soup for you!”, when the Medium Boost team rejects a Boost nomination, they’re effectively saying, “No money for you!”

That had always been my experience, but things were about to change. Big time.

In corpo waffle-speak, my story started getting “traction”, whatever the fuck that means. I just look at Read numbers and View numbers, and when a story gets Boosted, those numbers go up. When a story goes UnBoosted, their dawdle barely becomes a crawl.

Yet lo and behold, my numbers were going up. Exponentially. Day upon day.

On Day 1, I had 91 reads — 76 Member Reads — and made about $6. Who knows how those numbers equate, but whatever.

On Day 3, I had 782 Reads — 667 Member Reads — and made about $29. Giddy up.

I didn’t understand it, but I liked it!

About a week after publishing, I was getting between 3K-4K Reads a day and was making $40–60 alongside those reads. Again, don’t ask me to explain the fluctuations because that would be harder than blowing smoke rings out my clenched up bum then catching them with a hula hoop. No can do.

By the end of January, my UnBoosted story had somehow pocketed me a cool $867 smackeroos.

Confused? I was. It continued.

On the occasions I’ve had Boosted stories before, they usually went strong for about a week then petered out into nothing very quickly. Kind of like a teenager’s undying love. But my UnBoosted story and its miraculous Reads and Views and Earnings just kept on keeping on all the way through February.

This thing had black market Viagra pumping through its vein.

By Feb 10, exactly three weeks after I’d first published the story, it was still generating 3K Reads a day and anywhere from $35–50 every time the daily earnings came through. It wasn’t just clinging on by its fingernails and trickling through a couple shekels into my bank, this thing had its claws, talons, and teeth clamped deep inside Medium’s plump algorithmic flesh. And it wasn’t letting go.

How Can This Happen?

This is the part where we really have to sit back and ask how? Why? I mean, of course I ain’t complaining, and I ain’t offering to donate my earnings to charity, but just some clarity on how this happens with the Medium algo would be nice, wouldn’t it?

This seemed so out of the ordinary. My experiences, along with pretty much every other person I know and follow on Medium, had always been the same since the Boost system took off last year.

Get Boosted, drink champagne. Don’t get Boosted, scavenge for rusty water.

And even within Boosted stories themselves, the consistency is hard to follow. Some go flying to the moon while others take off and hit their deluded little noggins on a stump barely three feet off the ground. Some get shown to tens of thousands whereas others are hidden deep in the 37th row, jumping up and down cloying for some attentive reader love.

But one thing had always been the same — you absolutely needed a Boost if you wanted anything to show for your time and efforts.

That was until this monolithic T-Rex UnBoosted story of mine started baring its teeth and eviscerating all the modest records I’d set hitherto.

Now here we are in March, pushing towards two months after I first published, and it’s still doing nicely, thank you very much. As of March 4, it’s getting over 1K Reads a day and making around $20 every 24 hours. These are the total numbers.

In truth, such a successful story does two things to you, only one of them good. On the positive side, it shows you what Medium can do for you if you sing the right tune and the algo likes your melody. That is inspiring. On the flip side, it can make you lazy when you see the fruits of your labours continue to produce such salubrious fiscal sweetness without you having to do anything.

Praise be to passive income!

Granted, I’ve had my mum over here in Japan for a couple weeks and been through two bouts of influenza, so those things have clamped the brakes on my writing, but if I’m honest with myself, I’ve made a sloth look like a busy bee since this story first got published.

Money, good. Production, bad.

Takeaways

In closing, this story was obviously a roaring success, but I think it’s worth remembering that there are always basics you must address when you write on Medium. For example, your heading, sub-heading, and lead image deserve a lot of attention because Medium classifies a Read as a member sticking around for at least 30 seconds. So, you need to attract them and keep them for at least half a minute.

I think I nailed those points with my story, so even though it was UnBoosted, it still had the right ingredients used the right way. Beyond that? Who knows how Medium’s algorithm works, but when you crack the safe, it gives you a nice little glimpse into possibilities I never thought existed on this platform.

So, get cracking, coz you just never know what fortunes await you! And download my free guide to successful Medium writing here if you want to know the 10 steps I always use for every story I write.