I am one of the select 1000 writers who got the Medium $500 bonus in June:

And yet, everything I do flies in the face of the established wisdom on writing on Medium

Okay, so let's get this out of the way.

I woke up to an email from Medium telling me they are sending me over a thousand dollars this month. I wondered if I was seeing things; after all, I know I didn’t earn anywhere near that much the last time I checked. I had to go to the actual partner earnings page to figure out what had happened. I had also not gotten an email from Medium telling me they are giving me the bonus…because I don’t subscribe to any of the Medium emails.

Yeah, I am one of those people.

Anyway, back to the bonus. It’s apparently given to the top 1000 writers with the most engagement and other writers get $200 or $100 etc. There are many articles on Medium that discuss what constitutes engagement, and how you can get some. You should go read those.

(Or not. I don’t.)

Now for the inevitable: how did I do it? After all, that’s why you’re here right? You are here expecting advice like, “Write an article every day for 30 days” and “Write what you love” or truly mindblowing nuggets like, “Edit your article.” Perhaps you are looking for something that only us secret top…