March 2025 earnings report (Another interesting month on Medium...)

Followers, Medium earnings, Substack subs, affiliate sales, and more!

Christina Piccoli

Apr 05, 2025

It’s weird. Many people are struggling to make a few bucks on Medium, yet it’s my one bright spot this month.

Let me show you what happened…

These are my current sources of income:

Medium
Amazon books
digital products
affiliate marketing promotions
Buy Me a Coffee (although I haven’t been promoting it at all)

Let me remind you what happened in February.

Quickie February stats

You can read February’s full report here.

Writing through Medium: 5,261 followers and $475.56
Affiliate sales: $105.46
Amazon KDP: $12.86
Digital products: $96.06
Buy Me a Coffee = $3

I made a total of: $680.08

March 2025 Results

First, I’ll show you what happened on Medium this month.

Reads & Views

Here are the reads & views I had in February for comparison.

Now, here are the reads & views from March:

It was slow going for most of the month, but I had one article take off right at the end. I’ll show you which one in a minute.

Followers

In February, I had 5,261 followers, and here’s what that stat looks like now:

I made it over 5.5k followers, which is great! I picked up 237 new followers in March.

Earnings

My earnings shot up at the end of the month because of that article I mentioned.

By the way, I’m also showing you April because, at the time I’m writing this, I only have one day’s earnings for April, and it’s already over $90. That’s a good start to the month!

You can see that March turned out well, with almost $700 in earnings. That’s my third best month ever. In January 2025, I made $961.80. In July 2024, I had an article get boosted, and it made $734.92.

So $694 is not bad for not getting a boost!

Here are my top earners in March:

You can see that only two were written this month. It’s fantastic when your past articles continue to earn.

Here’s the one that took off:

I’m happy about that 78% read ratio!

You can see how it did nothing for a while, then finally gained traction.

Why?

The hell if I know!

I wish I did so I can try to duplicate it over and over again.

I was telling my daughter about this article and how sometimes things take off in Medium for no good reason. She said, “It’s like gambling.”

Indeed.

I like to play slots, and Medium acts just like one. Most of the time, you lose, but once in a while, you hit a jackpot.

Total Medium earnings = $694.39

Affiliate & Benable sales

Every day, I say to myself:

“Get back on Benable and start building out lists again.”

And I just never do it.

So there’s nothing new with Benable this month. (Except that quite a few people followed me, but I have no idea why.)

I also haven’t been doing a great job promoting affiliate offers, but I did make a few recurring sales, and I also made enough on Amazon to get paid.

Total affiliate sales = $56.18

Substack

I’m currently not monetizing my Substack, but I’ll show you the subscriber growth I’ve had so far.

Last month Hustling Housewife had 688 subscribers. Here’s what it looks like now:

I’m just chugging along…

I also decided to restart my mini-newsletter, Intellectualists. It goes out Tuesdays and Thursdays. Here’s what that looks like:

Intellectualists contains short lists of information and resources to help you with writing, marketing, sales, and side hustles. It’s just links, so it’s quick and easy. Check it out here.

Amazon KDP

I had another payout from Amazon KDP. I can’t believe people are still buying my Medium Money book on there! I almost never promote that one.

Total KDP sales: $17.28

Gumroad

I’m most disappointed with myself about Gumroad. I haven’t been doing enough to promote my stuff there.

Here’s what March looked like:

I have started to update my Medium Money ebook. I considered abandoning the idea when my earnings were going down over there. But now that they’re going back up, I have a better idea of what’s working again.

Once that’s done, I’ll promote it on Medium, and hopefully, that will kickstart some sales again.

I’d like to create more books and digital products to sell on Gumroad, but I haven’t nailed anything solid down yet.

Medium Money = 3 sales ($33)
The 4-Step Affiliate Marketing System = 12 downloads

Total Gumroad payments (for sales activities Feb 22 — March 14 ) = $44.70

(This is after paying fees + affiliates and includes any affiliate sales I made through Gumroad.)

Total Earnings

Here are all my earnings since 2024:

January 2024 = $1,008.10
February 2024 = $1.045.69
March 2024 = $664.55
April 2024 = $1,111.32
May 2024 = $713.60
June 2024 = $1,095.47
July 2024 = $953.89
August 2024 = $938.42
September 2024 = $492.98
October 2024 = $508.28
November 2024 = $491.12
December 2024 = $215.38
January 2025 = $1,449.67
February 2025 = $680.08
March 2025 = $795.27

One more thing…

I had one fun milestone on Medium I wanted to mention. I started a publication called Smart Finances just to keep my personal finance articles organized.

It hit 100 subscribers!

I wasn’t expecting it since it’s not a “real” publication, so that’s pretty cool.

Final Thoughts

I need to keep reminding myself that this side hustle business has tons of ebbs and flows. It’s not steady, and sometimes that makes me feel a little seasick. (And sometimes it’s fun, like being on a roller coaster.)

I also don’t do enough outside of Medium to create more opportunities for myself. I constantly debate in my mind if I want to push myself more with my side hustles or keep things as is and get a part-time job for a steadier income.

Each option has its positives and negatives.

Like everything in life, right?

See you next week! 👋