Last month was pretty rough, especially for Medium. But when Medium is down, so is everything else. Last month showed me that I was basically starting from scratch.
June was a bit better, so it gives me hope that things will continue to increase, as long as I keep creating new content.
Quickie stats for May 2026
- Writing through Medium: 8,647 followers and $48.98
- Affiliate sales: $19.00
- Gumroad: $0.00
Total earnings for May: $67.98
June 2026 Results
Here’s what happened on Medium this month…
Reads & Views
Here are the reads & views I had in May for comparison:
And now June:
I wrote seven articles in June versus May’s 4. I was hoping to do many more than seven, but I’m struggling to balance writing on Medium, writing on Substack, working on my Secret Project, and creating new digital products to sell.
I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew again. But I want to keep going with all of them for now because each thing has a role to play.
Followers
My followers are at 8,674 (this includes 9 days in July), which is up just a bit from last month. (Last month’s count was 8,647.)
Earnings
Here are my earnings over the past several months. This month is quite a bit higher than May. I really should get crackin’ and write some more. There’s still a lot of potential with Medium.
Here are my top earners from June:
You can see my top story did better than anything else by far. And it was one I wrote in June, so that’s a good sign!
My top earning articles on Medium are stories about money and personal finance. But stories about alcohol also do very well.
Total Medium earnings: $80.09
Gumroad & affiliate sales
My other streams of income right now include:
- Gumroad
- Affiliate sales
Affiliate sales: $33.39. (This doesn’t include Gumroad affiliate sales. Those go in the Gumroad section.) I have a couple of recurring sales every month for a community I promote. The other sale was a surprise payout from Kit.
I always love money surprises!
Gumroad = $110.31 (This was a payout from sales March – May and includes affiliate sales and takes out affiliate fees and Gumroad fees.)
I also made 3 sales totaling $58 in June, but that won’t be paid out until I hit a total of $100 in sales again.
Here are my affiliate sales for other people’s products I promote from last month’s report:
And this is this month’s report:
As a reminder, these are total lifetime sales. There isn’t a way to break these down by month, unfortunately. But this will work for now.
You can see I made just a few bucks in affiliate sales in June for Gumroad products.
Substack
Here’s what subscribers looked like in May:
And here’s June:
I gained about 16 subscribers in a month. I know I could do better here if I actually wrote and posted Notes consistently. For some reason, I really don’t like Notes. I had Claude helping me with it, which I need to get back to. I completely abandoned it.
I think the issue with Notes is that they never sound genuine. No matter if I write it or Claude helps, they sound dumb.
Other people write Notes so well with a voice that matches them. I can’t seem to figure out how to do it. I probably just need to put more out there so I can figure out what sounds right.
Kit subscribers
I guess I should add Kit subscribers back into this monthly report. I haven’t sent an actual email in quite some time because I decided to close down my old Intellectualists newsletter.
Now I’m creating a 365-day email sequence that I like to call “The Secret Project.” It’s not a secret in any way, I just needed to name it something and I liked how mysterious it sounded.
The idea of it is to create 365 days of content, then load it up into Kit and let it run indefinitely. I wanted a way to create something with upfront work that will (hopefully) pay off for a long time after.
Right now, I’m sending people to a waitlist, so I’ll give my total email subscriber number, and the waitlist number.*
Total Subscribers:
Waitlist Subscribers:
I have a total of 845 subscribers, and 55 subs on the waitlist so far.
For some reason, I’m really resistant to looking at my Kit numbers. But I’m always glad when I do because seeing the people on the waiting list reminds me I need to get going a little faster on that project…
I’m excited about it, and yet, I keep getting sidetracked. But that’s another complaint for another day…
* I haven’t emailed my regular list telling them about the wait list or the Secret Project. I’ll eventually do that and invite them to join the new list.
If they don’t sign up, I won’t move them there manually. So I expect the total subscriber count to go down dramatically. I’m OK with that since I’m starting fresh with a new brand.
Final thoughts
I’m happy to see the number bump back up from May, but June wasn’t exactly a world-shattering month either.
The thing is, while I know I can do better, I’m also not that worried about it. My whole brand is about showing a realistic look at what’s possible when working on a side hustle in the cracks of your day. Not 12 hours a day. Not 8. Sometimes not even 1. Just whenever there’s some time to do it.
As I mentioned, I get sidetracked by life often (like cleaning up my dog’s puke this morning when she got sick…) and can’t get always get on a good roll with things. That’s why the numbers aren’t huge.
The cool thing is, they don’t need to be.
(Although, I would like them be a little huger. That’s why I’m doing the Secret Project. Sign up for the waitlist here if that’s something that sounds interesting to you. It’s going to be a doozy!)
See you next month!
Total Earnings
2026:
- January 2026 = $458.91
- February 2026 = $587.78
- March 2026 = $200.83
- April 2026 = $79.49
- May 2026 = $67.98
- June 2026: $223.79
2025:
- January 2025 = $1,449.67
- February 2025 = $680.08
- March 2025 = $795.27
- April 2025 = $1,503.01
- May 2025 = $1,807.19
- June 2025 = $1,827.03
- July 2025 = $1,168.61
- August 2025 = $2350.55
- September 2025 = $1,997.66
- October 2025 = $1,303.80
- November & December = $858.07
Total 2025 earnings = $15,723.24
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