May was not a good month, but I didn’t put much effort into Medium, which is where I’ve made most of my money in the past. I only wrote four articles in May, so of course I’m not going to do well.

And because Medium has also been a major source of my traffic for Gumroad, that’s gone down significantly too.

Although…Substack has been doing OK for me with this, but we’ll talk about that a little later. For now, let’s get into the stats for May.

Quickie stats for January through April

Writing through Medium: 8,634 followers and $695.56
Affiliate sales: $434.91
Gumroad: $196.61

Total earnings for January through April: $1,327.01

May 2026 Results

Here’s what happened on Medium this month…

Reads & Views

Here are the reads & views I had in April for comparison:

And here’s May’s reads & views:

I’m surprised views and reads went up a little. And I have no idea why there was a big spike in views around the 20th of May. It didn’t result in more reads, so it’s a little weird. It’s not good to have a big discrepancy like that because it makes the read ratio much smaller, which screws earnings.

Followers

My followers are at 8,647, which is growing at a snail’s pace. But that tracks with everything else that’s going on. You can’t get followers if you can’t get any readers. And I can’t get any readers if I don’t put anything out to read!

Earnings:

You can see how much I was earning last year compared to now. This platform has such intense swings.

Here are my top earners from May:

Only one article made it over $10. Still…you can see what I like about Medium. One of the top earners was from a story I wrote last May. That’s one of the biggest benefits to this platform. Articles you wrote ages ago can still make you money.

Total Medium earnings: $48.98

I’m not completely worried about this amount. As I mentioned, I only write four articles in May. I haven’t been as inspired to write here.

But June will be different. I’ve already got two out the door for June, and it’s only June 2nd at the time I’m writing this. I’m already halfway to May’s amount of stories!

Gumroad & Affiliate Sales

My other streams of income right now include:

Gumroad
Affiliate sales

I also use Benable, but I haven’t done anything with it recently.

Affiliate sales: $19.00. But I’ve been making quite a few affiliate sales through Gumroad.

Gumroad = $0 I know I just said I’ve been making affiliate sales through Gumroad, so why is this $0? This number is what I get paid out for the activity I’ve done in the month. I haven’t gotten paid out because Gumroad changed their minimum payout from $10 to $100.

I’ll get paid in June.

But I’ll show you the sales I made in May. This is just for my own products:

Here are my affiliate sales for other people’s products I promote:

Those are total sales. It doesn’t look like there’s a way to break these down by Month, which is a bummer.

And for fun, here are the products I’ve sold the most of:

These tiny ebooks have done well for me, and for good reason. They’re fantastic books with small prices. Check them out here, if you’re interested. (These are my affiliate links. If you purchase any, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

$7 Problems – The best way to make money online is to find some small problems and sell the solution. They don’t have to be big problems with big solutions. Just $7 ones. This book shows you exactly how to do that.
The Simple-Fix PDF Engine – 12 short chapters that show you how to build and sell tiny, useful PDFs.
Simple-Fix PDF Manual – A more robust version of The Simple-Fix PDF Engine, this one covers the full creation and sales system for creating tiny PDFs to sell, including a complete first-product walkthrough.
Thirty Bricks – Build a tiny product catalog brick by brick. How to find products when you think you don’t have anything to share, learn pricing strategies that make customers buy on impulse, understand the tipping point when your catalog sales start compounding.
The Article Funnel Blueprint – Write simple articles that attract your ideal audience, create low-pressure offers that convert, and grow an email list that you own.

I’ve read and utilized the information in all these books, and can verify that they’re worth every dollar. Even though you only need a few of those dollars to buy them.

Substack

I guess I need to add Substack back in here. My newsletter doesn’t have a paid option, and I don’t plan on doing that any time soon. I have been getting quite a few affiliate sales from it though, which is great!

So this part won’t be tracking earnings, but I’d still like to keep track of subscriber growth.

Here’s what things are looking like:

That big dip in the middle is because I left for some time. That’s why the views are down from last year too. I also switched it up at least three times.

But I cleared out my old articles and started fresh there, and now I’m happy with how things are going.

My Substack is also called Hustling Housewife and I’m using it as a type of “idea diary.” Every Monday I send out a Substack that goes over an idea I’m trying to grow my mini digital empire.

I’m not super concerned about how good it’s doing or not, I’m just concerned about staying consistent with it since I haven’t been in the past.

So far, so good!

Total Earnings

2026:

January 2026 = $458.91
February 2026 = $587.78
March 2026 = $200.83
April 2026 = $79.49
May 2026 = $67.98

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

Future Plans

So, making $67.98 for an entire month is diabolical. It feels like I’m starting back from square one. The good news is that I’ve already built up small audiences on Substack and Medium, so I’m not actually starting from square one.

The big future plan is to finish my “Secret Project” email sequence, which documents how I’m building a mini digital empire. It includes some affiliate links and links to my digital products. Once it’s done, I can let it run on autopilot.

So while it’s not making any income while I create it, once it starts running, it should make consistent sales. Then my biggest job will be to direct people to that sequence so it can do its thing.

In the meantime, I’m going to get more consistent on Medium again to try to get my traffic back up. And I’ll also be working on growing my Substack.

I better get going on all this stuff…!

Earnings Report: May 2026