A novel compensation method for temperature-dependent gain tilt of L-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier (L-EDFA) is proposed, in which the attenuation between stages is the only parameter to be adjusted. A simple linear relationship between the attenuation and the erbium fiber coil temperature was derived theoretically. When the erbium fiber coil temperature cycles from 26 to 70 ℃, the gain tilt variation less than 0.3 dB is achieved experimentally by adjusting only the pre-inserted variable optical attenuator (VOA).