How Much Do Medium Writers Make?
This is a great question. If you’re reading this, I assume:
You want to write on Medium
You want to make money writing content
You’re googling this to figure out whether you stand a chance at making money writing on Medium
If those are all fair assumptions, you’ve come to the right place.
Short answer to how much Medium writers make: somewhere between $0.01 and $10,000, depending on how good they are.
That’s kind of a garbage answer, isn’t it? Let’s jump into the deeper story.
A quick answer
If you're just here for a quick and dirty answer, here you go. I can't tell you comprehensively what the maximum amount is for the Medium Partner Program. I can tell you that as a writer, I typically earn between $1,500 and $3,000 every month on Medium. I write between two to six stories per month.
Here's a screenshot:
My highest-earning Medium story has earned nearly $10,000 over the course of six months:
If you are more interested in figuring out how much you can make on Medium as a writer in the partner program, you'll need a little more context and history.
How does the Medium Partner Program work?
Unlike Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, and AdSense, there are no ads on Medium's blogging platform. Instead, the Medium Partner Program works on a royalty setup.
I pay $5 every month to be a Medium Member. Medium takes part of that to cover its overheads – servers, staff, running that recommendation algorithm, renting the office in San Francisco.
The other part of that $5 a month goes directly to the authors I read. If I only read one story all month, the full remainder goes to that writer. If I read five stories by five different authors, then it's split five ways.
The Medium Partner Program wants to reward engaging, valuable writing content with a high reading time. Recently, the partner program got a little revamp. If I follow you, if I clap or leave a comment on your article, if I spend longer than 30 seconds on your article, Medium takes those to be signals of quality. You then get paid more.
Source: Medium’s help doc on the topic
There's one final touch: if your writing is so good that Medium selects it for a Boost – that is, they handpick it to show to a wider audience of readers – then there's an extra multiplier on earnings. Boosted stories are hand-selected with no algorithm or machine learning involved. It's all human.
Here's some more info on how it all works.
You can't earn money through the Partner Program unless you're a Medium member.
What does this mean for my income if I'm a Medium writer?
That's right – you're here to find out how Medium's partner program pays you. Well, it mostly means this: You'll make more money as a writer if you take more time to write good articles.
Every freelance writer likes to hear this. I have never met a good writer who prefers churning out quantity. Most writers feel like they have to, to keep up with the voracious social media algorithms.
But on Medium, the bias is towards deep, thoughtful, well-researched pieces that you care about. Those articles will earn more money through the partner program.
How much does the average writer earn on Medium?
Medium no longer releases stats about how much they pay writers, but…Back in December 2020, 8% earned more than $100, and the highest-earning story earned $8,855.75.
Source: this is a screenshot from the January 2021 email sent out to writers on Medium.
Today? We have no idea.
Nowadays, the best way to get a sense of how much a writer can make on Medium is by looking at stories on Medium. Many a writer shares the behind-the-scenes. Here's a quick link to see how much Medium writers make, at least the ones who are posting about it.
You can also check out the Medium Partner Program tag here. There's no one Medium publication that covers all stories about Medium earnings, but the tag does a good job of collecting Medium income reports.
I would say the average writer on Medium makes less than $100/month, but that many writers on Medium make over $1,000 per month— if they're good writers who are willing to put in the effort.
How can I make more money on Medium?
This is probably my most frequently asked question. I have created a lot of content about this, but here are the cliff notes.
Publish in a Medium publication, especially as a beginner
Like any social media, Medium shows readers your content based primarily on an algorithm. Medium will show your article to some of your followers. If they respond well – reading, clapping, or otherwise engaging – Medium's algorithm says, “Hey, we've got a great story on our hands! Let's show it to more Medium readers, beyond just this person's followers.”
But you have no followers at the start. Use a publication to piggyback on its followers instead. For example, you could submit to The Writing Cooperative if you're writing about writing.
Use tags appropriately
Tags are like hashtags on other social media platforms. You can add up to five per story. Using tags appropriately will help your story be shown to more readers, which will ultimately earn you more money through the partner program.
Source: my own story on Medium.
There are two reasons for this. One, it's another way for Medium to know who might be interested in your story. For example, I tag my content about marketing with the marketing tag. If I'm not sure what other tags to use, I go to the Marketing tag page and see what other tags Medium has clustered into related topics.
[tk screenshot tags]
Second, it's how the people who have the power to Boost your stories – that is, show them to more readers, even those who don't follow you – find your writing.
I personally am a Nominator. That means that every month I can nominate up to 20 articles for a Boost. Medium staff decide whether the writing is worthy of a Boost or not.
I look inside Better Marketing, the publication I run, first. But if I don't see anything good enough there, I put on my reader hat and look through the Marketing tag for another potential story that was recently published that is about marketing.
Seriously, focus on writing good content for Medium
A lot of Medium writers feel like earning money is luck of the draw. I will grant you this: sometimes, writing a good story that happens to take off feels like luck.
But the longer pattern reveals that long-term success isn’t luck. It’s consistent good writing that works with Medium's system.
If you're not earning money on Medium, I would say one of those things probably isn't true for you.
You're not writing consistently. Maybe you poured your soul into one good story that didn't happen to take off. That sucks! But being successful is not about a single story; it's about being a good writer consistently.
You're not playing with Medium's rules. Look, it's the platform of Ev Williams, not mine. You need to use publications. You need to use tags. You need to read a lot of content on the platform and see what Medium readers like to see.
You're not good enough – yet. This one really hurts to hear, I know. But if you're publishing consistently and you're working with publications, tags, writing in topics where you're an expert, polishing each piece until it shines – then it means your writing isn't quite up to snuff. There's so much amazing content on Medium that you really have to be good to do well.
There are plenty of other simple mistakes that can be made on Medium that will hold you back. But those three are the main ones.
I find that good writers who learn how Medium works, stick with consistent writing (e.g. once per week) and actually work on their craft eventually succeed.
How much can Medium writers make?
Let's revisit that original question. How much do Medium writers make?
Good writers? They can make thousands of dollars on Medium. But those are the really good ones. Most folks earning $2k+ have turned Medium into a pretty serious gig. They've dedicated themselves to Medium for a couple of years, they've found their reader audience, and they have a lot of good stories worth telling.
The same is true of:
Substack writers who need subscribers
Freelance writers who look for clients
Any kind of content writer who wants to make money writing
Everyone else? Well, Medium is a great place to learn how to write, find your audience, build a portfolio and get paid a little bit as a bonus for your content while you do so. You probably won't earn $1,000s for your content, though.
I'll take this opportunity to reiterate my favorite writing advice. Write as well as you can, as often as you can.
That breaks down into a thousand infinite facets, but that's the upshot of all my writing tips. Your reader will thank you if you stick to that advice. That's true for the Medium game, yes, but it's true for any kind of writing.
Medium earnings FAQs
We've covered a lot of ground! But in case you have any lingering questions about this blogging guide, let me cover all my bases.
How much can a single Medium article make?
It depends on how many views it gets. In the email they used to send to partner program writers, I've seen a single Medium story make over $10,000 in a month!
Christ on a cracker! Source: The Oct 2020 email from Medium.
Can you make more with affiliate marketing?
Yes! As long as you disclose any affiliate links, you can certainly do affiliate marketing with your Medium articles to effectively get paid twice – once through the partner program, once with any affiliate sales.
Do I need 100 followers on my Medium account to get paid?
No, not anymore! that used to be the case, but Medium changed that a while ago.
Do only active writers earn money on Medium?
Yes. If you haven't published a story in six months, you are booted from the partner program.
How much does Medium pay per 1,000 views?
I've done the math on this one myself – it depends! For example, if I get 100,000 views from all readers, but only 20,000 were from Medium subscribers, that'll be less than if all 100,000 were from Medium subscribers. We don't get paid for non member reads.
But we can use my August 2023 as a rough example.
In August of 2023, I had 172,783 views from readers. I earned (not including my bonus from referred members, which is separate to Medium member royalty earnings) $2,840.33.
$2,840.33/172.7 thousand views = $16.43 per thousand views.
Is writing on Medium profitable?
If you love writing and you're willing to learn to play by Medium's rules, yes!
If you think this is a place to get rich quickly by blogging “How to 10x your life in 1 minute per day – try this INSANE trick!” listicles, no, it is not profitable.
How much does Medium pay per word?
This is the wrong question to ask. The Medium platform doesn't pay by word; it pays by read time, among other factors.
Source: Medium’s help doc on how they calculate earnings in the Partner Program.
What is the earning potential for Medium writers?
Hopefully this has helped you figure out how much Medium writers can make with Medium writing. With a Medium blog, the true answer is “it depends.”
Many writers can make thousands. (I’m one of them, and have been since December 2018.)
Many more writers will make hundreds.
But most writers will make tens of dollars or less on Medium.
I love Medium for many, many reasons: the simplicity of the Medium editor; how friendly it is with search engines, the reading habits of the average Medium user. But mostly, I love it for this simple reason:
It lets you earn money by writing about what you love. If you go in expecting to earn $9,667 your first month, you'll be disappointed. But it's the best place to grow your brand and earn money while doing it, no matter the amount.
