How Much Money is 1,000 Views Worth on Medium? [2023 Update]

How much money can you make by writing on Medium? This is one of the most important and most frequent questions I get asked. And honestly, I understand why. It’s totally natural to want to know how much you’ll be compensated for spending hours working.

Further reading: How much do Medium writers make?

Every time I publish a story, I hope it makes me at least enough to buy me a coffee. And if that’s you, too, I don’t think you should feel guilty about that.

The truth is that there’s a lot of variation around how much money you can earn on Medium. Some of the top writers on the platform make over $10,000 per month. But most writers — 92%, in fact, last we heard — make less than $100 per month.

*This image is from Dec 2019 Partner Program earnings*

You see why this is a more open-ended question that you might think at first. Yes, it’s possible to earn thousands. I’ve seen people do it. I do it myself. But there’s no guarantee.

That’s why I choose to measure writing income with a different metric: dollars per view.

In this article, I’m going to break down the two different ways to measure how much money you can expect per 1,000 views, and I’ll explain to you four strategies to improve that ratio.

I have also created a video here which describes the same:Y

How much money is 1,000 views on Medium worth?

There are two different ways of looking at this — by month and story.

First, you can look at your monthly views. This is the simplest metric to measure because Medium puts it all right there:

I did the math and found that I earned around $16 per thousand views. This is better than how much YouTube pays, by the way, which is closer to $13 per 1,000 views.

You can easily calculate each month. For example, in August of 2023, I had 172,783 views from readers. I earned (not including my bonus from referred members, which is separate from Medium member royalty earnings) $2,840.33.

$2,840.33/172.7 thousand views = $16.43 per thousand views.

But we can also divide it by story. Here’s one with just around 3k views that’s earned me $60. That’s $12 more than I would expect, given my rule of $16 per 1,000 views.

This brings me to the most interesting thing about Medium: stories with a high Read ratio, that are read by your followers, that get high engagement, or that are Boosted, all earn more.

*Source:* *Medium’s help doc* *on the topic*

It’s also worth noting that this figure is divided by your reader’s activity. Basically, “rare” readers on Medium are worth more. If I read 5 articles a month, roughly 1/5 of my monthly membership goes to each author. If I read just 1, then 100% goes to that author.

That’s why, generally speaking, the more views an article gets, the higher that ratio goes. This is because while your first 10, 50, or 100 views may be from very active, common readers, the more reads you get, the more likely you are to hit a “rare” reader.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Even with fewer views, the later date earned more money.

Why do later views earn more money on Medium?

To fully understand this, you have to know how Medium’s payment model works. At its simplest, you get paid based on read time. More people read your stuff, you earn more money.

But of course, it’s not exactly that simple.

See, it also has to do with how much someone reads overall. This can be confusing to break down, so I want to do a little thought experiment here.

Let’s say I read 30 stories per month, one each day, each 5 minutes long and each by a different author. At the end of the month, the money I pay to Medium to get unlimited reads gets split 30 ways — 1/30th to each author I read. Not bad! But imagine I only read 4 stories a month. Suddenly, my share is worth much more. Instead of 1/30th, the authors of the stories I read get 1/4th of that money I pay to Medium. Because we all pay the same $5 to Medium, the amount of money that goes to writers we read is spread out by how much we read.

It also has to do with read time. If someone bounces before thirty seconds of reading your story, it doesn’t count as a view.

I love the way Medium puts it:

It’s really about that first 30 seconds on the page which we believe is enough time for a reader to assess whether or not a story will deliver on the promise of the title and preview.— via Medium’s help pages

Other factors include external versus internal traffic, topic, and other factors Medium doesn’t tell us about. They say on their blog that “your daily views and reading time are not the only input into your daily earnings.”

So why are later views worth more?

This is because, in the first burst of views, almost all views are from frequent Medium readers — the people who have the app, the notifications, who read the email digest religiously, who do almost all their daily reading on Medium.

Then, later, you get views from people who are sometimes on Medium — the folks who hop on once a week, who only click on a Medium digest story if it looks particularly amazing, who are quite picky with who and what they read.

Finally, in the later stages of your story, you get the very rare Medium readers. They happened to check their email, your story happened to be recommended, and they only read that one the whole month.

As different types of readers find your story, as a rule, their value as readers tends to increase. You might get a frequent reader on month 7, but you’re more likely to get a rare reader.

In my case, my monthly pay-to-views ratio is lower than on my highly-viewed stories because some of my articles do not get widely viewed. I also cater to a crowd of very engaged Medium readers (hi, if that’s you!) Ultimately, this means that a lot of my audience reads not only my stories, but other stories, too. Hence my overall money earned per 1,000 views is fairly low.

How Can You Improve Your Views to Money Ratio?

What if you want to improve this, and earn more than $15 per thousand views, or whatever your ratio is? There are four strategies you can use to improve — waiting, curation, finding your audience, and finally, readability. Let’s get into each one.

1. On Medium, writing is a long game.

You know what Medium has that Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook don’t? A long tail. What I mean by that is that stories don’t earn one day and never get a second glance tomorrow — they keep cropping up to readers.

You never know when a story you wrote a year ago might earn you a rogue $50 this month. You never know when an infrequent viewer might pop onto your story. You never know when you become a favorite author of a reader. So strategy number one is simply don’t give up. Keep writing.

2. Boosting is key to longevity (and earnings)

Focus on getting Boosted. Getting a story Boosted will increase your earnings per 1,000 views and also give you more guaranteed traffic as Medium recommends it not once, but time and time again. Here are the stats for the same story, before and after getting Boosted.

You can see it’s a multiplier of almost 5x in this particular case.

In terms of longevity, Medium recommended me this story that Kieran MacRae wrote nearly two weeks ago. (It’s a great read, BTW.)

Screenshot by author

That’s the power of getting Boosted. Your story is shown to readers not just once when published, but days and weeks after it’s been written. Medium only does this with Boosted stories as getting Boosted is what powers Medium’s recommendation algorithm.

3. Your audience will have different preferences.

One of the questions I get asked a lot is whether certain topics are more lucrative. For example, does 1,000 views in a story about data science earn more than 1,000 views in a story about writing?

The truth is for me, yes. But the same may not be true for you.

For example, you might find that when you write about relationships, you’re able to write in a way that attracts readers who rarely read relationship stories, whereas when I write about relationships, I only attract those who read much more on Medium. Or I am unable to get Boosted, while you are, so your relationship stories are much more valuable.

The best way to find out is to test different topics over time, and keep an eye on your ratio. Which story topics show that you’re able to access those rare readers more?

4. Readability is absolutely critical.

Remember earlier I talked about the read time of a story? That matters. Medium wants to reward you for the amount of time you keep people engaged.

This does not mean to write a long, rambling post stuffed full of junk in order to artificially bulk up your read time.

If you write long, rambling posts that turn people off at the first sentence, it doesn’t matter how long it is — your read time will be flat.

Consider the following: if I write a four-minute story that keeps readers engaged for three minutes, versus a 10-minute story that loses readers in the first 30 seconds, the first will make more money.

Learn how to grip your readers from the beginning, and how to keep them hooked.

In summary: your earning ratio matters. There are four ways you can improve it.

I really encourage people to not be ashamed of the fact that they write for money. I love earning money by writing about what I love, and I understand why people want to know what the potential is to make money on Medium.

There are two ways to look at your ratio: by month, and by story. Both metrics are useful when gauging your ability to provide value for readers. As a general rule, stories with more views earn disproportionately more than those with fewer views (e.g. a story with 2,000 views will earn more than twice as much as one with 1,000 views).

If you want to improve your overall metric of how much money you earn with 1,000 views, there are four strategies you can use. First, you can always simply wait and hope. This is harder than it sounds - it’s very tempting to give up. But you never do know when a factor might change, someone could find and love your writing, or your story might take off. Second, you should focus on curation. Love it or hate it, curation is how Medium continues to show readers your stories long after they were published. Third, find your audience. Everyone’s reader base is different. Finding your strengths will let you continue to write stories your audience values. Finally, improve your readability. Practice cutting fluff that doesn’t matter and creating compelling, engaging stories that keep readers hooked to the last sentence.

Writing on Medium is one of the most rewarding places on the internet, both financially and creatively. By analyzing your metrics, you can be sure to maximize your earning potential and writing the stories that matter to your readers.

And in short? 1,000 views is between $10 and $20 on Medium.