What is the Medium Partner Program?
The Medium Partner Program is a revenue-share system between the company Medium and its writers. When paying Medium members read a story written by a Medium Partner Program writer, a portion of their membership fee goes to the writer.
My opinion? The Medium Partner Program is the best revenue share program out there. No reliance on ads, like YouTube. No “creator fund” cap, like TikTok. It’s pretty transparent, unlike Instagram. And essentially, you get paid for writing about what you love, unlike Twitter.
Let’s dive in. In this article, I’ll cover:
How does the MPP work?
What are the requirements to become a Medium Partner?
How to make money on Medium?
Is Medium free?
How much can you earn from Medium’s Partner Program?
How much does Medium pay for 1,000 views?
How to join the Medium partner program from countries where Stripe is not available?
How does the Medium Partner Program work?
It works like this:
As a reader, you have the choice of becoming a paid Medium member. This unlocks access to all content on Medium, along with a few other perks such as access to the Medium Mastodon server.
You pay $5/month to Medium to read these great articles.
When you read a paywalled story, a portion of your membership fee goes to the author of that piece (assuming the writer is part of the MPP).
As a writer, it means you get paid when readers engage with your work.
How to join the MPP? What are the Medium Partner requirements?
As of May 2024, there are only a few requirements to join the Medium Partner Program. I’ll list them here, as well as the rationale behind them (to the best of my knowledge).
You need to be a Medium member. This is to make sure that you’re actually here and willing to contribute to the community before you get a payout.
You need to have published a story in the last six months. Again, this makes sense. Why keep paying for writers who are no longer active on the platform?
You have to be in a country accepted by Stripe. Medium pays out through Stripe, not PayPal or Payoneer or Wise, so you need to live in a country that Stripe supports. You can see the full list here.
Be at least 18 years old.
Finally, accept the MPP terms and conditions and abide by the Medium rules. Basically, don’t be a dick. No spam, no harassment, no hate speech, no plagiarism.
Medium talks more about their Medium Partner Program requirements here.
How to make money on Medium?
Once you’re accepted into the program, you may be interested in maximizing your earnings. Unfortunately, I have a very basic, boring answer:
Write what you care about, and write what you know about.
There’s no real way to hack the system. There’s no one topic that makes the most money on Medium. There are only topics that make you the most money on Medium. I’ve got a tutorial to find YOUR topics to write about here.
Here are some general guidelines to help you earn more money through the Medium Partner Program:
Find your frequency. I post 1x/week. I have found that on Medium, quality matters more than quantity. Find a rhythm that works for you.
Edit and solicit feedback. You need to provide value to readers. Part of that is writing a solid story that has no typos, errors, or flow issues. If you’re not a great editor, I recommend you find a buddy.
Write what you are an expert in. This doesn’t mean career/education/certificate. I’m an expert in owning two Maine coon cats, for example. Dig deep. What do you know about? Find your following in that field.
Experiment with topics. Don’t niche down too soon. I’ve got a great workshop here on how to pick a niche, and how to know when you’re ready to pick a niche.
Look for publications. I am a huge fan of pubs. Especially as a beginner, Medium publications are a great way to give you a leg up. Think of them as platforms to hop on while you’re still small. Find one in your niche and publish there. You can find a list of Medium publications that accept submissions here.
Try to get Boosted. Medium’s Boost program is a process by which Medium publication editors (not Medium employees or staff - just regular writers!) nominate stories from their publications for a Boost, which increases the likelihood of your story being seen by a wider audience. Here’s a list of publications that are in the Boost Nomination Program.
A Boosted story can go far.
Is Medium free?
Yes and no. You can read as many unpaywalled articles as you like, but if you want to read paywalled stories (and support the writers for their writing) you’ll need to become a member. You also need to be a member in order to put your own stories behind the paywall.
I recommend joining Medium membership for two reasons.
There’s so much great writing on Medium. Just this week, I read so many useful stories, including the late adopter’s guide to Notion (guilty), a fascinating story on how the vast majority of Princeton theses have a colon which I used for research on an article, and a hilarious take on those “Dinner in 15 minutes” blog posts that always end up taking three hours. That, to me, is easily worth $5 a month.
It’s nice to support writers. I pay for a few newsletters from writers I adore, like Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day. But I don’t have the money to pay for everyone’s writing I like. Medium membership lets me make micro-donations to all the writing I enjoy.
How much can you earn from the Medium Partner Program?
Medium used to publicize how much writers earned, but this stopped in December 2019. Because that information is now half a decade out of date, I’m not even going to include a screenshot of that info because it’s probably more inaccurate than helpful at this point. If you’re looking for Medium Partner Program earning reports, many writers share those openly on Medium! Check out the Medium tag page and have a scroll.
How much does Medium pay for 1,000 views?
Short answer? It depends. Personally, I’ve found Medium pays around $24 per 1,000 views or around $0.024 per view. For instance, in April 2023, I got 75k views and earned $1830 from the Medium Partner Program exclusively.
But there are some complicating factors.
First, there’s the complex way Medium determines how the money gets split up. I’m oversimplifying here but in essence and to the best of my knowledge, Medium throws all the money they get from Medium members into a big pot. Then at the end of the month, they pay their bills and share the rest of that money proportionally among the writers. You earn money when Medium members engage with your story. Say you get 1% of all the engagement — reads, claps, comments, followers —of reader activity on Medium this month. Then you get 1% of that lumped pot of member money.
Next month, even though you only get half the reads, you still get the same amount. Why’s that? Because it was a quiet month all across Medium and member reader activity on your writing still accounted for 1% of all member reading activity.
But there are other factors, too. Medium says:
You only earn from Member reads. If a non-paying reader sees your story, that does not affect your earnings.
Read ratio matters. “Members-only stories will earn money when a member reads your story for 30 seconds or more, and will continue to earn more the longer they keep reading. Long, thoughtful, reads are encouraged!” Basically, if you write clickbait and a member comes onto your story but then leaves quickly afterwards, that affects your earnings.
Do member readers interact with your story? “You’ll also earn more when members clap, highlight, reply, or engage with your story in other ways.” Key to note: this has to be AUTHENTIC engagement. If you beg for claps or go on a comment-for-comment spree, Medium’s Trust & Safety team could catch you and ban you. Don’t risk it.
Are you writing for your audience? “When members follow you and continue to read and interact with your stories, you will be given a follower bonus.” This means that you’re not writing generic self-help listicles (unless that’s what your audience loves from you, in which case go for it.) You’re writing stories that come from you, from your experience and knowledge, and you’re writing for the readers who love to read your stories specifically.
Are you writing to get Boosted? "Stories that are Boosted will also earn more for each read and interaction. We recommend that writers spend more time on fewer, high-quality stories to reach this bar.” As I said above, working with publications in the Boost Nomination Program is a great way to not only get more reads, but also earn more money for your writing. I personally have found that it’s much better to spend a long time crafting a story that I think fits with Boost guidelines than cranking out clickbait, even if the clickbait gets more views — because it’s clickbait. The earning incentives are lined up to work on craft, not getting fast views.
That’s why there’s a lot of variation in how much 1,000 views is worth on Medium. If you’re getting 1,000 views from readers who aren’t members, perhaps because you’re ranking highly on SEO for example, then that will have a much lower earning ratio than one that reaches only Medium members. If your story is Boosted, you’ll earn more than for non-Boosted stories. If you write stories that don’t deliver on the title’s promise, you’ll earn less.
Again, to summarize, 1,000 views on Medium can range from $0.01 to hundreds of dollars, depending on:
Overall activity on Medium that month
Whether you’re regularly getting Boosted or not
Whether you get many followers from that story, and how many of your followers read that story
If your readers stay and read the story, or if they quickly bounce after clicking into the story (specifically members; non-member behavior does not impact earnings)
Whether you’re reaching member readers or non-member readers
You can see the worth of 1000 views on Medium varies a lot.
How to join the Medium partner program from countries where Stripe is not available?
First: Medium now supports over 120 countries in the Medium Partner Program as of August 2024, so it’s likely your country IS supported.
If you don’t live in one of those countries, the bad news is that there is no safe and foolproof way that I’ve found. Some members have a friend or relative that lives in a Stripe-allowed country, and they link up that bank account to get the earnings that way, but that’s it.
It’s also worth noting that trying to get a hacky workaround runs the risk of violating Stripe’s terms and conditions.
That all being said, I still think it’s worth writing on Medium even if your country is not currently monetizable. You can totally sign up, start writing, build a portfolio and start getting followers now.
You won't be paid by Medium directly YET. In the meantime, there are other ways to earn money. You can use Medium to drive people to your own blog, use affiliate links, or attract clients. Furthermore, eventually, I hope, Medium/Stripe will monetize additional countries. If that's the case, you'll be established when that happens.
Final thoughts on the Medium Partner Program
YouTube pays me around $6-7 per thousand views, and I’m not getting paid by viewers — I’m getting paid by advertisers to host ads on my content.
My website pays me around $10 for 1,000 views, and again, through ad placement rather than direct reader monetization. Instagram paid some through their creator fund, as did TikTok, but those were very, very low earnings indeed for the vast majority of creators.
Medium is the best partner program around. I genuinely believe it’s a revolutionary way to help writers earn money by sharing their thoughts with an audience. The incentive scheme is to write good stories that resonate with readers — not chase clicks, not write ad-friendly content, and not try for sponsorships. It’s pure quality.
