How To Get Paid On Medium After You Reach 100 Followers

You’ve been grinding away to reach that first milestone of 100 followers. I feel you. I was in the same situation a few weeks ago.

Congrats on making it this far! Many writers give up before they even reach their first 100 followers.

How To Get Your First 100 Followers On Medium

If you’re still not sure how to get your first 100 followers, be sure to read the article I wrote about how to get 100 followers.

I published this article on January 11, 2022. At the time, I had 35 followers.

I then went from 35 to 135 followers within 36 hours.

A couple of weeks later, I have over 200 followers without publishing any more content.

Thanks to everyone for the support!

What To Do After You Reach 100 Followers

Now that you’ve reached the elusive 100 follower milestone, it seems like the perfect time to celebrate your achievement.

That would be a big mistake!

Getting 100 followers won’t automatically mean you start getting paid on Medium.

First, you need to enroll in the Medium Partner Program to start to earn for your writing.

To join the Partner Program, there are 2 requirements you must meet:

• Have at least 100 followers on Medium
• Have published at least one story on Medium in the past.

If you’ve reached 100 followers but still haven’t posted a story yet, you will need to do this before applying for the program.

How To Apply For The Medium Partner Program

You can submit your application to the Medium Partner Program here.

Besides having 100 followers and publishing your first story, there are some other criteria you have to meet.

• You must also be at least 18 years old.
• You must be from an eligible country.

Here are the countries and the full eligibility requirements.

After you’ve submitted your application to the partner program, you will receive a confirmation email — Application to the Partner Program received.’

You’ll need to wait until your application is accepted and Medium verify that you meet the requirements.

It took about 12 hours for my application to be assessed, but it can take 24–48 hours.

You will need to just be patient until you receive a response.

Acceptance Into The Partner Program

Next, you will receive an email titled ‘You’ve been accepted to the Partner Program.’

Congrats, you’ve been approved!

You will need to officially enroll in the Medium Partner Program to start earning.

To do so, You must provide the following information:

• Your address & phone number
• Your bank account info
• Your taxpayer info, if applicable
• If you are a US or non-Us citizen
• If you are an individual or a corporation

Once you have all the information, click ‘Finish your Partner Program enrollment.’

Next, you must agree to the terms and set up your payout information.

To get paid, you will need to have a Stripe account.

You can create one for free or link an existing account.

I have been using Stripe for invoicing my freelance writing clients for a few years. It has been very reliable and trustworthy, with fast payout times and low fees.

Once you have provided all your personal and payment information, it must then be verified by Medium. After verification, you will be successfully enrolled in the program.

Welcome To The Partner Program

You will now receive another email “Thanks for joining the Medium Partner Program.”

It will confirm that your tax information has been verified and that you can now receive earnings through the Partner Program.

Congrats, you are now officially enrolled in the Medium Partner Program!

But, there is still one more crucial step.

Your stories won’t automatically start making you money.

You must manually enroll each of your stories into the Partner Program first.

If you don’t do this, then you won’t be paid!

You should do so ASAP after receiving confirmation of being enrolled.

How To Make Your Articles Eligible For Monetization

After being accepted into the Partner Program, you must make your articles eligible for monetization.

Many people completely forget this step or don’t realize they need to. They then, unfortunately, miss out on any earnings.

Luckily, making your stories eligible for monetization is very easy and only takes a few seconds.

You will need to go to ‘Your Stories.’

You can access them from the document icon on the toolbar on the left.

Next, go to the ‘Published’ section.

Choose the story you wish to monetize, and then click the 3 dots.

Click ‘Edit story.’

Then click the 3 dots which appear at the top right.

Next, click ‘Manage meter setting.’

You will see a checkbox next to ‘Meter your story.’

You need to tick this checkbox.

Doing so will enroll your story in the Partner Program and allow you to earn money from it.

Then click Save.

Congrats, your story is now eligible to earn you money from your writing!

You will need to do this for every story you have already published individually.

Then, for any new story, you will need to make sure you check this box while you publish it.

It is a bit time-consuming, especially if you have written many articles. But, you only need to set it up once.

How To See Your Medium Partner Program Earnings

To see your earnings, click your photo in the bottom left corner of the page.

Then click ‘Medium Partner Program.’

You will see your payment preferences and taxpayer information listed and can update this information if you need to.

Upcoming Earnings

Nest, scroll down further to the Your Partner Program earnings section. You can then see your partner program stories that are eligible to make money.

It will also show how much your stories have earned for the current month.

The upcoming earnings are broken down for each story.

It may not seem like I have earned much. But, I only started getting paid for the views that happened after I enrolled in the Partner Program.

You can also click on ‘View stats’ to see each story’s views, earnings, and average reading time.

As you can see, just reaching 100 followers isn’t going to magically make it rain money overnight.

After I reached 100 followers, I took a break from Medium for a few weeks to focus on launching my blog @ SkylerBenson.com.

In that time, I have published 5 blog posts, including:

While working on my blog, my content on Medium has passively earned $0.51, without me doing anything.

This is why it is essential to make your stories eligible to earn right away so that you don’t miss out on any potential revenue.

Audience Stats

You can also see your monthly growth by clicking ‘Audience Stats’ at the top of the ‘Your Partner Program earnings’ page.

In December 2021, I published 2 stories in my first month on Medium and got my first 3 followers.

So far, in January 2022, I have gained 203 new followers from only publishing one new story.

Not bad for a brand new writer to Medium!

What To Do Next

Congrats on reaching 100 followers on Medium and enrolling in the Partner Program.

It is a big achievement to reach this milestone. The first 100 followers are definitely the hardest.

This is only the first step to becoming a successful writer and creating a passive income stream from your writing.

Make sure to keep going!

It can be hard to keep motivated at times but don’t give up.

The most important thing is to keep writing quality content regularly, build an audience, and engage with the Medium community.

Don’t forget to enroll in the Partner Program. Then, make sure all your existing stories are monetized to start earning right away.

If you have any questions about enrolling in the Medium Partner Program, let me know in the comments, and I will do my best to help you.