Everything You Need to Know About How Medium Pays Its Writers
Earning Calculations Explained
Intro
I see a lot of confusion amongst Medium writers on how exactly their earnings are being calculated. It’s time to clear the confusion.
Medium Partner Program
In order to get paid you first need to get into the Medium Partner Program. To achieve this you need to have 100 followers, at least one published story. You also need to be over 18 years old and be from one of the eligible countries. You can check if you’re eligible here.
If your country is currently not eligible don’t give up just yet. This may change in the future as Stripe (The payment processing company used by Medium) expands its business globally.
A Common Misconception
There are quite a lot of people who think that you need to pay $5 a month to be able to earn on Medium, but this is not true. You don’t need to be a Medium subscriber to get paid. However, being a Medium subscriber sure comes in handy when you are trying to grow your audience because you can engage with other writers more freely. If you decide to join Medium after reading this you can do so by using my link. This will direct a portion of your monthly fee directly to me.
Earnings Explained
Now we have got to the part that confuses the writers most. Currently, there are 2 main ways you can earn on Medium.
- Referred memberships
- Member read time
You can also get offered bonuses from Medium publication editors. Be aware that in this case, the e-mail address offering the bonus will always end with @medium.com.
Referred memberships
For every user that signs up for Medium membership using your referral link, you will get half of their membership fee minus a small payment processing fee as long as their subscription is active. Currently, that’s about $2.27 each month for each referred member.
You can find your referral link by going to your Medium profile page and adding /membership at the end of the URL.
https://medium.com/@your username here/membership
Member Read Time
This part is what gets most of the writers confused. On Medium you don’t get paid for
- Views
- Followers
- Reads
None of these stats are what you are getting paid for. The metric you are looking for is Member reading time. You can find this metric when looking at individual story stats. But there is still something confusing about this.
Calculations
Even when we know which statistic to look at it still is confusing. And the reason is simple. Sometimes your earnings are lower for a higher reading time or vice-versa. You can earn $1 for 10 minutes of member reading time and you can earn $0.50 for 20 minutes of reading time.
The part missed by most
The payouts are calculated proportionally to member read time on your articles vs other articles. Meaning if the Medium subscriber reads only your stories, you get paid all of the earnings from this member minus the part Medium keeps to remain profitable.
By doing so Medium incentivizes writers to create content on a wider range of topics. If you are the only writer on Medium covering a specific topic, and there are Medium members interested solely in that topic your earnings per minute of member reading time will be a lot higher than for writers focusing on more saturated topics.
One Last Thing to Mention
To stay in the Medium Partner Program you need to post at least one story every single month. Hope that this article helped to clear up the confusion. If you have more questions feel free to comment below.
If you’d like to check for yourself all of this information is freely available on the Medium help page.
Good luck with your writing!
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