How Much Did Medium Pay Me for 10,000 Views?

You can earn money writing, but how much?

I joined Medium precisely two months ago. I approached this platform as a way to express my thoughts and distract myself from everything that’s going on in the world. My primary goal is not to make money, but to improve my writing skills, as well as enjoy a new hobby.

You can get paid for your work. There is a countless number of stories related to Medium earnings, and I would like to share my own. It took me 60 days to gain 10,000 views — I will break down the nature of those views, the pay per view and the amount of money I received.

Internal and External Views: Comparing the Two

While 10,000 views may seem like a lot, not all of them are internal. You don’t get paid when an external reader reads your article — it’s only internal views that count. Someone from the outside may stumble upon your story, but if they are not a paying Medium member — unfortunately, you won’t get paid. Because of that, even if you have a high view count, some of those reads will not translate into earnings.

You don’t get paid for views — instead, writers make money based on the reading time. The reads are different from views, and they are always lower:

But since we’re using views as a metric, I will breakdown my numbers. Here’s what they look like:

10,000 views = 6,059 internal views + 3,941 external views

Evidently, only 61% of all the views were associated with earnings, while 39% were unpaid. I suppose you can say that almost 2/3 of my 10,000 views brought income, while just over 1/3 did not. As much as I would love to get paid for the entire 10,000, a big portion of readers were not Medium members.

The Earnings

I signed up for a paid membership on April 14, 2020. June 13, 2020, was the day my view count reached 10,000. During this time, I was paid for two weeks of April, the entire month of May, and for almost two weeks in June.

The screenshot of my pay looks as follows:

If we add those figures up, my earnings amount to $125.05.

But how much did I get on average for every 1000 views? I broke it down into two calculations: one includes all the views, while the second calculation only looks at the internal views:

$125.05 for 10,000 overall views = $12.51 per 1,000 overall views

$125.05 for 6,059 internal views = $20.64 per 1,000 internal views

There you have it! Overall, I got paid almost $13 for every 1000 views since the moment I joined Medium. Having that said, more than 1/3 of my views ended up bringing no income.

Not All the Views Were Created Equal

Reading time is crucial when reviewing the earnings. One of your articles may gain a high number of views, but the readers wouldn’t make it through the entire story. At the same time, another piece can attract more attention and keep the person reading till the very end.

I have two articles, which received an almost equal number of views, yet one of them made much more money compared to the other one. I prepared the figures, so you can see how important the reading time is.

First article:

Earnings: $11.72

Views: 330

Internal views: 298

Reading time: 8 hours, 30 mins

Pay per 1,000 views: $35.52

Pay per 1 hour of reading time: $1.37

Second article:

Earnings: $1.30

Views: 332

Internal views: 242

Reading time: 1 hour, 2 mins

Pay per 1,000 views: $3.92

Pay per 1 hour of reading time: $1.26

There is a drastic difference when you look at the views-related earnings, isn’t it? However, the pay for reading time is almost the same. This is an excellent example of how important capturing the reader’s attention is. One of my articles was much less appealing compared to the other one, which translated into much higher reading time — more than eight times higher.

The conclusion is: it’s essential to focus on quality, as opposed to quantity. Reading time trumps the view count.

I go into more detail about my articles and experience with Medium over here, when my views were at a 4,000 mark.

The Take-away

Many Medium writers, especially newbies, are obsessed with statistics and the view count. While it can serve as an excellent metric of the readers’ number, the engagement level is critical. You need to focus your energy on the reading time, not on the overall views.

It’s possible to make money writing for Medium, although it won’t be a lot in the very beginning. It takes time to educate yourself on how the system works.