How Much Money I Made By Publishing On Medium For The Whole Year

I thought that I had made about $24.000, but I made over $28.000

I started publishing regularly on Medium on 28th June 2022. I did not know what to expect, but the results surprised me.

I was blogging before on WordPress and Blogger with no results. I also tried to make money online with affiliate marketing but failed.

After a year of writing on Medium, I have transformed my life. I was in a completely different stage of my life a year ago. And it wasn't a happy place.

I was stuck in the worst 9–5 job ever. But that helped me put all my efforts and do everything possible to escape that hell.

And I succeed. I made more money within three months than in my 9–5.

My life looks very different now. I am in full control of my time. I work less and earn more than before.

My example shows that anybody can make money online. And writing on Medium is one of the easiest ways to start making your first $ in a digital economy.

You will not become wealthy from writing on Medium, but it gives you many opportunities. Medium is a unique platform with very high domain authority. So, whether you want to start an online freelancing business or are already an entrepreneur or creator, you can promote it here.

In this article, I will share my earnings to give you insights into what to expect after writing on Medium.

My first earnings

I joined the Medium Partner Program in January last year. I wasn't sure what to expect. I did not pay much attention as I was massively involved in the failed affiliate marketing project.

For the first couple of months, I published only one article per month. And to my surprise, I managed to make some money with every single of them. It wasn't much, but it was encouraging.

You can see the exact numbers in the screenshot below.

Writing and publishing every day

The horror of my 9–5 caused me to decide to do everything and anything to get away from my job.

In June, I started to write every day after work and on weekends. I was so determined that I was compromising my free time and rest. But I had one goal in mind and was ready to do anything to achieve it.

And that consistency started to pay off. I made $117.81 in July, $570.93 in August, and $3.550 in September. And later, as you can see in the screenshot below, even more.

My highest and lowest monthly earnings on Medium

After several great months, my monthly income from Medium Partner Program dropped drastically. So my best-ever month was October 2022, with $4.710 in total. And the worst month was January 2023, with a total of $1.320.

But still, I was hitting four figures every single month.

My average monthly earnings on Medium

So I made $27.900 in total. That makes about $2.325 monthly from story earnings and referred member earnings.

Three Ways of making money on Medium

Medium provides three methods to earn money on the platform.

1. Join the Partner Program and earn money based on your readers' time reading your stories. The longer people spend reading your story, the more money you make. Unfortunately, the Partner Program is not open to all nations. You can check the list of countries eligible for the Partner Program here.
2. Promote Medium membership using your personal link. Attach your link to each story; if someone signs up using your link, you’ll get paid monthly as long as they retain the subscription.
3. Tipping. It is a relatively new feature. If you haven’t activated tipping yet, here’s how.

Methods of checking out your earnings

Medium dashboard provides you with many important metrics, including your earnings. But it is not that precise as it does not include the last day of the month.

So, as a result, it will be more than the Medium dashboard shows you.

You can check out your Medium earnings using the Medium dashboard in 2 simple steps.

1. Click on your profile picture in the top right corner

2. Click on Partner Program

The dashboard will show you how much each of your stories earned so far for a particular month and how much you made on referred member earnings.

Referred member earnings are almost passive as you get paid as long as they stay members. It is changing monthly but only a little.

So it is almost guaranteed that you will get it even if you don't publish anything.

To stay active and make money on Partner Program, you are required to publish only once per six months. But from my experience, you will lose members referred from your link as soon as your traffic decreases.

Referred member earnings strictly correlate with your articles' traffic (number of views and reads). The more traffic you have, the higher the referred member earnings. With the decrease in traffic, your referred member earnings will also decline.

But there is another method of analyzing and visualizing your Medium Partner Program earnings. It is a free Chrome extension called Fractions. It delivers more information and is more sophisticated than the Partner Program dashboard provided by Medium:

• Earnings per month
• Total member reading time per day
• Total profits from yesterday
• Yesterday’s top-earning post
• Estimated payments before the end of the month
• Daily average earnings
• The difference in percentage from the previous month
• This month’s highest-paying post
• And much more

I like the Fractions extension, and I use it a lot. I took many screenshots for this article using Fractions. You can read more details about Fractions here.

Tipping earnings

Medium enables you to integrate one of three different platforms:

• Ko-fi
• Patreon
• Paypal

I use Paypal. The integration process is simple.

Neither the Medium dashboard nor the Fractions Chrome extension will not show you earnings from tipping. You will have to check it out with your platform of choice.

Tipping depends on traffic, from my experience. I earned about $200 from tipping in the best month. And zero in some months. But usually is anything around $20-$50 per month.

Summary

Writing on Medium for a year has completely transformed my life. Now I can live anywhere I want and scale up my online earnings.

• Medium surpassed my expectations, allowing me to earn more than my previous 9–5 job within three months.
• Medium offers freelancers, entrepreneurs, and creators opportunities to promote their work and online assets.
• While not a path to instant wealth, writing on Medium can help you to build a prosperous future in the digital economy
• My earnings on Medium exceeded my initial estimate, reaching over $28,000 (with the tipping)
• Writing on Medium has been life-changing, offering flexibility, recognition, and financial rewards.

I encourage aspiring writers to embrace Medium and explore its personal and professional growth potential.

The most important step is to make a decision and start.

I am working on a new educational project for online writers, creators and freelancers. Stay in the loop and never miss an update.

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