How Much Money Are 1,000 Views Worth on Medium?
How much money can you expect to make?
How much money can you make by writing on Medium? This is one of the most important and most frequent questions I get asked. And honestly, I understand why.
Although the best and most successful writers are those who don’t write for money but rather for the love of the craft, it’s totally natural to want to know how much you’ll be compensated for spending hours working. Of course I love to write, but I’m motivated by knowing that I earn when I write.
Every time I publish a story, I hope it makes me at least enough to buy me a coffee. And I don’t think anyone should feel guilty about that.
The truth is that there’s a lot of variation around how much money you can earn on Medium. Some of the top writers on the platform make over $25,000 per month. But most writers — 94.6%, in fact, last month — make less than $100 per month.
You see why this is a more open-ended question that you might think at first. Yes, it’s possible to earn thousands. I’ve seen people do it. I do it myself. But there’s no guarantee.
That’s why I choose to measure writing income with a different metric: dollars per view.
In this article, I’m going to break down the two different ways to measure how much money you can expect per 1,000 views, and I’ll explain to you four strategies to improve that ratio.
I have also created a video here which goes through this question:
How Much Money Are 1,000 Views on Medium Worth?
I’ll be upfront: there are two different ways of looking at this — by month and story.
First, you can look at your monthly views. This is the simplest metric to measure because Medium puts it all right there:
You can easily calculate each month. For example, in April I got ~40k views and earned $611. That gives me around $15 per 1,000 views. The same is true for March — I got around 28K views that month and earned $402, giving me about $14 for 1,000 views.
The second metric is by an individual story. And the weird thing is, the trend doesn’t continue.
Let’s pick an individual story. Here’s one with just over 1,000 views that’s earned me $42.45.
This is weird. With my earlier calculation, 1.1K views should have earned me between $15-$16. Instead, I’ve earned nearly triple that.
This brings me to the most interesting thing about Medium.
The earlier views are always worth less than the later views. How do I know? Look at the earnings chart over time:
You can see that even though traffic is relatively low as the story ages, there are still disproportionately large spikes later on.
If you break it down by day, you notice that fewer views are worth nearly the same amount of money later on:
November 5th, 269 views are worth $6.57. If you extrapolate that, it’s $24 per 1,000 views. However, on November 18th, only 65 views net me $2.36 — a rate of $36 per thousand views.
Why Do Later Views Earn More Money on Medium?
To fully understand this, you have to know how Medium’s payment model works. At its simplest, you get paid based on read time. More people read your stuff, you earn more money.
But of course, it’s not exactly that simple.
See, it also has to do with how much someone reads overall. This can be confusing to break down, so I want to do a little thought experiment here.
Let’s say I read 30 stories per month, one each day, each five minutes long, and each by a different author. At the end of the month, the money I pay to Medium to get unlimited reads gets split 30 ways — 1/30th to each author I read. Not bad!
But imagine I only read four stories a month. Suddenly, my share is worth much more. Instead of 1/30th, the authors of the stories I read get 1/4th of the money I pay to Medium. Because we all pay the same $5 to Medium, the amount of money that goes to writers we read is spread out by how much we read.
It also has to do with read time. If I read a story that’s one minute long and a story that’s nine minutes long, both fully, the author of the nine-minute story gets 90% of my revenue. The one-minute author gets just 10%.
I love the way Medium puts it:
Imagine an author writes about fly fishing. She finds an audience of fly fishing enthusiasts who subscribe to Medium primarily to read her stories, meaning she receives a strong share of reading time from each of her readers. In contrast, an author who writes about a wide variety of topics might receive smaller shares from a broader audience of readers, who also read a variety of other authors. While the generalist will often earn a lot through the first total reading time part, the fly fisher is well equipped to earn through this share part — even with a smaller audience. — via Medium’s help pages
Other factors include external versus internal traffic, topic, and other factors Medium doesn’t tell us about. They say on their blog that “your daily views and reading time are not the only input into your daily earnings.”
So why are later views worth more?
This is because, in the first burst of views, almost all views are from frequent Medium readers — the people who have the app, the notifications, who read the email digest religiously, who do almost all their daily reading on Medium.
Then, later, you get views from people who are sometimes on Medium — the folks who hop on once a week, who only click on a Medium digest story if it looks particularly amazing, who are quite picky with who and what they read.
Finally, in the later stages of your story, you get the very rare Medium readers. They happened to check their email, your story happened to be recommended, and they only read that one the whole month.
As different types of readers find your story, as a rule, their value as readers tends to increase. You might get a frequent reader on month seven, but you’re more likely to get a rare reader.
In my case, my monthly pay to views ratio is lower than on my highly-viewed stories because a lot of my stuff does not get widely viewed. Most of my views come from the stories I publish that get 100–500 views.
Additionally, I write a lot of stories about Medium. Those stories are usually only read by people who write on Medium, and as a result probably read a ton on Medium, too.
Ultimately, this means that a lot of my audience reads not only my stories but other stories, too. Hence my overall money earned per 1,000 views is fairly low.
How Can You Improve Your Views to Money Ratio?
What if you want to improve this, and earn more than $15 per 1,000 views, or whatever your ratio is? There are four strategies you can use to improve — waiting, curation, finding your audience, and finally, readability. Let’s get into each one.
1. On Medium, writing is a long game
Do you know what Medium has that Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook don’t? A long tail. What I mean by that is that stories don’t earn one day and never get a second glance tomorrow — they keep cropping up to readers.
You never know when a story you wrote a year ago might earn you a rogue $50 this month. You never know when an infrequent viewer might pop onto your story. You never know when you become a favorite author of a reader. So strategy number one is simply don’t give up. Keep writing.
2. Curation is key to longevity
Focus on curation. Curation is the only kind of traffic that ensures longevity as Medium recommends it not once, but time and time again.
Medium recommended me this story that Kyrie Gray wrote four months ago.
That’s the power of curation. Your story is shown to readers not just once when published, but months and months after it’s been written. Medium only does this with curated stories as curation is what powers Medium’s recommendation algorithm. High curation means your story is more likely to be widely recommended over a long period of time.
3. Your audience will have different preferences
One of the questions I get asked a lot is whether certain topics are more lucrative. For example, does 1,000 views in a story about data science earn more than 1,000 views in a story about writing?
The truth is for me, yes. But the same may not be true for you.
For example, you might find that when you write about relationships, you’re able to write in a way that attracts readers who rarely read relationship stories, whereas when I write about relationships, I only attract those who read much more on Medium.
The best way to find out is to test different topics over time and keep an eye on your ratio. Which story topics show that you’re able to access those rare readers more?
4. Readability is absolutely critical
Remember earlier I talked about the read time of a story? That matters. Medium wants to reward you for the amount of time you keep people engaged.
This does not mean to write a long, rambling post stuffed full of junk in order to artificially bulk up your read time.
If you write long, rambling posts that turn people off at the first sentence, it doesn’t matter how long it is — your read time will be flat.
Consider the following: if I write a four-minute story that keeps readers engaged for three minutes, versus a ten-minute story that keeps readers engaged for two minutes, the first one will earn more money.
Learn how to grip your readers from the beginning, and how to keep them hooked.
In Summary: Your Earning Ratio Matters. There are Four Ways to Improve It
I really encourage people to not be ashamed of the fact that they write for money. I love earning money by writing about what I love, and I understand why people want to know what the potential is to make money on Medium.
There are two ways to look at your ratio: by month, and by the story. Both metrics are useful when gauging your ability to provide value for readers. As a general rule, stories with more views earn disproportionately more than those with fewer views (e.g. a story with 2,000 views will earn more than twice as much as one with 1,000 views).
If you want to improve your overall metric of how much money you earn with 1,000 views, there are four strategies you can use.
First, you can always simply wait and hope. This is harder than it sounds — it’s very tempting to give up. But you never do know when a factor might change, someone could find and love your writing, or your story might take off.
Second, you should focus on curation. Love it or hate it, curation is how Medium continues to show readers your stories long after they were published.
Third, find your audience. Everyone’s reader base is different. Finding your strengths will let you continue to write stories your audience values.
Finally, improve your readability. Practice cutting fluff that doesn’t matter and creating compelling, engaging stories that keep readers hooked to the last sentence.
Writing on Medium is one of the most rewarding places on the internet, both financially and creatively. By analyzing your metrics, you can be sure to maximize your earning potential and writing the stories that matter to your readers.