How to Earn Money as a Medium Writer: New Payment Plan Update

While change is inevitable — good, engaging writing is timeless.

OK, the dust has settled. As of yesterday (10/28/19) We’ve got a new dashboard and a lot more stats. No clap-crap. We’re now paid for reading time. We’ve got almost-live stats too, so we can see how we’re doing each day (versus each week before). I love the direction Medium has taken the partner program.

Here’s why you might like it too:

• We get paid for all subscribed reads. Even the people who hate our writing. No-clappers only have the option of a quick-skim to avoid giving a writer her little share of reading time.
• If someone bookmarks your story and reads it more later, you’ll get paid more reading time later too.
• Whether you write long or short content, you’ll still earn money. According to my stats this morning, I’m on track to do a little better than I did with the clap model.

I believe the income will be spread more-evenly.

It’s also interesting to see very old stories earning near the top. A reader might’ve returned to the same story, or people that would not otherwise clap, are now giving some of my year-old, popular stories a try.

This is also great news, making writing on Medium a more-passive income model than a content hamster wheel (although the wheel will always exist a little).

Below is my strategy for earning money in the new Medium landscape.

How to earn money in the new Medium landscape

Readers still skim. On a seven-minute story my average read time was 2.5 minutes. In the first day, this particular story garnered .5 cents per minute of read time. I checked a second story. This one earned me .9 cents per minute. A third paid me .3 cents per minute.

Follow-up checks with multiple stories proved similar results.

There is no universal time payment per story, because every reader’s time bank is different.

I might read one story per month and my read time is worth 3 cents a minute. While this other reader plows through hundreds of stories per month, making her read time worth fractions of a penny.

The best we can do is continue to engage our readers with great work.

What I can tell you is we’re looking at approximately half-pennies per minute of read time. While this seems like peanuts at first, if your story earns any traction at all, you should see multiple read-hours per day. The pennies will accumulate quickly.

Whether you write long or short content, the key to earning money on Medium is to keep your readers coming back to your writing. For this, you need to write a lot.

Write every day.

The writers who generate more content will generate more read time. The writers with a bigger reach will generate more read time. Those folks with curated stories will generate much more read time, due to the longer distribution window (curated stories live much longer on Medium — years versus days).

What does this mean if you’re new to the platform?

Grow your readership as much as you can. Promote your stories to all your social profiles. Old reads for non-subscribers will count to your income total if that person subscribes within 30 days of reading your story.

Publish everything you write to a publication, if you can.

Publication stories get curated more-often and get more eyeballs on average. This read-time payment plan is a long-game, not a daily game. You want stories that pay you over many months, not just the first day you hit ‘publish.’

We get the long-game traction with publications, curation, and links to our old content. In the end, it’s the writer’s job to keep her work alive.

There’s also one more way to earn even more money, off-Medium. In the next section I’ll show you how.

Earn even more money away from Medium

If you’re a writer who wants to build an indie publishing business from her writing, you need to own your traffic. When you’re on Medium, they own the platform. They hold the cards. Medium owns your tribe, no matter how many followers you have.

Medium can turn your income on (or off) like a faucet. They can shut-down your account if you’ve ruffled the wrong wings. Poof. Zero dollars tomorrow morning.

But if you own your traffic you change the game.

When you build an email list of your most-engaged Medium readers, not only will you have a direct line of contact to them, but you’ll also have the ability to generate automated, passive income from your writing. I call this ‘mailbox money.’

Each morning I check my phone. Most days I earn money while I sleep.

Take all the romance out of it. This automated sales method will give you more time to do your best work — it takes less time to promote, giving you more time to write.

If you’d like to build your own list of readers, I’ve got a free Tribe 1K email masterclass I’d like to give you. Tap the link below and get the first lesson immediately. I’ll show you how to get your first 1,000 subscribers (or your next 1,000) without spending a hot nickel on ads.

Enroll in my Email Masterclass. Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.