MEDIUM THINGS

Medium Just Announced New Changes To Their Partner Program

Here is how it may potentially affect you and why they are going down this path

I’ve been on the Medium Partner Program (MPP) for just over 2 years now and while there have been a few changes to the way earnings are calculated, there has never really been any changes to the way a writer can be part of the MPP.

Until now.

Early yesterday morning, I received an email from our good friends on Medium announcing some changes to the MPP. There were two things that were announced in that email:

• Referred Memberships
• New MPP Eligibility Criteria

Let’s get into what these two things are about.

Referred Memberships

This is pretty straight forward as the name suggests — a membership referral where you can earn money for any new referrals.

Every time you convert a reader to a paying member, you get half of that reader’s membership fee, net of standard payment processor fees, for as long as they are an active member.

Referral earnings are additional to existing Partner Program earnings, which are based on member read time. Readers can sign up on your personalized referrals page.

Also, when a non-paying reader subscribes to receive your stories by email, they’ll be given the option to convert to a Medium member. If they sign up for a Medium membership at that time, it will count toward your referral earnings.

For more in-depth details about this, you can read it directly from Medium themselves here.

New MPP Eligibility Criteria

Now, this one has caused a bit of an uproar from the writing community on the platform as it now requires writers to fulfil a certain set of criteria before they can start to monetise their writing on Medium.

Previously, the moment you join the MPP and place your articles behind the paywall, you can immediately start earning money whenever a paying member spends time reading them or back then, when they clap for them.

It was simple, it was easy, anyone can do it.

But now, Medium looks like they’re going down the path of YouTube where before you can start to earn money, you will need to pass certain thresholds.

If you look at YouTube, before you can be part of their partner program and start earning money from your videos, you will have to have at least a minimum of 1,000 followers and an accumulation of over 4,000 hours of views from all your videos within a year. Once you’ve hit those 2 milestones, only then can you be part of their program and start earning money.

Most people take at least a year or so to hit that and that’s with consistent publishing of videos, etc. but what YouTube wants is to ensure only those who produce quality videos are part of the program.

Medium wants to apply the same standards as well from the looks of things. You can read all about it from here.

But basically, in order for you to be eligible for the MPP, you will need to have at least a minimum of 100 followers and have published one article which is not a comment or a response. If you fulfil this criteria, you will be eligible to be part of the MPP.

However, all of this will only be applicable for new writers who are planning to apply to join the MPP right now. If you are already part of the MPP but do not fit the criteria, you can still continue to earn money from your articles until the end of the year — meaning December 2021.

Should you fulfil all the criteria by then, you will continue to be part of the MPP come January 2022 onwards.

But if by then, you still do not fulfil the criteria, you will be removed from the MPP until you fulfil the criteria from which, you can apply again.

Another thing to remember is also that you have to continue to be actively writing on the platform. Should a writer be inactive for up to 6 months, Medium will remove the writer from the MPP. Of course, the writer will be notified first before removal so as to have the option to start being active again.

This is also part of Medium’s plan to have only active members — be it writers or readers — on the platform. Similar to when writers were losing followers because Medium started to remove fake and inactive accounts, they will be doing the same for inactive writers on the MPP.

As with many of Medium’s changes, there will be plenty of people who will not be happy with these new updates while some may be OK with it or even welcome it.

Personally, I’ve always said that Medium will continue to change and evolve with times and its surroundings.

I’m neither happy or upset with what Medium has just announced but at the same time, I’m also in a position where I’m comfortably fulfilling all the require criteria to stay in the MPP and continue earning.

But as with all the previous changes that Medium has made over the years, I will just adapt and keep trying my best to hit the goals that I’ve set for Medium.

I will just keep on writing.

And I hope you will too.