Referred Membership Money, Where Does It Really Go?

Who get’s what exactly?

So I have a few questions and answers on the new referral membership scheme being run by Medium. Below I have listed a paragraph from their announcement page; you can click on it to read their full article.

Here’s how Referred Memberships work: For every reader who a Partner Program writer converts to a paying Medium member, the writer will receive half of that reader’s membership fee, net of standard payment processor fees. Referral earnings are recurring as long as the reader’s membership plan remains active and will be in addition to Partner Program earnings based on member read time.

Here’s an example of what a writers’ Referred Memberships earnings could look like:

This leads me to some interesting questions:

1. If a non-paying member reads my story then signs up within 30 days, whether as my referred member or not, will their read time be counted in my earnings?
2. If a non-paying member reads my story then clicks on “Upgrade” to become a paying member, will that be counted as a referred membership or not be counted as a referred membership?

Now here are the answers:

1. Yes, if a non-member converts to a member in any way, the time they spent reading our post in the past 30 days is credited to you as earning Member reading time.
2. That will not be a Referred Membership. Referred Memberships are only applied if they become Members from your link or by subscribing to your emails (via the envelope icon on your profile and post pages) and applying their referral that way.

This is the knowledge that I felt would be worth sharing with my followers, many of which are new to Medium.

Let me know if you have any questions about the scheme, and I will attempt to find you an answer.

Written by Robert Ralph

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