A Quick Guide to Referred Memberships
How you can earn money when your readers become Medium members
Perhaps you’ve been in the strange, yet pleasant, situation in which your friend or your dad’s colleague or your seventh grade English teacher or someone has said, “Hey, I loved that thing you wrote on Medium! After you shared it, I started clicking around and it was so much fun and I found so much great stuff that I decided to become a member so I could read an unlimited amount of this awesomeness.” And maybe you thought, sheesh, I’m the reason that reader became a member, Medium should give me some money or at least a pair of branded socks or something.
Well, good news: Medium has rolled out Referred Memberships. This means creators can tap into their networks of followers in order to earn more from their writing. (No word on socks though, sorry.)
Basically, if you’re in the Partner Program, whenever you convert a reader into a paying Medium member, you receive half of that reader’s membership fee (minus standard payment processor fees). So anytime a reader uses your Referred Membership link to become a member, we’re giving you half their fee. Because hey, thanks for bringing that reader to Medium! They will end up with a totally normal membership by the way, and still have access to all the paywalled stuff on Medium, not just yours.
These earnings keep going as long as that reader is a member. And these earnings are on top of whatever Partner Program earnings you make based on member read time. (By the way, this is totally optional — you can ignore the whole Referred Membership thing if you want, and it won’t affect your Partner Program earnings.) Neat right?
Here’s a detailed walk-through of what setting up your referred memberships might look like. And the below graphic shows what your earnings could look like, based on current membership rates:
There are two ways you can implement this:
Your personal referral page
Every Partner Program writer has a personalized referral landing page where readers can become a paying member for unlimited access to your writing, plus the rest of Medium.
You can find your referral landing page when you go to Settings > Audience dev > Promote memberships. And you can share this landing page however you’d like: share it on social platforms, link to it on Medium post pages, or include it on your profile.
Here are a couple examples of ways Medium creators have done this:
It can feel a little funny to ask people for money, but it’ll probably feel less awkward if you keep the tone light and genuine, make it clear this is about supporting your work, and be sure to express gratitude to your fans!
Your email subscribers
When a non-paying reader subscribes to your email, they’ll be given the option to convert to a Medium member. If they do, this counts toward your referral earnings. You don’t have to do a thing: Whether you actively encourage readers to become email subscribers, or they subscribe on their own, we’ll automatically ask if they’d like to become a member.
That’s it! Happy writing!
