How to make money on Medium

Being among the most popular blogging platforms, Medium has around 85 to 100 million monthly active users around the world. By leveraging your writing skills, you can create content that people will read while earning from it. In this post, you will learn how to make money on Medium.

1. Drive traffic to your website

While this isn’t a direct way to make money on Medium, it will bring in people that will read your blog and add to your traffic visits. If you have ads on your site, the impressions of these readers will count, and your payout increases.

And if you’re lucky, a few of them might click on your ads, and that means more money.

2. First-party promotion

You can use self-promotion to bring out readers that will perform a desired action. It can be to buy an ebook, download an application, sign up for a newsletter, purchase a physical product and many more.

Whenever you want to publish an article on Medium, you can include a link that will take your readers outside of the platform to another where they will perform the desired action. It may be a link to a landing page, eCommerce store and the like.

3. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing allows you to promote the products and services of other businesses while earning a small portion of each sale. 

Over time, and with many sales, your percentage adds up and that can be a significant amount. You can include such links in your posts and your readers might click on them if they find them useful.

Is Medium good for affiliate marketing? Does Medium still allow affiliate marketing?

This has been the bone of contention for some time now. Many have been left wondering which side or claim is right. Does Medium really ban affiliate links?

Not really. The fact that Medium suspended the accounts of certain users benefiting from affiliate links does not necessarily mean that Medium has banned affiliate links.

Medium allows everyone to include affiliate and referral links in their articles, but the usage is regulated. You have to specify (make a disclosure) somewhere in your article that you may earn a portion of the purchase amount if anyone buys through that link.

Also, if you write a post for which you’re being paid or rewarded to do so, you must specify it somewhere in that post. These rules are very important and you must adhere, unless of course, you wish to risk suspension.

What links are not allowed on Medium?

Now some types of links are not allowed on Medium. If you happen to include them in your written works, you may be suspended if detected. Cases like this have happened and others mistook affiliate links as the reason behind the suspension.

That’s not completely true.

It’s probably because of third-party advertising and brand sponsorship. Medium does not allow users to add links, promote products or advertise for third parties on the platform. Also, images that function as third-party ads are not allowed.

4. Earn from the Medium Partner Program

The Partner Program allows content creators to get paid by Medium itself. This payment will be made to your account each month and is calculated by taking some metrics into account.

What is the Medium Partner Program, and how does it work?

The Partner Program is Medium’s own way of rewarding content creators by paying them a portion of the members’ subscription fee. As you already know, there are free and paid memberships on Medium.

The free plan allows users to access a limited amount of content per month. On the other hand, the paid plan makes them members and grants unlimited access in exchange for a subscription fee of $5 per month.

Now if any user (under the paid plan) reads your content, or if a user (under the free plan) subscribes to a paid plan through one of your posts, a portion of their subscription fee goes to you.

We will explain more about how payments are calculated in the last section of this article. Here’s an overview of how the Medium Partner Program works.

• Meet the requirements and submit your application
• Get accepted
• Keep publishing stories
• Earn money when Medium members spend time reading your work
• Make more money on Medium by referring members
• Receive your payment every month

Requirements to join the Medium Partner Program

1. You must be up to 18 years of age.

2. You must have a minimum of 100 followers on your Medium account.

3. You must have published at least 1 post on the platform before you can apply for the Medium Partner Program.

4. You must be a citizen or resident of one of the eligible countries. The countries eligible for the Partner Program are listed below.

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Hong Kong
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Singapore
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• The United Kingdom
• The United States

5. After your application is approved and you have become a member of the Partner Program, you must continue to be active. You must publish at least one post every 6 months, or else you may no longer be eligible to earn.

You can apply for the Medium Partner Program here.

How is your monthly payout calculated on the Medium Partner Program?

As of the moment of writing this article, Medium calculates earnings based on 3 major metrics, and they’ve been explained below.

1. Time (how long)

The more time users spend reading your content, the more money you stand to earn in that month. Note that only the reading time of Medium members counts.

The reading time of non-members may also count, but that’s only if they become members within 30 days of reading your story.

2. Time (how much)

Your monthly payment is also calculated by how much members spend on your story out of their monthly reading time.

This means that if a member spends 10% of their total monthly reading time on your content, you will receive 10% of their subscription fee.

3. Referred Memberships

Aside from the content you publish, you can also make money on Medium by referring readers to become members.

For every reader that you convert to a paying member, you will receive half of their subscription fee and net standard payment processor fees for as long as they continue to be a member.

Learn more about how payments are calculated on Medium.

Conclusion

There are other ways through which you can make money on Medium aside from the Partner Program. It is advisable to learn and use them to earn pending the time you become eligible to join.

You can use Medium to drive traffic to your blog and promote your digital products while also being an affiliate.
One last tip: Your reading time matters regardless of which way you make money on Medium. The more attention you can get, the more your chances are.