So, I made $55.46 writing on Medium last month, $25 of it from the first poem I published. It’s kinda weird to earn money from writing, but it’s been transfered to my wife’s account.

The Medium Partner Program is pretty cool.

How It Works

Medium pivoted from an advertising based model to a subscriber one, based on a paywall. Most content seems to be free, but you can pay $5 a month for access to everything behind the paywall. That includes stuff from major publishers (The Economist, Inc) and also any writer choose to go behind the paywall.

First you have to sign up to the Medium Partner program and you need some bank account supported by Stripe (I used my wife’s UK account, it unfortunately doesn’t connect to Sri Lanka). Then you need to write. Medium isn’t actually great for discovery, so you have to promote your own content through, shudder, Twitter and Facebook and whatever channels you have.

Payment seems to work through some algorithm, views, reads and ‘claps’ that people give you. My guess is that the amount of claps you get from paying members contributes to how much you get paid, but that’s a black box.

How Much You’ll Earn

I don’t know. This is what I earned. The Internet Of Shit was viewed 435 times and got 35 claps. Google Is God was viewed 329 times and got 32 claps.

To be honest, my views, claps and earnings have only dropped since then. Perhaps the algorithm favors newbies to encourage them, or maybe I just need to write better. I haven’t blogged like this for years and I’m a bit rusty.

Would I Recommend It?

Yes. I think this is amazing. Getting paid to write without worrying about the business end of it is the dream. And subscribers (not advertisers) paying for content is also a clear and elegant relationship.

I don’t know if it’ll work in the long run, but I really respect and appreciate what Medium is doing. They’re trying to set up a simple system where writers can get paid. And it’s a working system that delivers payments now.

I’m hesitant to encourage more people to get on it, because supply and demand would probably drive payments down, but it is still wonderful news.

If you write on Medium you can make money. I did.