How to Make Money on Medium (Getting Paid to Write for Medium)

As a freelance writer, you should always look for new opportunities to earn more money with your writing skills.

Fiverr, Upwork, and TextBrokers are well-known platforms where you can be hired as a writer and get paid for every article you complete.

But there are many more places on the internet where you can make money as a freelance writer.

If you have ever wondered how you can make money by writing, I’m here to tell you about Medium.

With over 80 million monthly readers and a Partner Program that pays writers, Medium is an interesting publishing platform.

And for me, it is one of the easiest blogging platforms out there. 

Unfortunately, in recent years, Medium seems to be heading down with a lot of traffic and a lot of bloggers are wondering if writing on Medium is still worth it in 2023 and even in 2024. 

In my opinion, despite the decreasing views, and the income it is still worth writing on Medium in 2023 and even in 2024, no matter if you are a beginner or an expert.

In this article, I will show you how difficult it is to make money on Medium, what are the requirements, what is the earning potential, and all the things I like and don’t like about this publishing platform.

How to Make Money on Medium

How Does Medium Make Money?

Medium is a combination of the free and membership business models. With Medium, users can read up to 5 articles per month. 

If you want to read more, you need to become a Medium member for the price of $5/month. Which is a great price, for access to high-quality content. 

Because Medium has a minimalistic design, it doesn’t go well with the traditional banner ads you see on other websites. So, for now, its income model is all about content quality and Medium members.

How Writing For Medium Works

If you want to get paid for writing on Medium, go ahead and sign up as a writer and then join the Medium Partner Program. This is not difficult. 

This publishing platform is still open to new writers, so there is a huge chance, you will get accepted and get paid if you are from any of the supported countries.  

Countries supported in the Program: Currently, enrollment in the Partner Program is only available in the following countries.

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, United Kingdom, United States

What is the Medium Partner Program?

The Medium Partner Program allows writers to earn money for the content they publish on Medium based on engagement from Medium members.

After you publish an article, you are getting paid every month based on how members engage with your stories. This means they pay you based on the reading time from Medium members.

The more time a Medium member reads your article, the more money you can make. 

So, if you are already signed up for the Medium platform, go ahead and join their partner program with this link: https://medium.com/earn, fill in all the important details about yourself, and you can start earning money. 

How Difficult Is to Make Money on Medium

Even with declining traffic and fewer paid members, Medium is still one of the platforms to publish your articles. Or republish. 

Yes, this is correct, Medium allows you to import stories from your blog and the coolest thing is, that Google doesn’t count such imported articles as duplicate content. 

So, it will not harm your blog. 

This is the way I’m using Medium. I’m using it to build my business, grow an audience beyond my websites, get a respectable number of views, and get paid to do so. 

Writing an article on Medium is pretty easy. They are using a simple interface that is suitable even for beginners. The learning curve is about 5 minutes for a newbie. After this time, you know how to write an article. 

However, for me, it is important to get traffic outside Medium, from Google, so before publishing the article, I’m always paying attention to the SEO elements of the article.

This means a title with keywords I want to rank, a description with secondary keywords, and I always include at least 4 tags with low competition. 

Earning Potential

If you are still interested in writing for Medium, you probably asked questions such as how much can you make and can you make money quickly?

Medium is an online publication that focuses on quality writing. And because you get paid, when a Medium subscriber is reading your article, you need to figure out what people on Medium like to read about. 

They like informational articles. They like personal experience articles. The product-heavy top 10 lists aren’t going to gain traction here. 

Quality gets rewarded over quantity in a Medium article.

So, how much money can you make on Medium?

Because I’m using this platform to build an audience for my newsletters, I don’t need to earn hundreds of dollars with my articles. 

This is why some of my articles are earning me just a few cents. 

But because Medium allows you to put affiliate links into the articles you publish on this platform, I earn much more from such articles than just a few cents. 

However, it is important to include an affiliate disclaimer somewhere in the article, otherwise, you can get banned.

But if you want to play safe, and earn without affiliate links, according to Medium, about 7% of writers earn over $100 per month. That is a small percentage and those are full-time writers. 

What I Like

Medium is still the best alternative to blogging. There’s no other blogging platform where beginners can pick up and start easily earning money by writing, whether $1 or $1,000.

It also gets love from Google, and with high domain authority, your articles can rank pretty high in Google search results.

This is why I like to republish old articles on Medium, to get an additional audience and more exposure to my websites.

What I Don’t Like

The ugly truth about Medium is its monetizing model. They don’t use advertisements, they make money only with subscriptions. 

And because a writer on Medium is paid only when one of the subscribers is reading the article, you get just a fraction of the money. 

After all, if you wrote a post on Medium that only made $5 over months, it doesn’t seem worth it. You can easily write the same amount of words for $50-$100 in any other freelance marketplace. 

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it is possible to make money on Medium even when you are new to the platform. And you can also use it to promote your other websites or businesses.

If you just write a single story, the chances of making money are small. 

Almost zero. 

Stay persistent as a writer. All it takes is some time, patience, and work.

Build a portfolio of articles and your earnings will build over time.