Update: Medium updated their payment program in November. Earnings will no longer be based on claps but on reading time. For more, read here.

A Review Of The Medium Partner Program

Every writer dreams of writing full time. Having their own site and monetizing it the best way they know-how. Or joining the 7% of Medium writers earning $100 a month from the Medium Partner Program. If you’re like me, you have probably thought of going into full-time writing and quitting your job, never mind that our jobs and our lives fuel our writing.
Take a few days off and you’ll make some exciting discoveries; your job feeds your passion either through money or through inspiration and ideas.
However, there’s no reason you can’t earn from your writing. A meagre $1.00 will put a step into your writing.

Who Writes on Medium?

Anyone can write. Top writers like Zat Rana, Tom Kuegler, Shannon Ashley and Jun Wu just to mention a few are reaping big from Medium. If you’re an aspiring writer who wants to practise, write 500 words articles on Medium daily.
Writing and reading on Medium is free. However, if you are on the free plan, you’re limited to read 2 to 3 articles a month. When you go premium and become a member, you are not limited to any articles at all.
When I started reading on Medium in 2018, I felt like I was standing on the sidelines as most of the articles were locked. The free articles were not as interesting as the locked articles and quite frankly, most Medium bigwigs were locking their articles.

Who Earns on Medium?

Now this depends on how you choose to look at it. On the surface level, anyone can earn from Medium, but when you look deeper, it becomes a hard nut to crack depending on where you live in the world.
I started submitting my articles to the Medium Partner Program early this year. This is what is commonly referred to as locking a post or locked posts.
Locked posts are available to Medium Members Only . However, a friend link is generated every time you publish an article which you can share with non-medium members to read or share across social media platforms.
As I mentioned, earning on Medium is dependent on where in the world you’re located. This is because Medium Partner Program pays through Stripe, and Stripe is supported in only 25 countries.
For my fellow writers across Africa, Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, Stripe is not supported so you might have to find a way through it either by using Stripe Atlas or other methods.
I wrote an article about how Medium is unfriendly to writers in these nations and how it favours the wealthier nations by choosing Stripe as the payment gateway. There was no reason why they could not have chosen Paypal. In addition to this, Babu from Hackernoon writes about this in detail and why he chose to quit the program.
When I cracked the nut wide open, I started earning from the program. If you’re from ACP countries, here is how you can earn from the program as well.

How Does The Medium Partner Program Work?

You get to choose whether an article should be locked in the Medium Partner Program or it should be free.
First of all, you’re already paying $5 a month to read all the articles so it makes sense to lock your articles, earn back your $5 and some change and if you put enough effort, make it into the 7% of Medium writers earning $100 a month.
Second, Medium favours locked articles and so do publications. Your free articles are most likely to die a quick death after publishing as they’re not in line with Medium’s bottom line.
Third, Curation is everything. That’s right. If you write an article that meets all the Medium guidelines, it will be distributed across their homepage, emails, and feature in tags chosen by Medium. This means that a lot of people will get to see your writing because you submitted it for review under the Medium Partner Program.
I have been curated many times in spirituality, self, books, social media and poetry. Curation is where you want to aim. It raises your claps, fans, reading ratio and ultimately your earnings.

Metrics That Determine How Much You Can Earn In The Medium Partner Program

Update: Medium updated their payment program in November. Earnings will no longer be based on claps but on reading time. For more, read here.
On Medium, you can engage with an article through highlighting, clapping or commenting.
Claps are the payment metric. If people highlight but don’t clap, then your article stands to earn no money. When they clap but exit soon, your article stands to earn less money. Which brings us to read ratio and fans.
Concentrate on having as many fans as you can and a high read ratio. You may have an article with 600+ plus claps earning less than one with 400 claps. Overall, things on Medium are always changing. Don’t obsess over the claps. Show up, write, engage and repeat.
Coach Tony has an article that clearly depicts how claps contribute to earnings among other factors.

How To Earn on Medium

• Create a great Writing profile complete with author profile and bio. No cat pictures please, a face is more friendly.
• Read the Medium writing Guidelines and Implement.
• Become a paying Medium Member.
• Join publications and submit your articles.
• Join the Medium Partner Program and lock your stories to increase your chances of curation.
• Join Medium Facebook Groups for Writers.

My Writing Streak on Medium

I write 3 times a week on Medium. Top writers like Shannon Ashley write 3 times a day. Find your writing streak, stick to it and twerk it as you grow.
I like having many income streams and Medium is one of them. I have not joined the top 7% mainly because of the effort I put. To earn $100 a month, you have to show up and write every single day. However, I always earn back my $5 and more than $10- $20 in change. Which gets me stationary, a writing desk or a cup of Starbucks coffee.
Here are some of my payments early this year:

Some of My Earnings in The Medium Partner Program:

Conclusion

Medium is a great place to write and connect with other writers and be paid based on quality writing, engagement and because you deserve it.
You can’t write about anything you want and express your opinion in a friendly way that provides edutainment. As a writer, I love it because outside of my work and site, I can write about other things and earn from it big time.
 
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