If you’re a blogger or writer and you’re wondering if you can make money writing on Medium, I wanted to share my experience here and my research to help fellow writers. As an entrepreneur and a writer, I have tried many side hustles and ways to make passive income, including writing on Medium. You can check out my Medium here to see some of the topics I’ve written about and how many articles I’ve written.

What Is Medium?

First of all, you may be wondering what is Medium and how does it work? Can anyone write for Medium? Medium is a platform for writers where anyone can write articles or essays. You can make money writing on Medium based on the amount of engagement with your writing. Another way to earn on Medium is through the referral program, where you refer people who join the platform.

Writers on Medium are paid through royalties from membership subscriptions. Anyone can set up a free account and write on Medium, and you can apply to the Medium Partner Program to get paid for your articles. To be eligible, you need to have published at least one article on Medium and have at least 100 followers on the platform. You can check out their full eligibility requirements here.

If you’re a new writer or would like to reach a wide audience, Medium can be a great tool to build your portfolio and reach. Medium has over 100 million readers and is continuing to grow, according to the Medium site. As a source of direct payments, I have not found it especially promising, but I will go more into detail below.

How to Make Money Writing on Medium

To make money writing on Medium, you have to apply to the Medium Partner Program and select the articles you write that you’d like to be included in the payment program. Then you can write about almost any topic and build your audience and engagement to earn money. You will get paid based on an algorithm of how long people read your articles.

Medium is its own social network of sorts, and submitting your articles to publications on Medium is a good way to get more exposure and potentially increase your earnings. You can also share your articles with your existing social networks. Also, it helps to comment on and like other people’s writing to boost engagement with your writing and profile.

In addition to royalties from your writing, which is paid monthly via Stripe, you can earn money by referring people who become Medium members. Here is more information on the referral program. Basically, members pay $5 a month to read unlimited stories on Medium (everyone gets three free article reads per month). I have focused my efforts on writing income, not member referrals so I will be discussing how to make money writing on Medium more in-depth.

Hustling on Medium

As is the case with many social networks, you will need to be on Medium a lot to hustle and make money writing on Medium. First, you will need to promote your stories. It helps your exposure a lot if you can get publications on Medium to pick up your stories. This happened by accident for me - a publication on how to make money picked up my story on How to Make Money Fast in NYC. This helped me reach a wider audience, which increased my earnings for this article. Also, the nature of the topic - how to make money - is always an in-demand topic, and this is my top earning story on Medium. (How much does it make, you want to know? I’ll get into that next).

When I signed up for Medium, I was publishing regularly as I was desperate for a way out of a copywriting job I had at the time that was pure drudgery. I ended up spending more than I made on Medium the first few months, as I became a member so I could read more than the allotted three articles per month and learn from other successful writers on Medium

The “You Get What You Deserve” Myth

On Medium, there are many writers claiming to have the secret to making thousands of dollars per month on Medium. Many go so far as to proclaim themselves superior writers because they have “cracked the code” and put in endless effort, publishing every day and sometimes even multiple times per day. First of all, even if they do succeed with this effort (and hopefully they are compensated for all that), it is unsustainable and unrealistic for most people to be publishing that much on Medium. In fact, if you do that much on your own blog or website, I can almost guarantee you will make more money than hustling non-stop on Medium.

Here are some stats I found on how much most writers make on Medium:

70% of Medium writers earn money, but only 6.4% earn more than $100 monthly
There are people who make thousands of dollars a month on Medium, but these people are few and far between.
One success story is Jason Gutierrez, who made over $12,000 from one article on Medium.

There are people who make a lot writing on Medium, but they put in a lot of effort, treating it as a full-time job, finding the most lucrative topics to target, submitting their articles to Medium publications, and promoting their content. It would require a lot of time, and this time may be better spent on other efforts if making money is your main goal.

Pros and Cons of Writing on Medium

Here are some of the pros and cons of writing on Medium, based on my experience and reading others’ accounts:

Pros

A good place to reach a wider audience than your usual network.
Great way to practice your writing. Medium is a low-maintenance, free way to practice your writing.
Great way to build your writing portfolio if you’re a new writer. You can write about topics you’d like to cover and create your own portfolio.
You can make passive income from your writing.
You have opportunities to get your articles published in other publications on Medium and reach a wider audience.
You can link to your related websites and projects on Medium. Although Medium links are no-follow (meaning they don’t boost the SEO of the site you’re linking to), they can bring traffic to your site.

Cons

You have to treat Medium as a social media and engage often to get better views, especially starting out.
You have to publish a very high, consistent amount to make money writing on Medium.
You have to maintain your Medium. This includes submitting your articles to different publications to try to reach wider audiences, as well as promoting your stories on your social channels.
The payout is not much for most people. In my case, my top-earning article earns between 75 cents and $3 per month and this is from the article that is featured in a Medium publication.
The content you put on Medium can be subject to Medium’s terms and conditions, and with all social networks, you don’t have control over what happens with the site or even how long the site lasts.

For background, I have not published anything on Medium in the past few months and no longer promote my articles. I put in a few months of writing regularly on Medium in 2018 and 2019 to reach the status I am at currently. Once in a while, I add a new post but I am by no means a regular writer on the platform anymore.

How Much I’ve Made from Medium

Here are my earning stats on Medium (drumroll, please):

The most I’ve made in a month on Medium is $6.09
My top earning story is How to Make Money Fast in NYC, which has earned a total of $24.20 since I published it in January 2019 and has 23,000 total views.
The least I’ve made is 0. There have been several months throughout the past few years where I made no dollars on Medium.
I have 19 published articles on Medium and started writing in late 2018.

In my experience, the articles that do the best on Medium are how-to articles that help people solve a problem. I have read many articles on Medium on how to make money on Medium or how to make money as a writer. For my writing, my article on how to make money in NYC seems to be an in-demand topic on Medium. This article was picked up by a publication on Medium, which has helped it reach more people and earn more than most of my articles.

The worst-performing articles I have on Medium were about personal things, in a personal essay style, so either I am really bad at these or no one cares, haha. In all seriousness, it makes sense that most people on Medium are interested in information or how-to articles. If you have an area of expertise you’d like to share, Medium is a way you can reach thousands of people. It can be a great tool for promoting your small business as well.

The Truth: My Advice for Writers

My advice for writers depends on your goals and situation. If you are looking for a way to build your writing portfolio and credibility without the costs of a website, writing for Medium is a good idea. If you want to practice writing and network with other writers, Medium is helpful. If you are willing to invest the time to do social networking on Medium and market your content, Medium can be a great place.

If you are looking for a way to make money, especially passive income, I recommend starting your own blog or website instead. With a blog, you always have control over your content and you can choose to monetize your blog however you see fit - selling digital products or using an ad network or affiliate links.

In my case, I decided to focus more on building my own websites, Runstreet and Book of Dog. I have been able to monetize Runstreet and make hundreds of dollars from my site instead of hundreds of pennies on Medium. Book of Dog is my new project documenting dog breeds and breed ranking lists, and right now I am enjoying writing about something I love - dogs.

Overall, for building a following and brand long-term, I recommend investing in a website to share your writing. If you want to monetize your blog, check out my tips to monetize your blog. If you want to build a free writing portfolio, practice writing, and network with other writers, Medium is a great place.

Have you tried writing on Medium? Comment below with your experience. Happy writing to you, and good luck!🤓

Marnie Kunz is a writer and marketing professional based in Brooklyn, New York. She has a background in small business, journalism, and digital marketing, and is the founder of Runstreet and the Book of Dog.

Can You Make Money Writing on Medium? My Experience