My first month writing articles on Medium – How much I earned

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I have good news, the first payment reached my account, let’s see my first Medium income report .

Why did I write an income report?

When I first heard that you can be paid to write articles on Medium I was looking everywhere for income reports. I was surprised to find so little information about how other writers are feeling about this platform. Not seeing how much an author earned for his work made me feel a bit cautious about Medium really paying to write there. So, how much money can you really earn by writing articles on Medium.

Now I want to mention that I am not a professional writer, I am a more technical person rather than artistic. I just like to share my experience with others and my first experience on Medium motivated me to open this blog.

Does Medium really pays its writers?

The answer is yes, and the proof is the below printscreen with my income for the first month.

The first article was published on 17th May, the second one on 26th May and the third was unlisted (meaning that only the ones with direct link could see it). That is why the numbers are so different and as you can see the income is reflecting only 2 weeks, not an entire month.

How many views I had?

These are the graphics till June 9, but for this income report were taken in consideration only the data till 27th May. I know that is a bit confusing, but I think it will help to have a visual representation of the status.

Views

You can see that number of views are fluctuating:

Reads

Medium has an algorithm that states the number of reads, people who actually stayed and read your article. It is a great way to see how can you attract and keep the reader until the end on the article:

Fans

A fan is a person who liked your story. Total number of fans until 27th May were 19.

As you can see, a reader can clap once, or multiple times:

How do Medium stories earn money?

I really like the concept that money is not related to people clicking on ads or how many views your article had. Medium has a membership program where anyone could pay $5 every month in order to have access to all the articles from their website.

Each member’s $5 per month subscription is distributed proportionally to the stories that the individual member engaged with that month. If someone engaged with 20 stories in a given month, their monthly subscription would be distributed to those authors only. There is no clear algorithm on how the distribution works, or at least is not publicly available.

What did I do to attract viewers?

Personally I did not do any marketing or sharing for the above articles. I was not even engaging with other authors or trying to get visible.

My first two articles were chosen by medium curators based on quality. That is why medium did all the marketing. I was lucky to have them published so easy.

Why Choosing to break up with your unused stuff article is unlisted?

Well, good question. The other two articles are more technical, this one is a personal story where I am sharing an intimate story that I do not feel so comfortable about. So I was a bit more emotional when this one was not chosen to be distributed by curators. That is why I change it to unlisted, so I can still work on it and make it better.

How did you receive the earned money?

The money will be automatically transferred to your Stripe account. There is no minimum amount, so you’ll have your money even if you earn only $1.

I connected my stripe account to Revolut, as I prefer to use this for all international transactions. Even if I get paid in USD, an exchange is automatically done and I will receive in my Revolut account the equivalent value in GBP. For example, in this case, on 5th of June I received a payment of 5,89 GBP.

Is is worth to write on Medium?

I would definitely say yes. The main advantage is that through Medium you can reach a diversity of people, and you do not need to put the effort of creating a blog in order to monetize your writing. But it is not a get quick rich scheme, it is more like: I have some interesting stories to tell and I could get a few dollars for that.

Of course there are some exceptional people who can make a living from it. Here is the status sent by Medium for May:

May payments

On May 31, we processed May payments to your bank account. As usual, these payments were based on the depth of engagement from our members (distributing each member’s $5/month based on their engagement last month).

Based on member engagement from May:

• 55% of writers or publications who wrote at least one story for members earned money.
• 7.6% of active writers earned over $100.
• $9,743.90 was the most earned by a writer, and $2,915.44 was the most earned for a single story.

That is a high amount of money only for one story/article. Probably those authors have millions of subscribers, but it is a great example that in the long run with dedication and hard work you can earn a decent income on Medium.

You can see above that most of the people earned under 100$, that is not a lot, but still counts as extra money earned with no considerable effort (you can even write from your phone on your daily commute).

Conclusion of this earning report

I think Medium is a great tool to use if you write about things you are passionate about and sharing them could bring value to others. You’ll not become a millionaire, but sharing your experience with others can be fulfilling and the extra money is a nice bonus too.

You can see here more details about the way Medium works and how to create an account.

Please subscribe if you want to learn about my next income report from Medium, which I will include in my Monthly Passive Income Update.