This guide will help you learn more about the Medium Partner Program and will walk you through the process.
Sections in this article:
- What is the Medium Partner Program?
- Step 1: Learn more about the Partner Program and distribution on Medium
- Step 2: Enroll in the Medium Partner Program
- Step 3: Make your stories eligible to earn money & submit them to curation
- Step 4: Track your earnings
- Common questions
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. Here's how it works:
- Enroll to the Medium Partner Program
To join the Medium Partner Program, you need to link your Medium account with your bank account or debit card via a third-party payment service called Stripe. Additionally, you need to provide your taxpayer information within 180 days to be able to receive payments from Medium. - Make your stories eligible to earn money & submit them for curator review
Once you're in, you can write your story, and put it behind the paywall. You also put your already published stories behind the paywall to start earning revenue from them.
When you put your story behind the paywall, you are also submitting it for a review by Medium curators. If a story meets Medium's Curation Guidelines, a curator will recommend it to readers interested in relevant topics across Medium.com, our app, and email digests. - Earn money based on member engagement
Partner Program writers are paid every month based on how members engage with their stories. This is determined by member reading time. Each member’s subscription fee is distributed proportionally to the stories that the individual member engaged with that month. You can always check your payment estimates in your Partner dashboard.
Interested in enrolling? Let's begin.
Step 1: Learn more about the Partner Program and distribution on Medium
Before you proceed, please take a moment to learn more about the Program by reviewing the following articles from our Help Center:
Recommended reading
- Review the general Medium Partner Program Terms
- Review Member Content Guidelines—stories behind the paywall must meet those guidelines in order to be eligible for monetization
- Learn more about Medium's distribution system—stories published behind the paywall are additionally reviewed by Medium curators, who might distribute them around the platform
- Review Medium's Curation Guidelines to learn what curators look for in a story and what disqualifies it from being curated
- Learn more about how Medium calculates story earnings in the Program
If you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with Medium Support.
Step 2: Enroll in the Medium Partner Program
Setting up payments with Stripe
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
- Go to medium.com/creators and click Join the Partner Program at the bottom of the page.
- Read and accept the Partner Program Terms.
- Connect your bank account or debit card with your Medium account by choosing the option relevant to you from the list and click Set up payments on Stripe.
- Fill out all the information required by Stripe to create your Stripe account. To learn more about choosing the right type of Stripe account to your needs and setting up payments, see this article.
- Finish creating your Stripe account.
Submitting your taxpayer information
You also need to submit your taxpayer information to Medium, as Medium will be required to issue you a 1099-MISC tax form for your earnings in the Medium Partner Program. This is because the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires Medium to issue form 1099-MISC based on earnings thresholds.
While you cannot receive payments until you add verified taxpayer information, your posts can accumulate new earnings for up to one month. You will be eligible to receive payments if you add your taxpayer information within 180 days from the first day that nonzero earnings are posted to your Partner Program dashboard. After those 180 days have elapsed, your funds will be forfeited. Please see this article to learn more.
At all times you must maintain an active Medium account, connected Stripe account, and valid tax form in order to receive payouts through our Program. If at any point, any of these are not met, you will forfeit any accumulated earnings that have not yet been paid out after 180 days.
For a step-by-step guide on submitting and managing your taxpayer information, please see this article.
Our Help Center also provides articles for further details on taxes in this section.
Step 3: Make your stories eligible to earn money & submit them to curation
Once you've enrolled to the Partner Program and set up your Stripe account, you now have an option to put your story behind the paywall to start earning money. Note that this needs to be done on per-story basis, and you can still publish stories outside of the paywall.
Additionally, when you put a story behind the paywall, it's also submitted to Medium curators, who will review it based on Medium's Curation Guidelines and distribute it to a wider audience via medium.com on desktop, our iOS and Android apps, as well as our email digests.
To learn how to put your story behind the paywall, see this article.
Step 4: Track your earnings
Medium Partners have access to a Partner dashboard, accessible by clicking on your profile picture in the top-right corner on Medium.com. Your Partner dashboard shows your earnings for each of your stories that are behind the paywall. You can learn more about your dashboard in this article.
Additionally, you will be also able to track your daily member engagement and estimated revenue on your post’s detailed stats pages.
Common questions
By the 8th of each month, we initiate the payments for the prior month’s earnings. Please allow 3–7 business days to receive it in your Stripe account. This date is also shown at the bottom of your partner dashboard. To learn more about payments, please see this article.