Enrolling to the Medium Partner Program is the first step to earning revenue on your Medium stories
Enrolling in the Program
To join the Medium Partner Program, all you need to do is to link your Medium account with your bank account or debit card via Stripe. You'll find more information below.
Please note: Currently, enrollment in the Partner Program is only available 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
If you're a resident of India, Brazil, or any other Stripe "Beta" countries, please see this article to learn more before proceeding.
- 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. You must use your verifiable legal name when filling out Stripe information, and not anonymized or pen names. Anonymized or pen names are still allowed on your Medium 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.
Once you enroll in the Partner Program:
- You will have access to a Partner dashboard. This is accessible from your avatar menu.
- Your story details will now show the lifetime earnings of the post. This is accessible from your post edit menu.
- You will be able to track your daily member engagement and estimated revenue on your post’s detailed stats page.
- You will see a new option to lock your posts behind the paywall during your pre-publish flow. This provides the potential to earn money. Please see this article to learn more.
- 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.
Common questions
Partner Program writers are paid monthly based on how much time Medium members spend reading their stories. Earnings are calculated based on two components:
- How long members spend reading your story. As Medium members spend more time reading your story (“member reading time”), you’ll earn more. When we calculate your story’s earnings, we’ll also include reading time from non-members if they subscribe to Medium within 30 days of reading your story.
- How much of their monthly reading time members spend on your story. By calculating a share of member reading time, we support authors who write about unique topics and connect with loyal readers. For example, if last month a member spent 10% of their monthly reading time on your story, you will receive 10% of their share (a portion of their subscription fee).
Imagine an author writes about fly fishing. She finds an audience of fly fishing enthusiasts who subscribe to Medium primarily to read her stories, meaning she receives a strong share of reading time from each of her readers. In contrast, a generalist author might receive smaller shares from his readers, who also read a variety of other authors. The fly fisher can earn relatively more through the share calculation, even with a smaller audience.
Check out this section to learn more about recent Partner Program updates.
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.
Your Partner Dashboard is updated every day for earnings. We use UTC days, meaning we include all earnings from activity during midnight UTC to 11:59 PM UTC. Earnings are then updated within a few hours.
We will aim to update your story stats page within 6-12 hours of the close of the “day,” meaning typically between 11:00pm PST and 5:00am PST.