This guide will help you learn more about the Partner Program and will walk you through the process of applying and getting started.
What is the Partner Program?
The Partner Program allows writers to earn money for the stories they publish on Medium based on engagement and activity from Medium members. Here's the process:
- Apply to the Partner Program
To join the Partner Program, you will need to meet the following eligibility requirements:
- Be a Medium member
- Have published a story within the last 6 months
- Be located in an eligible country
- Be at least 18 years old
- Enroll in the Partner Program
Once accepted into the Partner Program, you need to set up payouts by linking your Medium account with a Stripe account, a third-party payment service. You also need to provide your taxpayer information to Tipalti, a third-party payment service, within 180 days to be able to receive payments from Medium. - Make your stories eligible to earn money
Once you've completed your enrollment, you can begin putting new stories and already published stories behind the paywall to start earning revenue from them. - Earn money based on member engagement
When Medium members read, listen, and engage with your stories, you'll receive a portion of their membership dues. Higher-quality stories full of your insights, personal experiences, and knowledge will travel further on Medium—and earn more money. You can check your payment estimates in your Partner Program Earnings Dashboard and review the different engagement metrics here.
Interested in applying? Here's how.
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:
- Review the general Partner Program Terms
- Learn more about Medium's distribution system—most stories are immediately eligible for distribution at the time of publishing
- Review Medium's Quality Standards to learn how curators and Boost nominators review stories for distribution
- Read more on how Medium calculates story earnings in the Partner Program
If you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with Medium Support.
Step 2: Apply to the Partner Program
To join the Partner Program, you need to:
- Be a Medium member
- Have published a story within the last 6 months
- Be located in an eligible country
- Be at least 18 years old
If you don’t meet those requirements, we encourage you to continue writing and publishing your stories and building your community.
Step 3: Enroll in the 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, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Gibraltar, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States
Please note: Outlying territories of supported countries are not supported at this time.
- Once you've been notified of your Partner Program status and you've agreed to Medium's Partner Program terms and privacy policy, you'll be brought over to set up payouts on Stripe.
- Connect your bank account with your Medium account via Stripe by clicking Set up with Stripe.
- Fill out all the information required by Stripe to create or connect your Stripe account. You can learn more about the process in 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. A link to do this will also be sent to you once you’ve been successfully accepted to the Partner Program.
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.
Stay active to keep earning
We encourage all Partner Program writers to remain active, publishing at least once every 6 months. Medium does reserve the right, at its discretion, to disable monetization from a writer if they have been inactive for 6 months or more. Writers who are at risk will receive notification before we take any action.
Step 4: Make your stories eligible to earn money
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 make them eligible to earn money. This step needs to be done for each story, and you can still publish stories outside of the paywall.
To learn how to put your story behind the paywall, see this article.
Step 5: Track your earnings
Medium Partners have access to a Partner Program Earnings Dashboard, accessible by clicking on your profile picture in the top-right corner on Medium.com. Your Earnings 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 member engagement and estimated revenue on your post’s detailed stats pages.
Common questions
As of August 1, 2023, we've updated the Partner Program to incentivize high-quality human writing. Here’s a quick summary: we’ve opened up the Partner Program to more locations, removed the 100 follower requirement, and require Medium membership to join. Earnings will be higher for stories that have repeat readers, have been Boosted, and that have a high read ratio. All stories will also earn more based on engagement signals like claps, highlights, and replies. Referral bonuses are being deprecated and new story stats will be added in so writers can better understand their story earnings breakdown. Read more about all of the changes and our vision for the Partner Program.
Getting Boosted results in both a distribution and earnings bonus. The Partner Program is designed to reward your most meaningful, original, and memorable stories. When you are in the Partner Program, members-only stories that get Boosted will earn at a higher rate, in addition to receiving the usual distribution bonus. Read more about our Boost criteria here.
We’re sunsetting the Membership Referral Program and replacing it with a Follower Bonus. Stories that are read by and have engagement with existing followers will get an extra bonus in earnings.
All member referrals made up until September 1, 2023 will continue to be honored indefinitely. We will keep your custom referral pages up so that they don’t break your links in stories, but we will stop generating new referrals for members who sign up after September 1st.