Tips to Help You Understand Your Medium Partner Program Earnings
Here’s what every MPP writer should know.
By Shannon Ashely
Every Wednesday, Medium releases an earnings estimate for writers in the Partner Program. For many of us, it’s an exciting and potentially stressful day, so I thought I’d do my part to help clear a few things up.
1. Each pay period runs either 4 or 5 weeks.
Essentially, each pay period is a month. And it’s pretty straightforward, because they tell you right in your partner dashboard. To get to your partner dashboard, click the circle of your profile picture (top right of web page), then “Medium Partner Program.”
Here’s a simple example. The pay period that was released on Wednesday, February 27th actually ended on Sunday, February 24th.
On Wednesday, March 6th, we received the estimates for week one of the March payout, and that ended on Sunday, March 3rd.
2. One week of earnings runs from Monday to Sunday.
Fellow writers frequently message me in a panic on Wednesdays to ask why one of their stories earned nothing. As in nada.
Usually the answer is that it was published on the previous Sunday or Monday, so it simply didn’t make that week’s estimate.
Stories published late on Sundays don’t always seem to be reflected on Wednesday’s earnings. That means any actual earnings should be looked for on the following Wednesday.
3. The only metrics we KNOW go into the earnings are claps and reading time.
A lot of writers around here get hung up on views, reads, highlights, and comments. They want all of those things to play a role in their earnings, and then they don’t don’t understand why their earnings are small.
Medium has yet to indicate that any of those metrics outside of reading time and claps matter in terms of pay, so there’s a lot of speculation among writers.
4. Keep in mind, it’s the claps from paying members that count.
We are only paid for engagement from paying members. Unpaid members may clap on our stories, but that action will not result in payment.
You can tell if somebody is a member because there’s green lines around their profile picture. Their profile will also say, “Medium member since…”
5. There’s no evidence that views or highlights are impacting your earnings.
One more time for the people in the back. We probably aren’t paid for views or highlights or even comments. That doesn’t mean those things don’t matter, because I think they do.
But Medium has never given any information to suggest stories are paid for those things. And if you talk to any regular high-earners, you’ll hear them confirm that such interaction doesn’t seem to impact pay.
6. Claps are probably not quite as important as you think.
At least, the number of claps per story isn’t all that important. Reaching 1K claps on any given story won’t unlock some Medium bonus.
The only thing it might unlock is disappointment. Many, many writers on Medium seem to think that reaching 1K claps on a story is like sitting on a gold mine. Except that it’s not always the case.
7. Fans are likely the more important number in terms of understanding your earnings.
I’ve been saying this for a while, but if you must obsess about a number on your stats page, let it be your overall fans. It’s the one number that’s allowed me to successfully guess what a week of earnings might be.
There have been a couple of exceptions. It disappointed me back in January, but that entire month was an unusual blip where earnings decreased for practically everyone. And then it disappointed me a bit in the spring, but after speaking with other top writers, it seems that the earnings were lower than expected for practically everyone.
August seems to have been another low paying month. Plenty of folks saw an increased in all of their numbers but a decrease in pay. It happens and you pretty much have to roll with it.
As a general rule, if you average 50 fans a day, and that number grows to 100 fans a day, you will see an increase in your earnings.
Yes, there are other factors at play, like how many of those fans are actual members. And how much those members clap for other stories. It might make a difference if there are more stories published one week to the next.
But overall, tracking fans can give you a good ballpark. If you’re making $25 a week averaging a certain amount of fans, you should see an increase if your average of daily fans increase.
8. As long as your stories are behind the paywall, they can keep earning money regardless of age.
This is probably one of the coolest things about Medium. Any story behind the paywall is eligible to keep earning if it continues to get fans.
It is not uncommon for a handful of old stories of mine to make an unexpected $20 to $50 each in one month. And of course, at the bottom of my earnings there are always some older stories which make little bits here and there — from pennies to a couple bucks.
If you’ve got a lot of stories, you can watch those small amounts add up.
9. On the last Wednesday of every pay period, lifetime earnings zero out.
There’s a little glitch that happens when one pay period ends and another one begins. If you haven’t noticed it before, it might freak you out when you see it, but it’s really no big deal.
After your earnings post on the last Wednesday of each pay period, before the dashboard reflects the new month, you might notice that all of the lifetime earnings for your stories says $0.
Don’t sweat it. This happens to everybody, and it’s resolved when the new month displays on the dashboard. Your earnings haven’t gone anywhere. The zeros will go away and you will see the actual earnings shortly.
10. You can check the status of your monthly payments in Stripe.
Medium typically sends out payments through Stripe on the last Wednesday of a pay period. Occasionally, it gets sent the next day.
How long it takes for you to see the money in your bank account varies depending upon your bank. I typically get my earnings in my bank on Friday morning if Medium sent the payment on Wednesday.
If they sent the money on a Thursday, then I’d get it on a Monday. Rarely, I haven’t received it until Tuesday. But there’s a way to know when it’s coming.
From your partner dashboard, you can check the status in Stripe. Just click “View Stripe dashboard.”
When you do that, it will take you to a page that looks like this. You can see whether your payment is in transit, and what date it’s expected to clear your bank.
11. Yes, curation still makes a difference.
I see that a lot of people have been frustrated with curation lately. In particular, you might be frustrated because it seems like your freshly curated stories don’t do as well or get as wide a distribution as they used to.
But what you might not have noticed is that there was definitely a change in the distribution algorithms a month or two ago. Older stories are currently getting more playtime.
If you happen to have plenty of curated stories on Medium, that’s good news. That means the algorithms may start distributing older stories of yours which you thought were already done earning.
The way this works for me lately is that my top earning stories tend to be older rather than new pieces. Maybe this will change, but for now, my new stories don’t get a ton of traffic for the first week.
Hopefully, this helps clear up a little confusion about how earnings work. Let me know if you’ve got any questions that I missed!
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This is really clear and helpful! Thanks Shannon!