Explaining the Medium Partner Program
Call this a one-year performance review, if you like.
I never expected to make a dime on Medium, and I’m thankful for any dimes I can scrape together from it. I’ve been fortunate enough to be featured once, and I never thought I’d get that, given my content is not infrequently critical of blue tribe narratives. But now that I’ve been doing this for a year, and accumulated a third of a million hits in the process, I figured I’d share what I’ve learned. Perhaps other writers can use this knowledge to best utilize the system, regardless of their tribal affiliation.
Basics
Medium provides statistics on the back end which are very different from what you see as a reader. As the reader you see a clap count, which is basically like a Reddit upvote or a Facebook like, except readers can clap as much as they like. Additional claps don’t necessarily earn the writer more money, because each reader only has a certain amount of their subscription parceled off to pay writers. The money is divided up by clap, so if you clap nine times for one article, and once for another, the nine-clap article rakes in 90% of the payout, and the one clap article rakes 10%.
How much of the monthly subscription is paid out exactly?
