How Indians can earn from Medium?
And why they should consider Medium for blogging.
The relationship between Stripe and India is like a couple that is desperately trying to make their it work, despite the inter-nation (international) nature of their relationship. The parents are currently in talks with each other.
After their first date in late 2019 (when stripe allowed Indian citizens to create accounts for payouts) they are still figuring out how this is going to work.
In short, Stripe is still in beta mode in India.
But there’s still a workaround, for future and for present.
For new birds here’s the backstory:
Medium charges its readers 5$. They keep their cut (obviously) and pay the writers on the basis of how their write-ups are performing.
In order to get paid on Medium, you need to join Medium Partner Program which will enable Medium curators (or Medium’s algorithm) to recommend your articles to readers based on the reader’s reading history and interests in publications.
Now, this is where the most interesting (and the most irritating) part of the story begins. Medium releases payouts via Stripe. Stripe is essentially a payment processing software/platform operating in around 30 countries (mostly developed countries). India and Brazil have been in Beta (or Preview) mode since November last year.
For a brief time period, they added India to their list of countries eligible for opening a stripe account. But that disappeared pretty quickly leaving writers, from India, confused. Medium Help and Support page explains that India and Brazil are in the beta version and they will soon be made eligible for opening a Stripe account.
This is even more frustrating when you see that India is only second after the USA in terms of Medium’s monthly traffic. For July 2020, around 7% of Medium’s traffic came from India. So is the case with Brazil (around 3%) which is not eligible for Stripe account activation despite being in Top 5 countries visiting Medium.
Now I can’t tell you the number of Paid Members visiting out of this 7% or roughly 13 million, but that’s still a significant number right there.
So why should Indians consider Medium anyway?
Well, I already covered the reasons why I prefer Medium over WordPress and Blogger. So you can go through that to get an understanding of why Medium is comparatively better.
The way forward for writers from India:
Now, since India is already in Beta mode, that means Stripe is indeed trying to add India in their list of Medium’s Partner countries. Since the last three months, 5 countries have already been added to the ‘Stripe eligible countries list’. Which means Medium is growing and they will be only moving forward in this:
As soon as Medium starts paying writers in India,
there will be more articles from Indians about India,
henceforth there will be more traffic from India,
henceforth there will be more paid members from India,
henceforth there will be an increase in the earnings for Indians.
I feel you can see where this is going. Blogging is like an investment of time if anything.
How Indians can earn from Medium?
Now, enough hypothetical assumptions about the future. Let’s talk about the present. I am a Medium Partner Member being from India, currently residing in India. I have stayed in Canada for a short while for work purposes and had to open a bank account there. I used that bank account to register for Medium Partnered Program.
But what if you don’t have a bank account from one of those eligible countries?
Well, I know a friend who registered for MPP by giving the bank details of a relative living in the Stripe eligible countries. So in that way, if you have any friend or relative (close enough to help you out with this) living in any of these countries you can start earning from Medium right away.
I consulted with him and he added that all you need from your relative (or friend) is to provide you with bank account details (the details you ask for when you need to a bank transfer) like Account Number, CIN number, etc. and a local address (address from that Stripe eligible country) of that person. And that’s it. You can fill up the registration form accordingly and you can enroll for the Medium Partner Program while living in India.
(Note: Just make sure that person is trustworthy enough. Because your earnings will be going directly in his/her account.)
Anyway, this is just a temporary solution. I hope Medium and Stripe will soon work it out and start paying writers based on their writing capabilities, not based on which geography they belong to.
If you have any queries regarding how to start with blogging on Medium or how to enroll for Medium Partner Program, ask right away. I will be happy to help.
If you are good to go, then please follow India on Run publication, solely dedicated to India and share your stories and articles.
