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Medium’s Latest Changes to the Partner Program (And what it means for writers)

Medium is making a major change in its partner program that will transform the Medium experience for readers and writers alike. If you’re a part of the Medium Partner Program, this is going to directly impact your income.

Anangsha Alammyan

Aug 2, 2023 • 4 min read

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I’ve been writing on Medium since 2020. In the three years since, I have:

Gained 155k+ followers
Built a publication with 18k+ followers
Made $30k+ from the Medium Partner Program.

The journey so far has been filled with ups and downs. But in all my time on the platform, I’ve never been more excited about it than now.

Why?

Medium is making a major change in its partner program that will transform the Medium experience for readers and writers alike.👀

If you’re a part of the Medium Partner Program, this is going to directly impact your income.

What’s official?

On July 19, Buster published a post on the official Medium blog announcing the change.

Medium will now reward stories it feels most proud of bringing to its paying members.

"We want to incentivize more original, high-quality personal stories, hidden life wisdom, and deep knowledge that's locked up in our collective lives. This is ultimately what members tell us they have come to Medium to read about." - Buster, New Partner Program incentives focus on high-quality human writing

This has five key parameters every writer needs to keep in mind.

1. Originality >>> Templates

This means you should:

Focus on quality rather than quantity.
Pour your heart and soul into your words.
Quit using AI to help with your writing.

The more original your pieces feel, the better you’ll be rewarded.💵

"Here's the main message: writing fewer stories with more heart and soul poured into them will perform significantly better than the strategy that tends to work on more attention-grabbing platforms (writing lots of stories that are cranked out based on formulas). Great writing is meant to do a lot more than merely grab attention." - Buster, New Partner Program incentives focus on high-quality human writing

2. Reader engagement matters

Until now, the Medium Partner Program earnings were based on the reading time from paying members. Starting Aug 2023, the following metrics will also matter:

claps
highlights
replies
follows.

What it means for writers: Focus on creating content that involves the reader and gets them to engage.

3. Boost: The secret sauce

Medium recently launched a new boost feature to bring authentic pieces to its members.

Stories that are boosted get amazing views and $$$.

Want to get your stories boosted too?

I’ve shared the how-to here.

4. Bye-bye clickbait 👋

According to the new update, if a reader spends less than 30 seconds on your post, their engagement won’t count as money.

That means you should no longer use clickbait.

Only make promises in the title that you can deliver in the article.

5. Four factors that determine your income

As per Medium’s new update, your stories on the platform will make money based on the following four factors:

Engagement points (You’ll earn more based on how many claps, highlights, and comments you have).
Follower bonus (You’ll get a bonus if a person chooses to follow you after reading your story).
Boost bonus (Boosted stories will get an additional bonus).
Read ratio adjustment (How many people view your story versus how many actually spend more than 30 seconds reading it).

In short: Personal stories that strike a conversation with the reader and positively impact their life will be most rewarded.

Summarizing

Here are the five major changes in the Medium Partner Program that will impact your income as a writer:

Original and research-based pieces will earn more compared to templatized regurgitated content.
Engagement matters more than simply counting the reading time.
Articles that get boosted will get more views and money.
Clickbait articles will no longer work.
Engagement and read ratio will be more important metrics in deciding how much money you make each month.

Medium is opening its Partner Program in India in a few months. Want to learn how to make your first $100 on the platform?

Get Project Medium. It’s my flagship course that helped 50+ writers earn their first $100 and beyond on Medium.