I didn’t intend to start a blog that would make me money – it happened by a total coincidence. Back then when the Covid pandemic started, Mark Manson had published a blog post asking people their thoughts on productivity in that difficult time. I had many thoughts about it and I have written a long email in reply. As far as I know, Mark Manson didn’t do anything with my reply. But soon afterward, I came across the free blogging platform Medium – and had an idea. I could publish my reply as a blog post. So I did. I didn’t think anything would come of it.
But suddenly, I had a blog – a platform where I could post my thoughts and writing attempts. And I continued to do so. My second post was about depression. I was edging slowly towards my niche, which will eventually be neurodivergence and mental health. But for now, I was posting whatever caught my fancy. I wrote poems, essays, and short stories. (Well, one short story, to be exact.) And I wrote about mental health a lot. Soon, Medium became a space for my self-expression and an outlet for creativity.
I didn’t have a strategy. I wrote what I wanted. And I had fun.
The money came soon, too.
Making money on Medium
From the beginning, I devoured many stories from people making money on Medium. At the time, I couldn’t do it because tax regulations in my country made it difficult. But I dove into the stories of people who were making a living blogging on Medium. I was fascinated. This was what I wanted to do!
Spoiler alert: It’s actually really difficult to make enough money to have a full-time income just by blogging on Medium. Yes, you see people who are doing it on the site, but they are few and far between. And they are caught in a blogging rat race – they must push out article after article, day by day. They are also at the mercy of the Medium algorithm.
But Medium is good for making a side income – and also, it gives you the opportunity to promote yourself, your product, and your other work. You can get clients and leads from your Medium blog posts. It’s quite a useful tool.
When I finally became part of the Medium Partner Program and started earning money blogging, I didn’t expect much, and I was pleasantly surprised. Month by month, a small sum of money made its way to my bank account. In the beginning, it paid for my Medium subscription, and in time, it gave me decent pocket money.
Create your blog on Medium – step-by-step
So how to start blogging and making money on Medium? First, you need to create a profile. I chose to write under a pen name because of privacy, and because my real name is insanely difficult to spell for English speakers. You can change your name later, so there is no pressure.
If you want to earn money on Medium, you need a Medium subscription – it’s one of the conditions. It doesn’t cost much and it gives you the opportunity to read as many articles as you want on Medium, so you familiarize yourself with the site. (Without it, you can read only four articles a month for free.) It sure helped me in the beginning.
Publications on Medium will show your blog posts to their readers
Then have a look at the Medium publications. They are something akin to a magazine inside the platform, focused on various topics. Put the topic you want to write about in the search and have a look at the posts that pop up and the publications they are in.
Put your topic in the search and look for the publications:
I recommend becoming a writer for publications that are relevant to your topics as soon as you can. Some will require you to have a draft of your blog post ready to show them, and the approval process may take some time. If a publication is accepting new writers, you will usually find the requirements somewhere on its front site under “Write for us” or “Join us”.
Be aware that some publications are created by a writer to showcase their own work and don’t accept blog posts from anyone else, while others have a range of writers. You can find out when you click on the name of the publication and look if the blog posts have various authors.
Submit your blog posts to a publication
As soon as you are a writer for a publication, you can publish your blog posts through that publication – and that will give you access to all of that publication’s readers on the top of the readers that will find your post through the Medium algorithm or search. This is a big deal. When you are starting out on Medium, you don’t have your own subscribers yet, and you can borrow the publication’s audience for your blog posts so that more people will find your blog post and read it.
Don’t hit “publish” on your post – that will put it only on your profile. Instead, on the upper right corner of the screen, hit the three dots and select the option “Add to publication”. Then select the publication you want your article to appear in. (If the publication requires an example of the yet unpublished blog post, you will get the link to send them by clicking on “share draft link”.) Finally, don’t forget to hit “Submit”, to finish the process.
Submit your blog post to a publication:
When you submit your blog post to a publication, they will review it and accept or decline it. Again, this may take some time, usually anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the size of the publication. If your blog post is rejected or isn’t accepted by that time, move on to a different publication.
Become a part of the Medium Partner Program in order to make money blogging on Medium
Then you want to enroll in the Medium Partner Program, which will make you eligible to earn money based on reads of your blog posts. There are three conditions for being part of the Partner Program: Your bank needs to be located in a country that is eligible for payouts (you will find out in the application), you need to be a Medium member, which means paying for the subscription, and you need to have published at least one blog post in the last 6 months.
And then you are all set! You can publish blog posts and earn money based on the time people spend reading them. They will come to your bank account via Stripe once a month.
Last thing – when you are beginning with blogging, I strongly recommend getting your own domain, getting self-hosted, and then importing your blog posts from your web to Medium. (This function is a bit hidden – when you click on your profile picture in the upper right corner of the screen, you choose “stories” and then “import a story”.) A self-hosted blog will cost a bit of money, but it’s a good investment. This way, you will have total control of the blog posts and the site they appear on, which gives you more options to make money from them. The articles on your site will be canonical – meaning Google will know they were published first and are indexed to appear in search – but you will have the opportunity to earn money on Medium at the same time.