Is writing on Medium still worth it in 2024? (REALISTIC earnings expectations)
I made A LOT of money writing on Medium in 2023, but big changes to how stories are distributed and how they earn recently changed the game completely.
Today I’m going to:
Walk you through those new changes to the Medium Partner Program
Review my earnings in 2023 and reveal what you can REALISTICALLY expect to make
And then I’ll tell you whether or not I think writing on Medium is still worth your time in 2024
So let’s get right to it.
Big changes to the Medium Partner Program
The Medium Partner Program underwent some major changes in August 2023, and those changes had a massive impact on how much you can realistically expect to earn.
The biggest shift was how story earnings are calculated.
Under the older system, subscriber read time was king.
The more time people spent with your stories, the more you got paid.
There were of course some other wrinkles there, but I found that, overall, this was the king metric.
The writers who contributed most to the platform — and those with large back catalogs of older stories that were still being read by a lot of people — earned the most.
To me, this is the fairest way to go about it.
People generating the most time on the app are the people who should be paid the most.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it works anymore.
Medium got a bit fancy with how they pay people in the new MPP in two important ways:
They switched to paying less for read time and more for engagement — especially for comments on your stories
They started paying more for “Boosted” stories, or ones selected by their hand-picked editors for bigger distribution and an earnings acceleration
It was pretty obvious to me what would happen next, and I was unfortunately proven right.
People who wrote short, junky, or controversial content that got a lot of comments would get the lion’s share of the money.
Meanwhile, long-time, high-quality writers who put out longer-form content would pay the price.
The other massive change was the decision to scrap the Medium referral program.
Previously, if you brought people to the platform and they subscribed using your link, you earned about half of that subscriber’s money every month as long as the person remained a subscriber.
This was a huge strategic advantage that Medium had over Substack if you ask me.
It offered writers the best of both worlds — earnings from people discovering your work, and earnings from your own paid subscribers.
What I earned in 2023
Now, I was one of those aforementioned writers who paid the price.
Take a look at my spring and summer numbers, when I really got rolling, and compare them to what I got from August on:
As someone who writes longer stories — usually between 900–1300 words — that generate fewer comments, I was absolutely punished by the new system.
Massive pay cut
For the purpose of this story, I looked back at my earnings in the summer versus now to illustrate just how big this pay cut was.
Here are my stats for June:
And here’s what I earned:
A popular earnings metric in the online content game is revenue per mille (RPM), or how much you make for every 1,000 views of your content.
So in June, my RPM was about $84.50.
Now here are my November stats:
And earnings:
So I actually generated a lot more traffic in November, but was paid $1,000 less than I was in June.
My RPM in November was $37.
Put another way, I earned $1,184 in November under the new system.
Had the old system been in place, I would have earned about $2,705, which is obviously a MASSIVE pay cut.
Converted to Canadian dollars, it would have been $3,571 and that, times 12 months, would be $42,861 — arguably a full-time salary just from blogging.
And if you think that’s bad, consider this: prior to Medium tweaking its algorithm in late October to begin paying a little more for read time again, my RPM was about $15.
I got this close to quitting the platform altogether.
The fixes they made convinced me to stick around, but with the lower RPM and no more referral system to build a nice foundation of recurring income, I don’t think it’s realistic to think you can make a living solely on Medium anymore.
So, that begs the question: is Medium still worth it in 2024?
Is Medium still worth it in 2024?
Now you might be surprised to hear me say yes here, but I do have some caveats.
As you know if you’ve followed this channel for any amount of time, I’ve always been a huge Medium cheerleader.
And under the old system, I would have looked at it as possibly the core activity of a long-term content side business.
As I get deeper into my second year as an online content creator, I find myself constantly looking for other, more effective ways to make money, however.
Again, the reason is that even as a top-level, marquee writer on Medium — which I think I am based on what I’ve seen other top earners get — there’s really no path anymore to making a full-time income.
Now that doesn’t mean Medium is irredeemably broken, but it does mean that it’s probably better suited to content creators who are just starting out.
The real value of Medium in 2024, if you as me, is as a starter platform for early-stage creators.
Now if you’re reading this article, that’s probably what you are, so everything I’ve already talked about is probably less discouraging than it could be.
The reason I argue it’s the best for early-stage creators is that:
The Medium Partner Program has a low bar for entry — you just need to be in an eligible country and be a member of the site
You can start getting paid right away
The second part is really important.
When you’re just starting out in a content business, it can feel like an impossible mountain to climb.
If you start your own blog or try to build an email list, it can take literally years to start seeing any real money.
It took me a full year to get monetized here on YouTube for example, and I really don’t make much money here yet.
But on Medium, you get an almost immediate financial return for your time investment, and this is an extremely encouraging thing.
In fact, the first time I logged in here and saw my earnings above zero (I think I maybe made a few cents my first day), it changed my perspective on everything.
It showed that it is possible to make money online.
And Medium still works as a foundational platform for making money elsewhere, too.
Every “script” I write for YouTube starts as an article on Medium. That way I do the work once, but I publish and earn twice.
In summary
So, yes, it is still worth it — especially if you’re just getting started as an online content creator.
As for me, I look at it as a bonus now, not my long-term plan.
I’m going to be publishing on YouTube anyway, and this gives me a place to publish written work too.
I no longer see it as a potential replacement for my day job, it’s just a good way to pad my investment account without touching my pay from my day job.
And that’s OK.
It’s their site, right?
I do think that the quality of writing on Medium will ultimately suffer in the long run as legitimate writers hunt for more effective ways to spend their time.
But I also hold out hope that Medium will figure out that the changes to the partner program hurt their top writers the most and continue to adjust the algorithm accordingly.
The more pay that goes to legit writers who bring readers and read time to the platform, the more great writers will consider joining up.