Last Updated on May 12, 2025 by admin
Wondering how to use Medium and how to make money on Medium? You’ve landed at the right place.Wondering how to use Medium and how to make money on Medium? You’ve landed at the right place. I started writing on Medium in 2016 when blogging was my hobby. A few months later, I realized the monetary potential of this blogging platform, and it’s proven to be a great start for my writing career. Although I ditched Medium years ago to solely focus on my blog, it is still one of the best blogging platforms to make money in 2024 — especially for the budding writers. In this guide, I’ll show you the best ways to make money on Medium, how to effectively use Medium, and what I’ve learned in the years using the platform. Here’s what this guide covers: What is Medium? How does Medium work? Writing for Medium Medium vs. WordPress How to Use Medium Getting Started With Medium How to Interact With Medium Content How to Write and Publish on Medium How to Get Paid on Medium The Medium App Popular topics on Medium range from mental health to social media, from world affairs and trending news to productivity hacks. This makes it a solid choice for anyone who wants to start blogging. Image Source As Medium founder (and Blogger creator/Twitter co-founder) Ev Williams wrote when he launched the platform in 2012: “Medium is not about who you are or whom you know, but about what you have to say.” How does Medium work? The first thing you’ll notice on the Medium website is its site design. As former HubSpot Senior Content Strategist Erik Devaney says, “It’s minimalistic, featuring lots of white space and limited formatting options. Want to change the header typeface to Comic Sans? You can’t. Medium won’t allow for such atrocities of design.” This decision makes great writing the focus. But that’s just one of many nuances of Medium. Medium is for two types of people — writers and readers — who are focused on online content publishing. When I started my career in content writing and strategy, I wasn‘t sure what that meant. I discovered Medium because I was trying to figure out where to build my writing portfolio. I’d heard Medium was a good choice, but the first time I signed up, I wasn’t sure how to use it. If you‘re just getting started on the platform, there’s a fair amount to learn before you hit publish. Let’s get into it. Quality Leads to Discovery Many writers go years without sharing their writing publicly. But once you decide to become a writer, whether you’re finishing a first novel or writing content for brands, you need to find a way to share your skills. Medium is great for writers who invest time and energy in their work. It rewards in-depth, well-researched, and useful articles, not just popularity or brand awareness. Platform-Enabled Reader Engagement Comments and likes are popular in online media. But when you‘re new to writing, it’s helpful to know exactly what people are responding to and why. To meet this need, Medium gives readers a chance to highlight and comment directly within the text of each article. This process is like the way professional editors engage with writers. Curation and Publications Medium has curators who review articles for quality. If a curator chooses your article for wider distribution, it gives you a chance to introduce your content to more readers. This might include highlighting your article on the platform, showing your post to readers they think will want to read it, or adding it to subscriber emails. Most curators are publication editors. Some of the most popular publications on Medium in 2023 include: The Startup. Towards Data Science. Personal Growth. UX Collective. The Writing Cooperative. Medium’s curation and publication models aren’t just great for writers. They also give avid readers and fans a chance to support their favorite writers. Paid Opportunities Medium also gives writers the chance to earn money with their stories. As a member of the Partner Program, you can put stories behind a paywall to earn income. In this program, you can increase earnings with repeat readers, engagement signals, and more. Writing for Medium Anyone who has a Medium account can write for Medium — there’s no other vetting process involved. To get started, simply sign up for a free Medium account (or upgrade to a $5/month membership for unlimited access), and you’re ready to start writing from there. It’s important to know that articles must adhere to Medium‘s content guidelines and rules. For instance, as a writer I can’t promote controversial or extreme content on my Medium account. I can‘t do third-party advertising. And there’s a separate set of policies if I want to write about cryptocurrencies. Affiliate marketing links are allowed, but writers must tell their audience that they’re including these links. For the full list of rules for content, take a look at this post on Medium Rules. As a marketer, Medium presents an opportunity for you to reach a new audience with your content. The platform is open, so some topics lean toward sharing longer-form, more well-thought-out content, while others are short and topic-focused. In this way, Medium is like marketing on many other channels, because success in writing for Medium isn’t just about great writing. It takes some research into audiences and publications in a specific area of interest. So, what makes Medium a great channel for writers? In the next section, I’m going to get into the topic above, and talk about how I chose between Medium and WordPress. Medium vs. WordPress This post offers an exceptional breakdown of WordPress vs. Medium for pricing, blogging, and SEO from a business perspective. So, I want to use this space to share my personal experience with the two platforms. How I’ve Used WordPress as a Content Writer I worked with a designer to build my personal website on WordPress and built a separate side project on