How we calculate your story’s earnings

From the start, our goal with the Medium Partner Program has been to reward the quality stories that resonate with readers.

We recognized a broken status quo in traditional media, where advertisers were the ones indirectly paying for writing. Ultimately, this system rewarded the lowest common denominator, rather than encouraging creative autonomy and truly serving readers.

At Medium, we’ve created a different path. Your stories are directly supported by readers’ membership fees, meaning everyone’s incentives are aligned. And you can focus on what matters: writing.

In our new calculation, we’ll include two parts to your earnings. As always, we plan to continuously improve our model as we learn — and we’ll keep you informed along the way.

1. How long members spend reading your story.

As Medium members spend more time reading your story (“member reading time”), you will earn more.

We’ve improved our story stats page to show both your story’s daily total member reading time and its daily earnings, so that you can understand how much you are earning over time and where your earnings come from. Note that you will still be paid once per month.

When we calculate your story’s earnings, we’ll also include reading time from non-members if they become members within 30 days of reading your story. So we encourage you to share your stories widely!

2. How much of their monthly reading time members spend on your story.

By calculating a share of member reading time, we support authors who write about unique topics and connect with loyal readers. For example, if last month a member spent 10% of their monthly reading time on your story, you will receive 10% of their share (a portion of their subscription fee).

Imagine an author writes about fly fishing. She finds an audience of fly fishing enthusiasts who subscribe to Medium primarily to read her stories, meaning she receives a strong share of reading time from each of her readers. In contrast, an author who writes about a wide variety of topics might receive smaller shares from a broader audience of readers, who also read a variety of other authors. While the generalist will often earn a lot through the first total reading time part, the fly fisher is well equipped to earn through this share part — even with a smaller audience.

Reading time

Reading time is the time that someone spends actively reading your story. As a user reads, we measure their scrolls and take care to differentiate between short pauses (like lingering over a particularly great passage) and longer breaks (like stepping away to grab a cup of coffee). Reading time incorporates signal from your readers without hurdles. You don’t need to ask your readers to remember to clap, or click, or do anything other than read.

We believe in reading time because it represents the core value that our readers receive from Medium. It may not be a perfect measure of value, but we find that it’s a powerful proxy.