Why Medium Membership Is A Great Investment

I know I have mentioned Medium.com in passing several times before, but in this article, I want to talk more about why it’s worth being a member, both as a reader and as a writer.

For Readers

The main reason to join is the wealth of articles on a wide variety of topics. These are constantly being refined, but they currently include the following:

• Accessibility
• Addiction
• Android Dev
• Art
• Artificial Intelligence
• Astrology
• Basic Income
• Beauty
• Biotech
• Blockchain
• Books
• Business
• Cannabis
• Cities
• Climate Change
• Comics
• Creativity
• Cryptocurrency
• Culture
• Cybersecurity
• Data Science
• Design
• Digital Life
• Disability
• Economy
• Education
• Equality
• Family
• Feminism
• Fiction
• Film
• Fitness
• Food
• Freelancing
• Future
• Gadgets
• Gaming
• Gun Control
• Health
• History
• Humour
• Immigration
• iOS Dev
• JavaScript
• Justice
• Language
• Leadership
• LGBTQIA
• Lifestyle
• Machine Learning
• Makers
• Marketing
• Math
• Media
• Mental Health
• Mindfulness
• Money
• Music
• Neuroscience
• Non-Fiction
• Outdoors
• Parenting
• Pets
• Philosophy
• Photography
• Podcasts
• Poetry
• Politics
• Privacy
• Product Management
• Productivity
• Programming
• Psychedelics
• Psychology
• Race
• Relationships
• Religion
• Remote Work
• San Francisco
• Science
• Self
• Self-Driving Cars
• Sexuality
• Social Media
• Society
• Software Engineering
• Space
• Spirituality
• Sports
• Start-Ups
• Style
• Technology
• Transportation
• Travel
• True Crime
• TV
• UX
• Venture Capital
• Visual Design
• Work
• World
• Writing

An up-to-date list of categories and topics can be found here.

Like many other platforms (e.g. Pinterest), you can specify which topics you are interested in reading about, but over time, their algorithm will fine-tune what it recommends to you based on what you told it, and on what you actually read.

The home page (once you’re logged in) will provide you with what it thinks you might want to read, and you can also receive a daily email with that day’s recommendations.

For non-members, you are currently allowed to read a very small number of articles each month, but after that, they want you to subscribe, because the vast majority of what is published on Medium is behind a paywall.

So, how much is membership?

To me, it’s one of the best-value subscriptions I have because it’s either $5 per month, or $50 per year.

And once you’re a member, you can read the entirety of as many articles as you want.

The articles fall into two broad categories – those published on an author’s personal page. Here’s mine, for example: markfarrar.medium.com

This author profile page will show some basic biographical information, and the articles they have written, most of which will be in chronological order (e.g. as per many WordPress blogs).

You can choose to follow specific writers, as you can on most social media platforms.

Alternatively, there are what Medium calls publications.

These might be larger publications, where one or more editors carefully curate articles they see elsewhere on Medium that they think fit in well with their own publication.

And you can choose to follow specific publications too, and the advantage of this is that you will be getting high-quality articles, because they have been approved and perhaps tidied up by editors.

When you find an article you like, you can also save it to your Reading List, so you can easily return to it later.

Finally, as at the time of writing this, you can “clap” for articles you like, and leave comments (which the author or other members may respond to).

Writers

As I mentioned earlier, most articles sit behind a paywall, which means only members can read them. (This is after you’ve read your “free” articles each month.)

The writers then get paid based on how many people read their articles, and how much of them they read.

To get paid, you need to sign up to their Partner Program.

Your monthly payment is basically a share of the $5 a month that members pay.

So if a member only reads all of one of your articles in any given month, you would receive their entire $5 subscription payment.

But if they read two articles, by different writers, each author would receive $2.50.

There is more to it than that, and the numbers may not be exact (I’m sure Medium takes their cut somewhere) but you should get the idea.

You can read more about their Partner Program here.

Is writing on Medium lucrative?

Well, some writers, like myself (as at the time of writing this) make pocket change, but there are some who earn thousands of dollars a month from their Medium articles.

And there is no shortage of articles and courses about how to write on Medium and make money.

As a writer, you can choose to publish your articles on your profile, or you can submit them to other publications.

If you see a publication that is well-matched to what you write about, you should find a link near the top of their page called Submission Guidelines.

In most cases, you will receive a response from them within a few days. They may reject it (e.g. because it’s not a good fit for them, or it is too similar to another article they’ve already published, or it’s not written well enough), or they may accept it, with or without suggested changes.

You can also create your own publications, which is something I have done:

1. 17 Onji is where I publish a haiku each day.
2. Mark’s Meandering Musings is where I publish occasional thoughts from my travels.

Note that articles from these publications also appear on my personal profile page, like any others that I write.

With your own publication, you get to choose who can write for it. In my case, it’s only me – I created the publications so I could group certain articles (i.e. haiku and travel experiences) together.

But there’s nothing to stop you from inviting other authors to write for you too.

In terms of the writing process itself, the interface is very simple and uncluttered. I found it a bit difficult to get used to at first, but one of the great benefits about Medium is that their articles are well-presented and easy to read because they don’t overcomplicate things.

One final point here – there are extensive statistics on each of your articles, so you can see for example, which ones were read the most, how much of each article was read, and which ones earned you the most.

Conclusion

I think $5 a month (or less if you pay an annual subscription) is an absolute steal.

As a reader, I discover all sorts of articles on topics I’m interested in.

Some of these are for purely personal interest. Some I share on my Self Help Nirvana Facebook group. And others may give me an idea for an article of my own, which is how some of the articles on this very site came into being.

And from the perspective of a writer, I currently treat it as a sort of playground. Most of what I write there is for me, not for the reader – I love writing haiku and I enjoy reminiscing about my travels, including what I learned from them.

But I do want to make my writing there a more serious venture over the coming year.

Whether you are a reader or a writer or both), I highly recommend giving Medium a try – you really don’t know what you might learn, and you’ll never run out of new articles to read!

And they have both a website and an app, for those who prefer to read (or even write) on phones or tablets.

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. Medium Writing Course