Dr. Patricia Schmidt

As a statistics nerd, I couldn’t help but analyze the data

Earnings calculations in the Medium Partner Program are a mystery. We know a few basics, but how the amounts are exactly calculated remains unclear.

Medium provides some information in their documentation.

According to the article, the following indicators account for earnings:

1. Reading time (how long members spend reading/listening to your story)
2. Engagement points (based on member reading/listening time & the number of clappers, highlighters, and responders)
3. Boost bonus (multiplier of engagement points for boosted stories)
4. Member read ratio adjustment (% of members who read your story among all the members who open the story’s page)

That’s all they say. Medium calculates earnings based on member interactions and a mysterious boost multiplier. However, the formula itself is kept secret, and we don’t know how much each indicator is considered in the calculation.

As a statistics and data nerd, I couldn’t help but run some analyses based on my Medium data. I’ll try to explain this as clearly as possible so that people without a stats background can also use this information to boost their earnings.

Ok, so now let’s lay the groundwork first, and then I’ll jump into my analysis results.

Where does the money on Medium come from?

It comes from membership fees. Everyone who signs up as a Medium member pays a fee, which goes into a general fund used to pay authors.

Some people sign up as “Friend of Medium”, meaning they pay a higher fee than members on the basic membership, so they contribute more to the general fund.

The basics of Medium earnings

Because only paying Medium members contribute to the fund, all earnings are based only on members’ interactions with your stories. Non-member interactions don’t count towards your Partner Program earnings.

Furthermore, you must be a paying member enrolled in the Partner Program to receive payments for your stories. Medium recently opened the program to 77 new countries, so more people than ever can monetize on Medium.

Finally, the story itself must be behind a paywall, i.e., a member-only story. If it’s not behind a paywall, you won’t accumulate earnings for it through Medium’s Partner Program.

My analysis and the surprising result

I joined the Partner Program a month ago and a few days later, I published my first story behind Medium’s paywall. I also retroactively paywalled 2 older stories (this one and this one).

For my analysis, I used the data from the 13 days following the publication of my latest story, which was boosted on the same day it was published:

I also included the data from the older 2 stories mentioned above, which I put behind the paywall several months after I published them. Thus, because they aren’t that fresh anymore, most of the data for my analysis came from the one story I published in August 2024.

I used Programmer Girl’s amazing Medium stats Chrome extension to extract the data.

Here’s a peek at my earnings:

The daily indicators I considered were:
– Number of views (how many times a member opened a story’s page)
– Number of reads (how many times a member stayed on a story’s page for at least 30 seconds)
– Read ratio (member reads divided by member views)
– Number of members who clapped
– Number of members who left a comment
– Number of members who highlighted
– Number of new followers (members only, of course)

I calculated a model to predict daily earnings based on the listed indicators. And my analysis result is shockingly simple.

Based on the data, the model I calculated can predict Medium earnings with very high accuracy. It explains 98% of the observed variations in earnings across the 13 days analyzed.

Why is it shockingly simple? Because the only 2 indicators that contribute to the model are member reads (number of reads only; I don’t have read duration data) and the number of member responses to my stories.

That’s it, really.

Lessons to boost your earnings

Based on these observations, you should aim for reads and comments on your stories.

Thus, you should get as many members as possible to spend 30 seconds or more on your story (only then does it count as a read). If you write well, your stories are sufficiently long, and you make your stories visually appealing with images, plenty of white space, subheadings, etc., then you should be able to “glue” the reader to your page for at least half a minute.

To motivate people to comment on your stories, consider inviting them explicitly to leave a comment. Or share controversial views to make readers more likely to comment on your story.

I have to mention two caveats here:

1. Comments may be an indirect measure of reading time because if readers comment on your stories, they spend more time on them. Currently, as far as I know, we don’t have access to reading time data.
2. The data I used are based on 13 days only, and my account is still a small one. Considering longer periods and/or bigger accounts could reveal a different picture.

Conclusion

The bottom line is simple: The more time Medium members spend on your story and interact with it, the more you earn. So make sure you write engaging content.