If you think so, then Medium may be for you.
Medium is an online platform where users can post their stories for all to read. While hardly a game-changer at this point, it gets better:
Medium.com has two kinds of users: the free users and the ones paying $5 per month for an all-access to the digital reading buffet. Not exactly high prices if Medium.com’s marketing is to be believed:
Medium taps into the brains of the world’s most insightful writers, thinkers, and storytellers to bring you the smartest take on topics that matter. -Medium.com
Here’s the good part:
The website distributes the $5 per user per month among contributors according to the readers that draw the most eyeballs for the longest time. In other words: if you can get people to read your ideas, you can get their money. That equals getting paid for potential clients to consider your product - or monetizing a step of your sales funnel that is not normally worth anything in itself.
As a content provider, you sign-up for free. You can do it right now by going to medium.com, signing up and joining the Medium Partner program.
After sharing your ideas, you should share them on LinkedIn or wherever you’d usually share your content anyway. All prospective clients will still be able to see and read your ideas on medium - no login needed.
If you’re a little tech-savvy, you can even throw a link to your newsletter or blog in there and stay connected to the people who’ve enjoyed your thoughts. Best case scenario: send them on over to your website, to watch a video, sign up for your newsletter or best of all: request a talk.
Learn the average fee-difference between The EU and The US.
Sign-up here:
How much will I make?
Probably not that much. According to professional writers that use Medium figures vary widely. Initially, you should keep in mind that you’re doing it to get more speaker jobs - the passive income is just a bonus.
There are plenty of examples of authors netting more than $100 for an article. Not too shabby for something you should write and share anyway as part of your marketing.
There’s even a very detailed blog post about what your post should look like to succeed. If you are a data-nerd, you really should look into this.
What makes an article popular on Medium? We analyzed 10,000+ data points to find out (external link)
If you choose to try out this path, you should be aware that your Partner dashboard (where you can see how much money you’ve made) is only updated on Wednesdays, showing earnings up until the previous Sunday. Medium.com deposits revenue to your bank account on the last Wednesday of every month.
Remember: Depending on your country of residence different taxation rules may apply. Please call or write your local authorities for help on this.
What are the cons?
No roses without thorns, right? Critics of the Medium partner program highlight that it can be hard to get exposure for your articles (to a degree you can overcome this by sharing them on other platforms with your connections), and that the calculation of your royalties is somewhat shrouded in mystery.
That last bit is definitively right, but shouldn’t surprise you:
Currently, Partner Program writers are paid every month based on how members engage with stories. Some factors include reading time (how long members spend reading a story) and applause (how much members clap). Each member’s $5/month subscription is distributed proportionally to the stories that the individual member engaged with that month. So if someone engaged with ten stories in a given month, their monthly subscription would be distributed to those authors only. -The medium.com FAQ on the Partner programme
Telling people exactly how the system worked would be an open invitation to try and game the algorithm. And if someone succeeded at that, everyone else would lose. That wouldn’t be cool, and we are guessing here, but that is probably why Medium.com is not showing their hands.
If you feel like trying out Medium.com, please give it a spin, and let your peers at Speakersloft.com know if the program works for you.
PS. While you're here, you should check out our reports on speaking. They can be found right here.
