How to Make Money Writing Online with Medium and Substack: A Realistic Side Hustle

How to Make Money Writing Online with Medium and Substack: A Realistic Side Hustle

It is the dream of every writer to finally earn some money with their writing. Whether it be fiction, non-fiction, memoir, short stories, writers tend to keep writing in their lonely space, unsure how to share their writing, and worse, how to convert it into money, and possibly a full-time career.

Enter the platforms Medium and Substack

Medium is an online publishing platform where writers can share their expertise through written content such as articles and blogs. Substack is an online newsletter and publishing platform where writers can share their creativity through newsletters, articles, and blogs directly to their audience via email and a dedicated app.

How They Work: What's Similar and Different

Both Medium and Substack are subscription-based platforms, not ad-based. They focus on providing an enhanced reading experience, and hence there are no ads. This means all the money is generated through subscriptions, which are much cheaper than any other platform.

Writers can literally write about anything in both platforms. Whether it be self-improvement guides, personal experiences, travelogues, opinions, satire, short stories, flash fiction; everything is accepted. Both platforms advertise themselves as giving voices to everyone.

Both pay exclusively through Stripe, but differ on how the monetization system works.

Medium

In Medium, writers can earn money through their Partner Program. To become a Partner, a writer should first be a Member, which is a subscription to unlock access to all content on Medium.

Medium offers different subscription models: Member and Friend. The Member subscription costs $5 a month(changes by region), and the Friend subscription costs $15 a month.

By becoming a Member, users can get:

• Unlimited access to all content on Medium

• One of the requirements of joining the Partner program

• Ability to support writers by making them earn by reading(to earn money, the article should be read by members, not free users)

• Access to audio narrations of stories

• Ability to create publications

• Read stories offline

By becoming a Friend, users get:

• All the benefits of being a member

• Ability to contribute four times more to writers than the usual member

• Includes a “Friend link” feature, which non-members can use to read the article for free

Writers are paid according to the number of views, reads, and total reading time. Other interactions such as claps, highlights, shares, and comments may also influence this. A viewer should have read for at least 30 seconds for it to count as a read. But, it is to be noted that there are some requirements to fulfill before applying to the partner program.

• Be a Member

• Be over 18 years of age

• Be in a supported country(check Medium’s website for supported regions)

• Be in a country that supports Stripe(users from many countries that don’t have Stripe can apply for a Stripe account through Medium)

• Account should be at least two months old(from the time the first article was published)

• Have a complete profile: profile picture, bio, have at least one pinned article, etc.

• Have posted at least 5 times in the last 6 months

• Should not have posted ai-generated content

Through the partner program, writers can choose to put their articles behind a “paywall,” which means only members can read their articles. And when members read the articles, they can earn money.

Writers can earn from anywhere between $10 to $100 per 1000 views, depending on the other factors as mentioned above. Top creators may earn in the thousands, but estimated earnings of active, consistent writers with about 20 articles is cited between $100 to $1500 monthly.

It is to be noted, however, that Medium values user interaction over anything. Both writer and reader should be interactive to support the algorithm, and that will affect the earnings. Merely posting daily will not reap results. Also, Medium is very strict about ai-generated content, and will not accept anyone who has uploaded such content to their Partner program.

On top of that, Medium is considered brilliant for writers to start building their platform, and show off their writing to the world. Some writers even advertise their books through articles on Medium.

Substack

Substack started as a newsletter platform, which means it was used only to send newsletters through email to everyone who’s subscribed to a writer. Now it has a dedicated site and app to also publish long form written content like articles and blogs. A feature called “Notes” makes the platform a social media app like Twiiter or X designed for short form content.

Unlike Medium, users don’t need a membership to start earning. It is free to start an account, and free to start earning.

On Substack, writers earn directly from their readers when they subscribe to their email list. Writers can set their own subscription prices and earn about 90% of what a subscriber pays as Substack takes 10% of the royalties. As it pays through Stripe, a processing fee from that will also be deducted from the earnings.

Writers can set this up on their very first article or newsletter, and don't have many requirements like Medium. Virtually, these are the only requirements to start earning on Substack:

• Set up a Stripe account. As Substack pays exclusively through Stripe, it is necessary to connect a Stripe account to the account.

• Allow monetization. Users must enable paid subscriptions on settings to allow readers to subscribe.

Although it’s easy to start, it is to be noted that writers should be able to offer expertise and publish consistently to gain subscribers on Substack.

Medium or Substack?

While it is free to start earning on Substack and paid on Medium, it is generally considered harder to actually earn the first dollar on Substack. This is because Substack requires a dedicated following. On Medium users can earn from reads by anyone who’s simply a member. But on Substack, only readers who like the content and subscribe to the newsletter help the writer with money.

This means users should offer consistently niche content with expertise for readers to trust them and subscribe on Substack. They should keep marketing their content and build trust. On Medium, writers can write a more variety of content and earn as earnings depend on the performance of each article. One viral article can bring in most of the earnings.

Although, Substack is considered better for long-term, consistent income as it builds a loyal following and real fans who pay month after month. Users can start earning faster on Medium, but the income may be lesser and unreliable as the earnings depend on the quality of each article and the changing algorithm.

Writers can use both platforms to get the best of both worlds; faster flow of money with Medium, a loyal following and more reliable income with Substack. It is up to the writer to commit to the workload of such writing.