New: A program to pay publication editors

100+ publications and 300+ editors are now eligible to earn for editing stories in the Editor Partner Program

Image by Emily Kelly // the Medium Brand team

Imagine you have a cool idea about a topic. Maybe cats, or maybe different foods around the world. You want to create a community around it — find other people who want to write about their experiences with cats or local tastes, find people who want to read about those experiences. You can do a bit to help develop your audience, but for the most part, readers and writers find you organically. Your community grows and thrives.

That’s exactly what Medium publications are. On the surface, they’re a collection of themed stories. Look a little deeper and you’ll see they’re communities, designed to be easy to spin up, easy to run, easy to recruit for, and easy to find writers and readers for.

We want editing to be joyful, both because it furthers our mission of deepening understanding, but also because every facet of Medium benefits tremendously from publications.

And yet! Just because something is a joy doesn’t mean it’s not work, and valuable work. Editors wade through sometimes hundreds of submissions for their publication, create prompts to inspire stories, go back and forth with writers on edits, create custom graphics and newsletters to promote their writers’ stories. And more.

For a long time, editors did this all for free. Often with families, full-time day jobs, other hobbies, publishing stories themselves. Just for their love of the community.

Today, all qualifying publications on Medium can earn from stories they edit. Over 100 publications and 300+ editors qualify to earn through the Editor Partner Program for the work you do to curate, elevate, improve, and polish the best stories on Medium. New publications can join the Editor Partner Program at the start of every month as they qualify.

• Read about how to qualify here.
• Read about how editors earn here.
• Get answers to general FAQs about the Editor Partner Program here.

The value of editors in the curation era

In 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT and since then, it’s been the easiest thing in the world to generate content.

The value of truly good stories, written by people with real experience and value to share, skyrocketed. Not just that, but the ability to spot those gems became equally, if not more, valuable.

Who do you trust more: the friend who says, “ChatGPT told me this is these are the five best new restaurants in town,” or, “Hey, you were talking about Nepalese food — I went to this restaurant yesterday and I think you’d love it”?

It also became clear that algorithms can’t find the best. The most popular, the most palatable, the most engaging, sure. But “the best” is unique. Your friend’s Nepalese food recommendation is valuable because she knows where you live, that you love momo, and that it doesn’t matter if the ambiance of a place is bad, because you always get takeout anyway.

That’s what Medium editors do for their communities. They find not the best, but the best for you, depending on your interests.

There’s no equivalent of the Editor Partner Program anywhere in the world

Medium made history in 2017 when we launched the Partner Program for writers as an enormous ad-free revenue-share program. There are dozens of ways to earn as a writer out there, but Medium is the only place you don’t have to sell anything, not even your own writing beyond having a good title, and you earn when paying members read your story, it’s that simple. All the great writing on Medium makes the sale for you; it’s our job to recommend your story to readers we think will enjoy it. This in turn makes us money — it’s your paywalled writing that convinces casual readers to become paying members.

The Editor Partner Program is a similar bet — the first of its kind anywhere online. It’s where you can spin up a publication on any topic you like, and if you do a good job with your community’s readers and writers, you can earn.

We’re investing in editors because we believe in the value you already provide — building community, curating and polishing stories, recruiting readers and writers — and in the value publications will continue to provide in the coming years and decades.

We want to incentivize anyone who has an idea, some kind of seed of a community they want to build, to come to Medium to build it. We can do that by continuing the work of making the product easy and joyful to use, but also to add a dollar amount to the work we value.

We hope this launches a new era of publications on Medium: new publications covering new niches, attracting new writers who write to serve new readers, who maybe one day think they might like to try developing a publication themselves.

How to qualify for the Editor Partner Program

You can see if your publication is eligible by going to the new Editor Partner Program dashboard under “Manage publication.” You can also navigate directly to the URL: Medium.com/[your-publication-name]/manage/editor-partner-program.

Our criteria are designed to include publications that are active partners on Medium, and that we would be proud to be in partnership with.

What does that all mean in actual criteria and numbers?

General criteria

• The publication owner must be enrolled in the Partner Program.
• The publication must have the “open to all” submission mode, meaning that any writer who follows the publication can submit stories. Read more about submission methods here.

Monthly requirements

• The paywalled stories in the publication must earn at least $200 dollars collectively. This means the editor or editors in that publication would earn at least $50. This requirement is to include publications that have already demonstrated they can build an audience, while also ensuring that editors will have a base level of earnings from the program.
• The publication must publish at least one story and no more than 300 stories. This is to focus on active publications that are discerning about the stories they publish.
• The publication must publish a story from at least two writers.
• Maintain overall story distribution levels. We know this one may cause stress among editors, but please be reassured that we’re looking for good-fit partners, rather than looking for reasons to not include pubs. We want as many publications as possible in the program! Publications that consistently publish stories that fall into General Distribution or Boost levels will meet this criteria easily, while publications that consistently publish stories that qualify for Network Distribution (think: AI slop, NSFW stories, Medium meta) might want to tighten their acceptance criteria for inclusion. You can read much more information about our distribution levels here.
• You must be operating in good faith. For example, if a publication qualifies, but we see one editor with multiple Medium accounts they control and are using to unfairly earn from the program, that publication obviously wouldn’t qualify.

Basically, we’re looking for publications that build community, develop writers, and are selective about what they publish. We’re not focusing on particular topics or publication sizes; we just want to reward publications that serve and grow Medium writers and readers.

Note that these criteria are subject to change. We will be learning from editors what criteria truly result in working with publications that are our partners in every sense of the word. We may add or remove criteria to make this program a better fit for our editors.

What’s the difference between general and monthly criteria?

We’ve separated the criteria into “general” and “monthly” to look more broadly at trends rather than individual good or bad months. If you take a break or have a quiet month, it won’t impact your publication’s eligibility.

To qualify, a publication must meet the monthly requirements for three out of six months, and the general criteria must always apply.

For example, if you meet all the criteria and you published 100 stories from January to June, and in July you publish 301, you won’t be removed from the program because you still qualify for more than three of the past six months.

However, if you meet the criteria but want to turn off open submissions, you’ll need to unenroll from the Editor Partner Program to do so.

How editors earn from editing stories on Medium

When editors assign themselves to a story in the submissions queue of a qualifying publication, that editor will earn 25% of that story’s earnings, as long as the story remains paywalled and in that publication. The editor has to be enrolled in the Partner Program — that’s how we can pay editors.

This doesn’t affect writer earnings at all. The pool of earnings we distribute every month to writers in the Medium Partner Program will remain the same.

Editor Partner Program FAQ

How do editors get paid?

When editors assign themselves to stories in the submission queue of a qualifying publication. Earnings accumulate throughout the month, get settled the following month within 10 business days, paid via Stripe. Editor earnings show up separately in your dashboard.

What if the writer isn’t in the Partner Program?

You won’t earn from that story. A story must be behind the paywall to earn from it, for both writers and editors.

Does this affect what writers earn?

No. The editor’s 25% comes from a separate budget Medium added specifically for this program. The pool of money we pay out to writers is untouched and has remained the same.

Can I assign myself to my own stories?

Yes, but you won’t earn an extra 25%. Editing your own work is part of being a writer. You can’t claim the editor bonus on stories you wrote.

My publication isn’t showing up as eligible. Why?

This means your publication doesn’t meet at least one of the general criteria, or has not yet reached three months of meeting the monthly requirements.

Does claiming a story mean the editor has to edit it, or just approve it?

An editor just needs to assign themselves to a story to earn from it. However, we expect there are two reasons for editors to want to do more than just assign themselves and publish a story:

1. The more that editor improves the story, the better that story will perform in the Medium Partner Program, and hence the more that editor will earn.
2. Writers will be more likely to submit stories to publications that improve their stories.

More broadly, the Editor Partner Program is not designed to reward only individual story performance, but also the effort editors go to in order to build an active, vibrant publication that readers love to read. Even if an editor doesn’t make major improvements, the writer still benefits from piggybacking off the publication’s pre-existing community.

What about publications with multiple editors — does each one earn on stories they claim?

Yes.

Can I claim a story and then reject it?

Yes, though you won’t earn on that story.

What about non-paywalled stories?

Editors can’t earn on non-paywalled stories.

Can I do this from my phone?

Yes. If you access Medium from your web browser you’ll be able to assign yourself stories in the submission inbox.

When will I know if my publication qualifies?

You’ll be able to check your publication’s qualification status by navigating to Manage publication > Editor Partner Program. If you qualify, the publication owner will be able to enroll the publication in the Editor Partner Program.

What if my editors aren’t in the Partner Program?

Please encourage them to apply for the Medium Partner Program if they’re eligible.