You can write and make money online writing on Medium.com from Nigeria. While some people are interested in writing solely for sharing their knowledge and experience about different things in life, several others will love to get paid for their writings or make money online writing and medium.com is one of such platforms where you can easily earn from your writings.
In this short guide, I will be sharing the steps by steps process on how to join the Medium partner program from Nigeria and make money online writing. Medium partner program was launched with a unique sharing formula by which writers get a fraction of paid users subscription fee. There are several explanations on how the algorithm works based on article engagements, claps value, views and lots more. However, Medium partnered with Stripe to allow writers to earn from the platform but for reasons best known to Stripe, they don’t support accounts from Nigeria and some other countries at the moment.
This guide will cover how to make money online writing on medium, how to sign up on Stripe using a foreign account and link it to your medium partner account. Lastly, I will be sharing some tips on how to join popular publications on medium and how to distribute your medium articles across different platforms. If you are ready to make money online writing, continue reading.
It’s a great feeling to publish and earn from make money online writing and I feel that’s something most writers look forward to at some point in their writing journey. This guide doesn’t in any way claim that you will earn a lot of money writing on Medium but it will put you through all the requirements to join the medium partner’s program.
Requirements to Join the Medium Partner Program
1. Medium Account: You need to register on Medium.com as an author, it’s free!
2. Foreign Bank account or Payoneer Account: Sign up for a Payoneer account here
3. Stripe Account & Local bank account: to process cashout to your account.
Extras
4. Strong Content Calendars
5. Social media accounts
Before you can be eligible to join the partner’s program, you need to have a medium.com account where you will publish all your writings, research and lots more.
Foreign Bank Account
Any bank account in countries where Stripe is eligible is required to complete the Stripe verification and that’s why we’ll be using Payoneer in this guide. Payoneer is a payment platform where you can sign up for a free account and get a unique US bank account number.
Sign up for an individual account on Payoneer and input all the details to complete the account creation process and get your account number. Click here to sign up for your Payoneer account.
After creating the Payoneer account using your original details. Log in to your Payoneer account to copy the foreign bank account details for your stripe verification. From your Payoneer dashboard, select balances on the Payoneer account and click the three vertical dots to check the receiving USD accounts.
Sometimes it takes between 24 hours to 3 days to get your Payoneer account verified. Ensure you check your email regularly to know when your account is ready for use.
Click on the USD account to get the routing number and account number for your foreign bank accounts. Click on the marked icons to copy the routing number and account number because you will be needing that to complete your Stripe account verification.
Join Medium Partners Program
Finally, now you can join the partner program and link your Stripe account to start getting paid for your awesome writings. Join medium partner program here: https://medium.com/creators
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Upon clicking on the registration link from the Medium partner’s page, it loads up a page to link your Stripe account.
If you don’t mind, feel free to click the Terms of Service link to read and digest the quality information after checking the box. Proceed by clicking on the Continue to payout setup button to complete the Stripe linking.
Click on the button for Setup payouts on Stripe
You will be required to select a country. Select the United States because your Payoneer bank account is domiciled in the country. Select individual under the type of entity, enter your phone number and email address. Click on next to input the verification code sent to your phone number. If you follow this step, you can start making money online writing.
After entering the right verification code, it loads up a page to enter your name, email and medium account URL.
It automatically picks your medium account URL, but feel free to check very well to be sure the link is correct and click on next to proceed.
Select Bank account under the payout details. Paste the routing number and account number you copied from your Payoneer USD account to the box and click on save to complete the linking of your Medium creator account to Stripe.
Click on Done from the confirmation page and you’ve finally joined the Medium partner program. Complete the final registration by filling the tax form. Typically, you should receive an email from Medium with a link to the tax page in less than a minute of linking the stripe account.
Click on the add taxpayer information to complete this requirement so you can get paid to your Medium.com account.
Click on next and confirm the information and your address on the next popup.
Select the W-8BEN option because you are based outside the United States and continue to complete the form.
Click on done to submit your tax form. You should receive an email to confirm the status of your tax information.
To check your partner account and see your stories performance. Click on your profile icon and scroll down to the medium partner program.
It loads up a page where you can see your eligible stories for the paywall and how much you’ve made from the stories as well as the detailed stats of your stories.
If you’ve been publishing on Medium for a while, feel free to check your old articles to edit and check the box to enable the medium partner program for the articles. Click on any article, select edit and click the three horizontal dots to select distribution settings and check the box. Click save and publish to enable the paywall.
How to Distribute Your Medium Articles
Now, let’s talk about the best distribution strategies for your medium stories. You can skip this part if you already have a strong content calendar or distribution strategies. Now is your turn to make money online writing, continue reading.
For this part, I will cover niche, writing style, publications and cross-posting or social media channels.
1. Popular Niches
It’s a known fact that some niches are quite popular than the rest. However, it doesn’t guarantee that your stories will be read or widely shared by readers even if your desired niche is hot ranking but it will help you make money online writing. Look up popular writers in your niche of interest and see how you can learn from their storytelling.
Writing for popular niches equally helps Medium curators select your articles for distribution to their email list, home page and lots more. Some of the popular niches on Medium are the followings:
- Programming/Software Development
- Finance
- Marketing
- Business
- Relationship
- Health & Fitness
- Travel
- Fashion
- Lifestyle
2. Medium Publications
Medium publications are some of the fastest ways to grow your readership on and off medium. The largest is The Startup and it’s quite difficult to join popular medium publications. Check https://toppubs.smedian.com/ to see the top medium publications and how to join them. Submitting your stories to publications gives you a fair chance to get your stories distributed to their thousands of followers and further help you make money online writing.
3. Cross-posting
It simply means sharing your contents outside the medium network such as email lists, social media, slack channels or forums. Most of the time, articles are published to share what you know differently about a subject matter or just your experience.
There’s always someone out there that need that information, it’s left to you to now look for them and distribute the contents so they can benefit from it. Personally, I use Quora and Tweetdeck to distribute my contents to the right audience at the right time. I get to see in real-time people who are interested in my article and I craft a simple reply with a link to the post. It actually works magic.
I once had over 20k reads for a blog in 30 days using my cross-posting strategies 😉
Congratulations on joining the Medium Partner program and I wish you luck on making money online writing. As with every other endeavour in life, the goal to win on Medium lies in your consistency and the ability to tell stories in a unique way.
Feel free to comment on this post or hit me up via Twitter @PiousGeek if you have questions about anything or the distribution strategies. You can also check out my writing portfolio via kolapo.contently.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Please I followed all steps until the stripe phone number verification code. I’m not getting the code to my phone number
Retry the steps from the guide.
please, how did you did you arrive at this because the partnership program isn’t available in Nigeria.
Hi
I followed your steps and opened a payoneer account. But the medium is fixed on saying the partner program isn’t available in my location. It won’t move on to the registration part. What do I do?
Hello Mariam,
They discontinued the program for Nigeria after the I published the guide.
You can only use a VPN to go beyond that registration part.
Hi, pls I’ll like you to answer my question.
Though, I found your writing on naira land that redirected me here…
And thanks for your great article.
My question is, I’m going to drop my Nigeria phone number to open the payoneer account- where I’m going to get the US account bank account?
I’ll be very happy if you can reply me?
Thank you.
Hello Sulaimon,
You will get a US account number from the Payoneer dashboard.
Kindly look through the guide again for a better understanding.