How I Make (A Small Amount Of) Passive Income From Medium (2024)

No, the above payouts aren’t mine —although I wish they were! 😜

They are Nicolas Cole’s recent earnings, and I got them from his Twitter account. I know that this is cheeky clickbait, and I hope that Nicolas and my readers will forgive me, because I’m trying to make a point here.

And my point is it’s possible to make passive income on Medium.

Here are my payouts:

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Alvin, that isn’t very much at all!”

And I agree.

I’m sure there are many among you who make much more than me. I used to make more money before Medium introduced the relational model and destroyed my views.

But here’s the thing:

I made almost all of the above money passively.

See, I recently took a two-month plus break from Medium to write my very first novel. And when I came back, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my previous hard work had not been in vain.

My articles were making me money — even though I had been away.

Now, it isn’t much money, to be fair. If we take away the $500 and $100 bonus I got for June and May respectively, I only made a grand total of $130.2 passively during the two months I was away.

However, we have to take into account two things.

Number one is, once again, the fact that this money is passive. Although past me had to write all those articles, current me didn’t have to lift a single finger to earn it. And free money is always good money.

Number two — I love writing. And getting paid for it is just the icing on the cream of the cake. To paraphrase Bukowski,

“Getting paid to write is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and the next morning she gets up, opens her purse, and hands you a stack of cash.”