Which Medium writers are making real money now?

Are Medium writers still making thousands of dollars a month?

Yes, some Medium writers are still making thousands of dollars a month today, including recent $5,000 months and at least one disclosed month above $10,000.

The clearest recent example is Anubhav, an AI-engineering writer who reported his first $5,000 month in 2026. He gave unusually detailed numbers. A Claude Code setup article generated about 39,000 views, nearly 20,000 reads and roughly $1,360. A guide to local coding models received almost the same 39,000 views but made just over $2,000. Another article about AI books brought in around $714 from 28,000 views.

Those three articles alone produced roughly $4,074. That gives us something much more useful than a screenshot showing one large monthly total: we can see where most of the money came from.

There are other strong cases. Derick David reported $10,650.66 in one month in 2025, only two months after returning to Medium following a year-long break. James Julian has shared months around $4,000 to $5,000. Other writers have publicly reported months in the $1,000 to $3,000 range.

Still, these numbers sit at the far end of the distribution. Recent public income reports from less successful writers range from a few dollars to less than $100 a month. Medium clearly retains a high earnings ceiling, while the typical visible outcome remains much smaller.

Writer	Recent disclosed Medium income	What we can actually verify
Derick David	$10,650.66 in one month	Public earnings dashboard and breakdown
Anubhav	$5,000+ in one month	Detailed story-level views, reads and earnings
James Julian	Around $5,000 in a strong month	Monthly statistics shared publicly
Several smaller writers	Below $100/month	Public dashboards and income reports

Who gives us the best proof that a $5,000 Medium month is real?

Anubhav gives us the strongest current proof of a $5,000 Medium month because most of his earnings can be traced back to specific articles, reads and traffic.

His Claude Code setup article reached around 39,000 views and nearly 20,000 reads, producing approximately $1,360. His local-LLM coding article also reached about 39,000 views, with 18,900 reads, yet earned just over $2,000. A third piece about AI books added another $714 from roughly 28,000 views and 12,800 reads.

Combined, those three stories generated around $4,074. Roughly four-fifths of his $5,000 month can therefore be explained without guessing what happened behind the dashboard.

The difference between his two biggest articles is particularly useful. Both had roughly 39,000 views, but one made almost 50% more money. Medium currently pays according to paying-member reading and engagement rather than a fixed rate for every page view. Traffic volume alone cannot explain earnings.

His whole account also accelerated sharply. Anubhav said his monthly views went from roughly 3,900 to 10,900 before the major breakout. During the $5,000 month, Medium displayed his work about 863,000 times and generated 132,000 actual views.

So we can be confident that $5,000 months still happen on Medium. What this case does not establish is that Anubhav will now make $5,000 every month. His own numbers show a breakout period rather than a stable salary.

Does Derick David's $10,650 month mean Medium writers can still make five figures?

Yes, Derick David's $10,650.66 month shows that a Medium writer can still cross $10,000 from the Partner Program, although everything we found suggests that this is an exceptional month.

David published the result in 2025 after returning to Medium from roughly a year away. He said the five-figure month came only two months into that comeback.

That is useful evidence because it tells us something about Medium's current ceiling. Enough money and paying-reader activity still flow through the Partner Program for one writer to generate more than $10,000 in a month.

The mistake would be to treat $10,650 as part of a normal expected range. Among the many recent income disclosures we reviewed, months above $1,000 were already much less common than the flood of “make money on Medium” stories suggests. $5,000 months were rarer again. A disclosed $10,000 month stood out immediately.

There is also a verification limit we cannot remove. Medium does not publish a public ranking of Partner Program earners, so David's number comes from his own dashboard and account. Medium has not independently confirmed that amount or revealed how many writers make comparable income.

David is good evidence that five figures remain possible. He is not evidence that five-figure Medium months are common.

Is James Julian actually making serious money on Medium?

Yes, James Julian has disclosed months around $4,000 to $5,000, making him one of the stronger examples of a mature Medium account producing meaningful income.

One particularly strong month generated about $5,050 from roughly 81,000 views and 64,000 reads. That works out to close to eight cents per read across the month, although Medium's payment formula means individual reads can be worth very different amounts.

The read ratio is also striking. Roughly 79% of his views became reads. Medium counts a paying-member read once that reader stays for at least 30 seconds, so getting tens of thousands of people beyond that threshold can change the economics quickly.

Julian is also useful because his public numbers have not always looked spectacular. He has discussed periods when earnings were closer to a few hundred dollars, as well as periods around $1,500 to $2,000 before stronger months pushed above $4,000.

That gives us a more realistic picture than a single record screenshot. A writer can have a big archive, tens of thousands of followers and a proven ability to earn thousands while still experiencing large swings in income.

Julian's results also make follower counts harder to interpret. His audience did not suddenly multiply each time his monthly earnings doubled. The performance of individual stories and the amount of paying-member attention moving through them changed much faster than the size of his follower base.

Do big Medium follower counts mean big Medium earnings?

No, a large Medium following does not guarantee large earnings today, and recent income disclosures make that unusually clear.

Anangsha Alammyan has built more than 100,000 Medium followers and has previously disclosed a month close to $6,000. She also wrote more recently about having to rebuild her Medium business after earlier earnings fell. A six-figure follower count did not lock in a permanent four-figure monthly payout.

Christina Piccoli offers an even clearer comparison at a smaller scale. With more than 8,600 followers, she reported earning $48.98 in one recent month and $80.09 the following month.

Meanwhile, Anubhav reached $5,000 without entering the period with anything close to a 100,000-person Medium following. His growth came from several highly relevant AI-engineering stories reaching the right readers at the right time.

Medium's current formula helps explain the mismatch. Paying-member reading time, claps, highlights and replies contribute to earnings. Boosted distribution can raise the payout. Search, external referrals and email can now earn extra weight. A follower who does not read contributes little to that equation.

Followers still help writers get initial distribution, but the useful metric is active paying-reader attention. The two can diverge dramatically.

How much are ordinary Medium writers making now?

Most transparent Medium income reports we found are nowhere near $5,000; ordinary writers are often making tens of dollars rather than thousands.

Vincent Croos published a useful recent example. Across eight months and 64 Medium stories, he reported total Partner Program earnings of $57.58. He recorded 1,497 reads over the period, leaving him with less than a dollar of earnings per published story on average.

Christina Piccoli reported $48.98 from four stories in one month and $80.09 after publishing seven stories the next month, despite already having more than 8,600 followers.

At the very low end, another writer publicly shared 31,600 Medium presentations, around 1,300 views and 269 reads for just $4.23 in monthly Partner Program income.

Put those figures beside Anubhav's 132,000 views during his breakout month and the earnings gap becomes easier to understand. These writers are operating at completely different orders of magnitude.

We should therefore be careful whenever somebody asks what a Medium writer “typically” earns. Medium does not publish a useful median Partner Program income figure, and public disclosures suffer from obvious selection bias. Writers with unusually good results have more incentive to publish income stories.

What we can see is a very wide distribution. A few dollars, $50, $500, $2,000 and $5,000 are all real Medium outcomes today.

Example	Recent activity disclosed	Medium earnings
Anubhav	132K views in breakout month	$5,000+
Christina Piccoli	7 stories in one month	$80.09
Vincent Croos	64 stories over 8 months	$57.58 total
Smaller disclosed account	269 reads in one month	$4.23

What counts as “real money” on Medium?

For this article, $1,000 a month is a sensible starting point for “real money” on Medium because it separates token creator income from something that can materially affect a writer's finances.

There is obviously nothing unreal about earning $200. But calling every account that clears Medium's payout threshold a serious income business would make the original question almost useless.

The public reports start becoming much thinner once we move above $1,000. We can find many stories about writers making $10, $50 or $100. There are fewer credible disclosures around $1,000 to $3,000. $5,000 months appear unusual. $10,000 sits firmly in outlier territory based on what we could verify.

The other requirement is repetition. Someone making $2,500 once after one viral story has achieved a strong month. Someone earning $1,500 month after month has built something economically more valuable.

So when we refer to writers making “real money,” we are mainly interested in four-figure income that can either repeat or comes from a large enough catalog that repeatability looks plausible.

Monthly Partner Program income	Practical interpretation
Under $100	Small creator income
$100–$999	Useful side income for some writers
$1,000–$4,999	Serious Medium income if it can repeat
$5,000+	High-end month based on current disclosures
$10,000+	Rare outlier territory

Are high-earning Medium writers simply publishing more stories?

No, publishing more stories by itself does not explain the writers making thousands on Medium; the strongest accounts combine a useful archive with a few stories that pull in disproportionate traffic.

Anubhav's $5,000 month is the cleanest example. Three stories generated more than $4,000, while around 20 additional articles gave those incoming readers somewhere else to go. Someone landing on his Claude Code guide could continue into pieces about RAG, local models, reranking or multi-agent systems.

His archive therefore amplified the breakout. Without the winning articles, the archive probably would not have generated $5,000. Without the related archive, some of the attention created by those winners would have disappeared after a single read.

James Julian shows a similar pattern from a much larger catalog. He has discussed earning on days when he published nothing new because older stories continued attracting readers. At one point, a library of roughly 150 articles was still producing hundreds of daily views while he published only 15 new stories during the month.

This is why raw publishing volume can be misleading. Sixty unrelated articles do not create the same effect as sixty articles serving overlapping readers.

The writers doing well now tend to have enough material for one successful story to push people toward several others. A catalog becomes much more valuable once the articles can feed one another.

Which Medium topics are making the most money right now?

AI engineering, software, investing and practical finance appear repeatedly among current high-earning Medium writers, but we found stronger evidence for narrow high-intent topics than for one universally lucrative category.

Anubhav's strongest pieces were highly specific. Claude Code configuration, local coding models, RAG and AI architecture attract readers who are actively trying to solve technical problems. Someone interested in one of those subjects is also a plausible reader for the others.

James Julian has increasingly written about investing, dividends and personal finance. Those topics have the same useful characteristic: one good article can lead naturally into another without changing audiences completely.

Personal finance has also produced strong articles for Christina Piccoli, although her recent overall Medium income remained below $100 a month. That is a useful reminder that choosing a potentially lucrative topic does not create distribution automatically.

We found a huge amount of “make money with AI” and online-income content as well, but this area is especially noisy. Some articles make large earnings claims without giving enough traffic or dashboard data to test them. A topic can generate clicks while still giving us poor evidence about what its writers actually earn.

The clearer pattern is reader intent. Technical tutorials, investment questions and practical problem-solving articles give readers a reason to stay, search for related answers and move through a writer's archive.

A broad subject such as “AI” tells us very little. An archive about deploying and debugging AI systems is much closer to what appears to be working now.

Where are successful Medium writers getting their traffic today?

Successful Medium writers currently have more ways to earn from discovery than they did a year ago because Medium now gives extra economic weight to search, external referrals and email alongside its own recommendation system.

The change is visible in Medium's official Partner Program rules. Member reads coming from outside Medium receive an external-traffic bonus. Paying members who discover a story through search engines receive additional weighting from a dedicated part of the Partner Program budget. Reads coming through Medium subscriber emails also earn more than ordinary feed traffic.

Medium also pays an extra one-time amount when a non-member reaches a paywalled story and becomes a paying member to continue reading.

Internal distribution still matters enormously. Anubhav published through Data Science Collective, a major technical publication, and credited the publication with helping his early AI-engineering pieces reach relevant readers. Once those stories gained traction, recommendations sent some of that audience deeper into his archive.

Large publications therefore still have a role, particularly for writers without an established audience. Their real advantage is access to a concentrated group of relevant readers. Publishing a machine-learning article in front of people who already read machine-learning content gives Medium much better initial information than launching the same story from a nearly empty profile.

Medium has strengthened that system further by introducing its Editor Partner Program. Editors at qualifying publications can now earn an additional 25% of what stories they edit earn, paid by Medium without reducing the writer's payout. That gives serious publications a direct financial reason to find and improve good outside work.

Search has become more attractive at the same time. A useful technical article can now be found through Google months after publication and earn an enhanced payout when the visitor is a paying Medium member.

A strong Medium writer today can therefore receive traffic from a publication, Medium recommendations, Google, subscriber emails and outside links. That mix is much healthier than depending on one home-feed spike.

Does getting Boosted still make a big difference on Medium?

Yes, Medium Boost still gives strong stories wider distribution and higher earnings, but Boost is less dominant than it used to be.

Medium's current Partner Program rules still give Boosted stories an earnings advantage. Human curators review stories for Boost, and selected articles can reach readers well beyond a writer's existing network.

Older income reports show how large that effect could become. Kieran MacRae, for example, previously reported earning around $1,700 from one article and attributed much of its performance to Boosted distribution.

Medium has since changed the payout mix. The company says non-Boosted stories now receive a larger share of Partner Program money than before. Search discovery, general external traffic, email notifications and new-member conversions have also gained their own financial incentives.

That makes the current system less binary. Writers no longer have to assume that missing Boost ends a story's earning potential.

For durable articles, search can keep supplying paying readers long after the initial publication period. For writers with subscribers, email has become more valuable. A good publication can provide another route into Medium's recommendation system.

Boost remains one of the best accelerators available on Medium. It simply has more company now.

Can old Medium articles still make money months later?

Yes, old Medium articles can keep producing income for months or years, and a useful archive appears repeatedly in the accounts of successful writers.

Anubhav described older technical posts receiving fresh traffic when his newer AI articles broke out. Someone arriving for Claude Code could then discover an older piece on RAG or local models.

James Julian has reported a similar effect from a catalog of roughly 150 articles. His archive generated hundreds of daily views during periods when he was publishing relatively few new pieces.

Christina Piccoli showed the same pattern at a much smaller income level. One of her stronger earners during a recent month was an article she had written roughly a year earlier.

Search incentives make this even more interesting now. Medium currently gives extra payout weight to paying-member reads arriving through search engines. An old article that ranks for a useful query has more economic value than a story whose traffic disappears after 48 hours.

This changes the way we should judge a Medium article. First-week earnings tell us something, but they do not capture the full value of a piece that can attract search traffic or receive new recommendation traffic six months later.

It also helps explain why experienced writers can sometimes earn meaningful money while slowing their publication schedule. A new writer has five active pages. Someone with a coherent three-year archive may have 150.

How unstable is Medium income for writers making thousands?

Medium income is highly unstable even for established writers, so a $5,000 month should never be read as a $60,000 annual salary.

James Julian's public reports make this particularly clear. He has described periods in the low hundreds, stretches around $1,500 to $2,000 and much stronger months near $5,000. The writer stayed the same while distribution and earnings changed dramatically.

Anangsha Alammyan has also described reaching almost $6,000 in one month after previously establishing monthly income around $1,000, only to face a later period where she had to rebuild her Medium business.

The same instability exists lower down. Christina Piccoli moved from $48.98 to $80.09 between two recent months. That is a 64% jump, yet in absolute terms it represents only $31.11.

Part of this volatility comes from individual articles. A breakout can suddenly send tens of thousands of readers through a catalog. Once that article fades, monthly revenue can fall quickly.

The rules can move too. Medium has recently changed the weighting of external traffic, search, email, Boost distribution and member conversions. Its Partner Program terms explicitly allow Medium to modify the program.

Anyone treating Medium as dependable monthly income therefore needs more than one strong screenshot. We would want to see repeated results across several months and ideally several different articles.

Can we trust writers who post Medium earnings screenshots?

Sometimes, but a Medium earnings screenshot becomes much more convincing when the writer also publishes enough traffic data for us to check whether the story hangs together.

Anubhav's report is strong because the pieces reconcile. His three major articles account for roughly $4,074 of a month above $5,000. He also gives views, reads, catalog traffic and changes over time. We do not have to accept one large number in isolation.

Derick David's $10,650.66 month is useful but harder to interrogate at the same depth. The dashboard gives us evidence of the amount he reported, while Medium itself does not independently publish or audit his number for readers.

James Julian has shared earnings and traffic across multiple periods, which gives us another advantage: we can compare strong months with weak ones rather than seeing only his personal record.

We found weaker claims too. One article reporting rising monthly earnings also incorrectly described publications as taking part of writers' normal Partner Program revenue. Medium's current documentation says a writer's Partner Program earnings are unchanged when a qualifying editor receives an editor payment. That factual mistake does not prove the writer fabricated an earnings screenshot, but it gives us a reason to be more cautious with the rest of the advice.

Medium itself has had to deal with manipulation. In 2025, the company publicly described suspending accounts involved in engagement rings, reciprocal activity, multiple-account manipulation and AI-generated Partner Program content. Medium has since kept strict rules against fake engagement.

So our confidence should vary from writer to writer. Detailed story-level numbers deserve more weight than a cropped dashboard beside a dramatic headline.

Has AI made it easier to make money writing on Medium?

AI has made writing and research faster, but it has not created an easy automated route into Medium earnings because fully AI-generated stories are currently barred from the Partner Program.

Medium's policy is explicit. When most of a story has been generated by an AI writing tool with little meaningful editing, fact-checking or original contribution, the story cannot sit behind the Partner Program paywall.

Undisclosed AI-generated writing can also be limited to Network Only distribution, meaning Medium restricts it to the writer's direct followers and subscribers rather than giving it broader distribution.

AI-assisted work is treated differently. Medium allows tools for outlining, grammar, spelling, fact-checking and similar assistance. The line is whether a human has actually produced and shaped the work.

The enforcement has financial consequences. Medium says accounts publishing fully generated AI writing behind its paywall can lose monetization, and abuse of the Partner Program can lead to removal.

That creates a useful contrast with the current high earners. Anubhav writes extensively about AI, yet his successful work is deeply technical: local models, RAG, coding agents and architecture. His advantage comes from knowing enough about the subject to write material that engineers actually spend time reading.

AI may reduce the time required to prepare an article these days. It has done much less to reduce the need for expertise if the goal is to earn serious money from readers.

Can you still make money writing about Medium itself?

No, Medium now excludes stories primarily about Medium, Medium earnings and Partner Program strategy from Partner Program monetization.

That closes off a category that once produced a strange feedback loop on the platform. Writers could publish articles explaining how much money they made writing on Medium, then earn additional Medium income because other writers clicked those articles to learn how to make money on Medium.

Current Medium rules classify this kind of platform-meta content as ineligible for the paywall. Writers can still publish it, but Medium normally limits the content to network distribution and does not let it earn through the Partner Program.

That makes many older “here's how I made $X on Medium” strategies less relevant for someone starting today.

It also changes the incentives around public earnings reports. Writers can still disclose their numbers, which is useful for our research, but the report itself can no longer automatically become another Partner Program money-maker simply because other aspiring Medium writers want to read it.

For current earning potential, useful subject expertise looks much more important than endlessly discussing the mechanics of Medium.

What separates a $5,000 Medium writer from a $50 Medium writer?

The biggest difference is the amount of paying-reader attention flowing through useful connected articles: current $5,000 writers can generate tens of thousands of reads while $50 writers often generate hundreds or a few thousand.

Anubhav's breakout month reached about 132,000 total views. Three articles alone generated roughly 51,700 reads and more than $4,000. His wider archive then gave those readers more related material to consume.

James Julian's $5,000 month involved approximately 64,000 reads from 81,000 views.

Compare those figures with Vincent Croos's 1,497 reads across eight months or the smaller writer who generated 269 reads in one disclosed month. The earnings gap starts with an enormous attention gap.

Even then, equal traffic does not mean equal money. As we saw previously, two of Anubhav's articles each attracted roughly 39,000 views, yet one made about $1,360 and the other more than $2,000. Paying-member behavior, reading time, engagement and traffic source all affect the payout.

The writers making thousands also tend to give new readers somewhere to go next. A successful AI-engineering article leads into another AI-engineering article. An investing piece can feed another investing piece. One breakout can therefore raise traffic across a much larger archive.

Followers help, publication access helps and Boost can help, but the economic engine is ultimately sustained paying-member reading. The successful writers have much more of it.

Which Medium writers are making real money now?

Medium writers are still making real money today, but the credible evidence points to a relatively small upper tier rather than a platform where four-figure income is normal.

Anubhav is currently the cleanest recent example we found. His $5,000 month comes with enough article-level data to explain most of the revenue. James Julian gives us a second useful model: a mature archive capable of producing months around $4,000 to $5,000, alongside much weaker periods. Derick David's $10,650.66 month shows that Medium's ceiling can still reach five figures.

Below that group, the picture changes quickly. Recent public reports include writers earning around $50 or $80 a month, writers producing dozens of articles for less than $100 in total, and accounts making only a few dollars despite thousands of views.

So the writers making serious money on Medium these days tend to share a recognizable pattern. They write for a specific audience, generate tens of thousands of actual reads, have enough related work for successful articles to feed an archive, and attract paying Medium members rather than merely collecting page views.

The platform has also become friendlier to more than one source of discovery. Search traffic currently receives additional economic weight. External referrals and email can earn bonuses. New-member conversions generate an extra payment. Publications still give writers access to concentrated audiences, while Boost remains a powerful accelerator without controlling the whole system.

At the same time, several shortcuts have become weaker. Fully AI-generated writing cannot earn through the Partner Program. Articles mainly about Medium or Medium earnings are also ineligible for the paywall. Large follower counts alone clearly do not guarantee meaningful income.

Yes, Medium can still produce $1,000, $5,000 and occasionally $10,000 months. Anubhav, James Julian and Derick David are among the clearest recent examples. What the wider evidence does not support is the much more attractive claim that consistently publishing on Medium will naturally lead there. Thousands of dollars remain achievable; they are far from the standard outcome.