Getting Started With the Medium Partner Program When You Live Outside the “Approved” Countries
A few years ago, a friend of mine sent me a screenshot. It was his first Medium payout. Forty-one dollars and some cents.
He was thrilled. I was confused.
“How did you even get paid,” I asked. “Medium doesn’t support payments in Pakistan.”
He laughed and said, “That’s exactly the problem I had to solve first.”
That conversation stuck with me, because it captures something a lot of beginners don’t realize. Writing on Medium and getting paid on Medium are two completely different skills. One is about words. The other is about logistics. And if you’re reading this from Pakistan, India, Nigeria, or any country where Medium hasn’t officially rolled out payouts, you need to understand both before you write a single sentence.
So let’s slow down and go through this the way I wish someone had explained it to me.
What the Medium Partner Program actually is
Medium runs on a simple idea. Readers pay a monthly subscription, around five dollars a month, to read stories that are marked as “member-only.” Writers who join the Partner Program get a share of that subscription money, based on how much time paying members spend reading their work.
Think of it like a shared pool. Every subscriber’s five dollars goes into a big fund, and writers are paid out of that fund depending on engagement. You’re not paid per view. You’re paid per minute a paying member actually spends reading you.
That last part matters more than most people think, and I’ll come back to it.
For someone in London or Toronto, joining is simple. You write, you turn on monetization, you connect a payment method, done. But if you’re writing from Karachi or Lagos, there’s a hurdle: Medium pays through Stripe, and Stripe doesn’t operate directly in a lot of countries yet.
This is the exact same problem freelancers everywhere have faced for years. In the US, someone opens a Stripe or PayPal account in an afternoon. In Pakistan, many beginners route around that gap by using local mobile wallets like JazzCash or Easypaisa for local transactions, or by working with a friend or relative abroad who has a Stripe or Payoneer account they can share earnings through. It’s not a perfect system. It’s a workaround. But it’s how a lot of income actually moves in places where the official rails don’t reach yet.
My friend’s forty-one dollars came from exactly that kind of workaround. Not because Medium changed its rules for him, but because he found a way to work within them.
The mistake almost everyone makes in month one
Here’s what usually happens. Someone reads that Medium pays writers, gets excited, and publishes ten articles in two weeks. Motivational quotes. Life advice. A recycled list of “5 habits of successful people.”
Then they check their stats a month later and see something like two dollars.
I’ve watched this exact pattern play out with people I know personally, and it’s almost never a talent problem. It’s a strategy problem.
Medium doesn’t reward volume. It rewards read time from paying members. A single well-written, specific, useful article that keeps someone reading for eight minutes will often outperform ten shallow posts that people click away from in twenty seconds.
The lesson took me a while to actually believe, but it’s true across almost every platform, not just Medium: specific beats generic, every single time. “How to be more productive” loses to “How I finally stopped checking my phone during the first hour after waking up, and what changed in three weeks.” The second one sounds like a real person. The first one sounds like every other article already published.
A small case study worth thinking about
There’s a writer I followed early on, based in the US, who wrote almost exclusively about her experience managing money as a freelance graphic designer. Not general finance advice. Her actual invoices, her actual bad months, her actual client who ghosted her for three weeks.
She wasn’t writing for everyone. She was writing for freelancers specifically, and within that group, she built something close to a personal brand. Her articles got shared inside freelancer Facebook groups and Slack communities, which brought in new readers who were already the exact audience Medium’s paying members skew toward: people who read to learn something for their work or their money.
Compare that to a Pakistani beginner I later spoke with, who was writing general self-improvement content aimed at “everyone.” Good writing, honestly. But no specific reader in mind. No community that would naturally pass it around. The engagement never took off the way it did for the freelancer writer, even though the writing quality was similar.
The difference wasn’t nationality or English fluency. It was narrowness. Write for someone specific, and strangers who match that description will find you. Write for everyone, and you’ll often reach no one.
What actually moves the needle, in practical terms
Titles carry more weight than people expect. Medium is a discovery platform, which means your title is competing against thousands of others in someone’s feed for about two seconds of attention. A title like “Freelancing Tips” is invisible. A title like “I Charged My First Client 3 Dollars an Hour. Here’s What I’d Tell That Version of Me Now” gives a reader a reason to stop scrolling.
The first three lines decide whether someone keeps reading. Medium shows a preview of your opening lines before anyone clicks in. If those lines are vague or generic, people skip past. If they open with a specific moment, a number, or a small tension, people tend to click through to see what happens.
Getting into publications helps more than posting to your own profile alone. Medium has thousands of publications, some large and general, some tiny and niche. Submitting a well-edited piece to a relevant publication puts it in front of an existing audience that already trusts that publication, instead of relying entirely on your own follower count, which for a beginner is usually close to zero.
Consistency beats intensity. Two solid articles a week, sustained for three months, will almost always outperform a burst of fifteen articles in one week followed by silence. Medium’s algorithm and its readers both respond to a writer who keeps showing up.
The payment question, answered honestly
If you’re writing from a country Medium doesn’t officially support for payouts, here’s the honest picture, not the optimistic one.
You will need a workaround, at least for now. That might mean a Payoneer account linked through a supported method, a trusted contact abroad, or simply building an audience first while you sort out the payment logistics in parallel. It’s genuinely annoying, and I won’t pretend otherwise.
But it is solvable, and thousands of writers from unsupported countries have solved it already. The order that actually works is: write consistently first, build even a small base of engaged readers, and sort out your payout method during that same period, rather than waiting for the “perfect” payment setup before writing a single word. Money that has nowhere to land is still worth earning. You just need somewhere for it to land by the time it shows up.
Three habits worth borrowing from day one
Write about something you’re already living through, not something you researched for the article. If you’re learning to freelance, write about this week’s actual client conversation, not a general guide to freelancing. Lived detail is very hard to fake and very easy for readers to feel.
Read the top writers in the topic you want to write about, specifically to notice their opening lines and their titles, not to copy their voice. You’re studying structure, not stealing style.
Track which of your own articles get read the longest, not which get the most views. Views tell you what got clicked. Read time tells you what actually worked, and on Medium, read time is the thing that pays.
A closing thought
My friend with the forty-one dollar payout kept writing after that first check. Slowly, unglamorously, his numbers grew. Not because he found some secret trick, but because he treated it like an actual practice instead of a lottery ticket.
That’s really the whole lesson, wherever you’re writing from. The platform mechanics matter, and the payment logistics matter if you’re in a country like Pakistan where the official rails aren’t there yet. But underneath all of that, the thing that actually earns money on Medium is the same thing that’s always earned attention anywhere: something true, told specifically, to someone in particular.
MASTER PROMPT FOR MEDIUM WRITING
Act as my professional human content writer for Medium.
Write a high-quality, human-style storytelling article that is optimized for both a global audience (USA, UK, Canada, international readers) and also relatable for Pakistani/South Asian readers.
Writing Style Rules:
- Use simple, clear, natural English
- Write in a human, conversational tone (not AI-like)
- Avoid robotic, generic, or overused AI phrases
- Focus on storytelling, real-life examples, and practical insights
- Keep paragraphs short and easy to read
- Make it engaging and Medium-friendly (high retention writing style)
Audience Strategy:
- Primary audience: Global readers (USA/UK/International)
- Secondary audience: Pakistan/South Asia beginners
When using Pakistani examples:
- Always explain them in a global context
- Do not assume readers understand local systems
- Make comparisons understandable worldwide
Example style:
“In countries like Pakistan, beginners often use mobile wallets like JazzCash or Easypaisa due to limited access to PayPal, while in the US people use PayPal or Stripe.”Content Requirements:
- Include real-life examples and practical scenarios
- Add beginner mistakes and lessons learned
- Use storytelling style (personal or observational tone)
- Provide actionable value and insights
- Make content feel like written by an experienced creator
Avoid:
- Robotic AI phrases (e.g. “in today’s digital world”, “it is important to note”)
- Overly complex English
- Pure theoretical content without examples
- Unexplained local references
Optional Enhancements:
- Add motivational but realistic tone
- Include comparisons (Pakistan vs global systems) when relevant
- Include case studies or mini stories
- Add practical tips readers can apply immediately
Output Goal:
A publish-ready Medium article that is:
- Human-written in tone
- Engaging and easy to read
- Valuable for global audience
- Still relatable for Pakistani readers
- Monetization-friendly and high retention
- When i copy and paste it should not give # or any other different element it should be same as written by you
Now Just Ask for Topic