Introducing Tipping on Medium (beta)
Add a customizable tipping button to your stories and start receiving direct support from your readers.
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“How can we make writing more sustainable and rewarding?” That question has always been top of mind for our team here at Medium. Our philosophy is that great writing deserves visibility and financial support, and that idea underpins how we’re already helping creators earn money via our Partner Program and Referred Memberships.
Today, we’re taking our first step in exploring how writers on Medium might earn money directly from readers. Thousands of writers have already been sharing links in their stories to third-party payment services like Ko-Fi and PayPal, and readers often want to show immediate appreciation for stories they enjoy. This experimental Tipping beta aims to make it easy for writers to highlight these payment links in their stories.
How to Add Tipping to Your Stories
If you have a Medium account, you can now visit your Audience Development settings to enable the new Tipping beta. You’ll be asked to provide a link to your payment landing page of choice, like PayPal, Ko-Fi, Patreon, or Buy Me A Coffee.
When you turn this on, a “Give a tip” button will appear below all the stories you’ve published on Medium. This button will use the link you provided, and it will appear like this on your story pages:
This first beta version is quite simple, but we think it opens the door to many new future possibilities. While its full rollout depends on how it’s received by the writer and reader community on Medium, we’re excited about its potential and how we might continue to develop the idea with your feedback.
From here, we may explore building more robust monetization tools for writers that remove the need for a third-party payment service. We may also explore building other types of customizable buttons for other use cases.
We want to hear from you! Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments here, or on Twitter @medium.
