Medium allows affiliate marketing on every post you publish, as long as you disclose your links clearly. Stack that with Medium’s own Partner Program payouts and an email list you own outside Medium’s walls, and Medium turns into a real income channel instead of a one-off experiment.
I’ve spent over 20 years recruiting affiliates and running programs, and Medium comes up constantly in questions from marketers who already run a review site or a niche blog. It’s not the biggest affiliate channel you’ll run, but it’s one of the easiest to start this week, and most marketers get the mechanics wrong on their first post.
Medium’s own published rules and its current Partner Program terms spell out exactly what’s allowed, so there’s no need to guess.
Does Medium allow affiliate links for affiliate marketing?
Yes. Medium’s official Rules page states plainly that affiliate links, like an Amazon link with your tracking code, or any link where you earn a commission or something of value, are allowed in posts. The catch is disclosure. Federal Trade Commission rules require you to tell readers when a link pays you, and Medium’s own guidance says a simple sentence in the footer of your post satisfies that requirement. You don’t need a legal disclaimer page or a pop-up. One clear sentence, placed where readers will see it, is enough.
Medium draws a line between affiliate links and paid sponsorships. Third-party advertising, like a brand paying you to feature their product or logo in a post, isn’t allowed on Medium at all. Affiliate commission links are a different category, and Medium treats them as first-party promotion, the same bucket as linking to your own website, business, or mailing list. That distinction matters if you also do sponsored content elsewhere. Bring a brand deal onto Medium and you risk your account. Bring an honest affiliate link with disclosure and you’re inside the rules.
Medium also won’t push your story into extra distribution if it reads like generic AI-written content stuffed with affiliate links, think spun product roundups with no real experience behind them. And the FTC’s clear-and-conspicuous standard means your disclosure can’t sit behind a click or hide in an About page. It has to be visible without scrolling or searching for it.
Getting the disclosure wording right matters more than most affiliates think, and Medium’s footer rule doesn’t tell you what to write. Affiliate Link Disclosure: What You’re Required to Say covers the exact phrasing that satisfies the FTC without sounding like a legal document.
How do you write Medium articles that get distributed?
Medium’s recommendation algorithm rewards stories that read like something a real person needed to write, not a generic list built to rank in Google. A personal account of testing a $19-a-month tool for six weeks, including what didn’t work, tends to get surfaced ahead of a recycled top ten list, because Medium’s curators favor lived experience over rehashed advice. If you already write product review posts for your own blog, you’re not starting from zero. Pull the specific results and the honest complaints from that review, then rebuild the piece as a first-person story instead of a listicle.
Once a Medium piece is live, it becomes raw material for other channels instead of a dead end. Break the strongest paragraph into a short post and share it on X or Threads with a link back to the full piece. I cover the mechanics of doing this well in my guide to affiliate marketing on Threads. The goal isn’t to write one piece and abandon it. Medium’s own distribution now credits external traffic too, which means every share you post elsewhere can quietly boost how the algorithm treats the original story.
Medium’s guidelines are specific about what gets a story blocked from wider distribution: content built mainly to drive clicks or boost search rankings for an outside site. Treat your readers the way you’d treat someone whose trust you don’t want to spend on an obvious plug. If a paragraph reads like an ad, cut it or rewrite it as a genuine recommendation with a real reason attached.
Turning a real review into a Medium-ready story still starts with a review that’s good enough to repurpose in the first place. Review Post Pro writes SEO-optimized review posts trained on 300+ top-ranked examples, so you’re adapting something built to convert instead of starting from a blank page.
Where do affiliate links belong in a Medium post without getting flagged?
Place affiliate links inline, right where you make the recommendation, not stacked in a list at the bottom of the post. A reader who finished the paragraph explaining why a tool solved a specific problem is the reader most likely to click a link sitting right there. Some Medium affiliates follow a rough rule of one link for every 500 words, so a 2,000-word review might carry four links total. That’s a guideline, not a Medium rule, but it keeps a post from reading like a link farm.
Repeat the same structure across every product you cover inside one post: a specific result, the honest limitation, then the link. Readers notice when a pattern breaks, and so does Medium’s spam detection. If you’re not sure which format fits a given product, match the structure to the type of piece, review, comparison, or roundup, instead of forcing one template onto everything you write.
Not every product deserves the same write-up, and matching the right format to the right offer is most of the battle. What Types of Content Work Best for Affiliate Marketing? breaks down which structure, review, comparison, or roundup, converts best for which kind of product.
How do you combine Medium’s Partner Program with affiliate income?
Medium’s Partner Program and your affiliate links pay you in two completely different ways on the same post. The Partner Program pays for reading time from paying Medium members, engagement, and a growing share of credit for traffic you bring in from outside Medium. Affiliate links pay when a reader clicks through and buys something, regardless of whether they’re a paying Medium member. To join the Partner Program, you need a paid Medium membership, $5 a month or $50 a year, at least six published stories, and a connected Stripe account. Both income streams can run on the exact same piece of writing.
Since October 2025, Medium has counted a share of Partner Program earnings toward traffic you drive in from outside the platform, meaning a story you share to your email list or social channels can earn Partner Program credit on top of any affiliate commissions from that same audience. Medium also adjusts payouts based on your member read ratio, the percentage of members who stay on a story for 30 seconds or more. A post people finish reading earns more than one that gets a click and an immediate bounce.
Treat Partner Program earnings as a bonus layer, not your main channel. A documented algorithm change in early 2025 cut earnings by 70 to 90 percent for a stretch of established writers overnight, and payouts still move whenever Medium adjusts its formula. Affiliate commissions don’t depend on Medium’s internal math at all. If you want a platform where the reader relationship and the revenue sit entirely in your hands, running a paid Substack newsletter works differently and is worth comparing against Medium.
Stacking Medium’s payouts with affiliate commissions is one version of building income without a product of your own. My free masterclass on making weekly income without creating a product covers more ways to do it.
How do you turn Medium readers into your own email subscribers?
Medium’s own rules explicitly allow first-party promotion, meaning you can link to your own website, business, or mailing list inside a post. That’s different from the third-party sponsorships Medium bans. Use that allowance on every piece: end each story with a one-line call to action pointing at a specific lead magnet instead of a vague “subscribe to my newsletter” line. A reader who spent four minutes on your story is warmer than almost any other reader you’ll get today, so give them somewhere specific to go next.
Building that list matters because you don’t own anything on Medium. If Medium changes its curation algorithm, adjusts the Partner Program formula again, or the platform’s subscriber base shrinks, your traffic and your earnings move with it. An email address doesn’t answer to any of that. You don’t strictly need an email list to succeed at affiliate marketing, but pairing one with Medium gives you a channel Medium can’t take away with an update.
Once someone’s on your list, treat them differently than a cold Medium reader. Affiliate email marketing converts at a different rate than a first-time visitor because you’ve already earned some trust. Send the specific resource you promised in your Medium call to action within the first email, not three newsletters later. That single follow-through step is what turns a Medium reader into money instead of a name in a spreadsheet.
What should you do next?
Publishing your first affiliate-friendly Medium piece comes down to three moves. Write one clear disclosure sentence and put it where readers will see it, not buried in an About page. Take a review or list you’ve already written for your own blog and rebuild it as a first-person Medium story instead of copying it over as-is. And add one specific call to action pointing at your own list before you hit publish, not after.
Grab the Affiliate Marketing QuickStart Guide if you’re still working out which programs to promote in the first place, and the Promotion Checklist Template once you’re ready to plan the push across email and social instead of Medium alone.
