Heart Attack Avoided! Medium Pays After All!

But this feels like a cautionary tale.

Last week, I received an email from Medium telling me that my earnings for the month were below the $10 payout threshold and would be held until next month or until they reached the $10 threshold.

The problem? I had met that limit and then some.

Frustrated, I reached out to Medium support and inquired why the $214 I had been expected would not be sent.

Was this a human error? Was it a system glitch? Something else?

I wasn’t sure.

Coupled with the previous glitch from earlier this year which led to several days’ delay in writers receiving their payouts, I wondered if Medium might be having trouble.

Speaking with a few other writers through

Kristina God

’s Online Writing School (which you should definitely join), I learned that I wasn’t alone.

Others were also affected.

I know writers who depend on their Medium earnings from month to month, and I hate the idea of them having to go without those earnings because of human error or a system problem.

Thankfully, Medium reached out to those of us who were affected and officially confirmed what we suspected.

It was indeed a glitch.

Whew.

But perhaps this is something of a cautionary tale. Perhaps this serves to illustrate what I and many others have said for ages: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

What if Medium actually were having trouble paying? What if we really did have to wait until next month or the month after?

Are we relying on any single source of income, or do we have other things to fall back on if we need?

No, this isn’t financial advice, and I don’t pretend it is. But I hate the thought that so many people out there don’t think about building multiple streams of income. We never know when we might need one.