An Unfortunate Early Halt for My Medium Endeavour

Hey folks,

Inspired by Christina and Diane, I recently created a Medium account and started writing articles.

My initial plan was of course to promote my blog, but making some money through the Partner Program seemed to be an appealing prospect.

I joined a couple of publications, starting gaining a few followers, and for a start, it's reasonable to say everything was going pretty smoothly.

However, I was unfortunately hit with a roadblock. And then a more massive one.

The First Roadblock

Medium manages payments through Stripe.

It turns out that if you don't reside in a country that has a tax treaty with the US, your earnings are subject to a 30% withholding tax rate.

In other words, you'll only have access to $7 out of every $10 you make through the Partner Program.

It's not great news, but I thought I'll manage. Making money on Medium was a side quest anyway.

The Second Roadblock

More woes to the fellow who doesn't live in North America or Europe.

Stripe requires that all residents of the UAE submit either a trade license or a freelancer permit to be able to earn money with Medium.

This was a big inconvenience.

I'm not a business. I'm not trading. I'm just writing articles, can you leave me alone?

Then I thought: fine, let me see how tedious the application process is.

Step #1: How much does it cost?

It turns out that a trade license/freelancer permit in the UAE costs at the very least:

.

.

.

$2000.

No thank you.

I guess I'll have to scrap out the side quest and just view Medium for what it initially looked like for me: A place to raise awareness of my website.

Thanks for reading.

Yusuf