Submission Guidelines
By: Dan Owen
Tags: Features, Submission, Film, Criticism, Writing

We DON’T own the article you submit, so you can remove it whenever you want, for whatever reason. But we hope you’ll contact us to discuss your decision before taking that drastic step! Just be courteous. It’s only good manners if we improved your copy with extensive rewrites, helped with feedback, or gave you valuable suggestions. (We aren’t here to give free assistance and support to writers who quickly remove their work and use it elsewhere.)

If we created bespoke graphics for your article when it was part of our site, these must NOT remain as part of your article if removed. (If they are, we’ll kick up a stink with Medium’s administrators.)

While your work is hosted by us, you agree to let it be used for marketing purposes, which is a mutually beneficial promotion for the site and yourself.

Writers have complete control over whether or not their submission is only accessible behind Medium’s paywall (more details on that in the section below). We strongly advise you don’t keep it behind this paywall forever, so weigh up the pros and cons of keeping something paywalled for longer than 14 days. If your work is making you money even months after publication, obviously keep it there!

We may add bespoke graphics, logos, or links to other content within your article, to encourage readers to recommend and share your work and other relevant content. Writing imported material into Medium from an external source will automatically include the following footer: Originally published at [link to your site or blog].

Payment & the Medium Partner Program (MPP)

We can’t pay anyone directly for their submissions, but you can enrol in Medium’s Partner Program. This means you can “meter” your article behind a paywall where only certain people can access it:

“Medium members”. Subscribers who pay $5 per month for paywalled content and other privileges.

Anyone sent a special “Friend Link” to access a paywalled article without requiring a Medium subscription.

Anyone accessing an article through Twitter.

This means authors are paid each calendar month based on an article’s engagement (i.e. how long a paid subscriber spent actually reading your submission). ‘Claps’ no longer affect payments as much, it’s just a way to show appreciation, but leaving a response (comment) perhaps helps a little. It’s a bit of grey area.

The publication owner is NOT paid a percentage of what an article makes, currently, despite often having a lot of input with editing and formatting. Hopefully, this will change soon, to help us cover the costs of running www.framerated.co.uk, together with compensating us for the added work editing, providing feedback, and promoting online. (What about it Ev Williams? Fair’s fair!)

Authors are paid by Medium each calendar month, but this requires signing up for a Stripe account. Stripe’s the company Medium has partnered with to manage payouts to each user’s bank account. You don’t have to be a paying Medium member to set this up, but we recommend you consider enrolling in the MPP because members seem to have work curated more often. (Curation is when Medium staff select your work for promotion on a topic page, which can bring it to a wider audience. This makes it more likely your work will be engaged with, thus earning you more money!)

Please note that not every country can participate in the MPP and Stripe isn’t available everywhere either, so some writers simply can’t be paid at this time. A handy list of countries where Stripe operates can be read here.

We’re happy to accept work from writers who don’t want to enrol on the MPP, of course, but you won’t be compensated financially by us right now.

Regular Contributions:

While payment isn’t guaranteed because it mainly relies on readers engaging by your monetised article in large numbers, being a regular contributor does give you some perks when joining Frame Rated: