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Medium Changes Earnings Model
New method for calculating earnings and more transparent analytics will be welcome news for many authors
Medium announced this morning that it was making broad changes to the earnings model it uses to pay writers. The company also announced that more detailed statistics and analytics would be available for writers, helping to clarify how and why their stories earned money on the site.
For many writers, this new earnings model and more transparent analytics will be a welcome change. Thus far, Medium’s earnings model has been relatively opaque. Earnings are based broadly on “reader engagement” with “claps” from paying Medium members contributing in a substantial way to a story’s earnings.
There are several challenges with this model. One is that claps favor certain kinds of writers, and certain kinds of stories. People are much more likely to clap for an inspirational piece about a writer’s triumph over a workplace challenge, a positive change in one of their relationships, etc. than for a dry, technical piece about machine learning or artificial intelligence. That doesn’t make one piece more or less valuable, but with the “claps” model, it did make the more inspirational or celebratory pieces more likely to attract applause and thus to earn revenue.
