From Medium:
In “The rationalization of publishing,” I argued that subscriptions for publishing on a wide scale are inevitable — and that’s a good thing. Now I will describe Medium’s unique approach to this opportunity.
First, in case you’re not aware, Medium has a subscription offering called Medium Membership. We launched it just over a year ago. Here’s what growth has looked like since then:
. . . .
The factors driving this took us a while to figure out and then get into motion, but they’re gratifyingly simple. In fact, there are just two major 🔑s:
- Put great stories behind the metered paywall.
- Help people find the great stories they care about.
In these ways, Medium is not unlike other digital media subscription businesses like the Washington Post or The New Yorker — or even Spotify and Netflix. We sell content on a subscription basis. Like most paywalled sites, we give some stories away for free (currently, it’s three per month). But unlike most paywalled publications, we rely solely on subscriptions (no advertising), and we have a mix of original and non-original content.
. . . .
I believe bundles are a large part of the future of content monetization. That doesn’t mean there won’t be lots of individuals subscriptions and patronage and other models that work — all of which help serve the cause. (It also doesn’t mean writers and publishers won’t be paid well.)
Medium is one of the largest bundles of original content of its type, so it’s a great value for readers. And it’s definitely the easiest way to get paid directly for writing, so we’re seeing rapid growth in people who may not have written on Medium before.
. . . .
More than 50,000 writers publish on Medium every week: politicians, professors, storytellers, experts in your field, and people you’ve never heard of. The best of these stories contain knowledge and insight that can’t be found anywhere else. We take pride that we offer a level playing field for diverse voices from everywhere to be heard. By curating and organizing these stories, we have the equivalent of a publication with more talent than any other — and it’s growing all the time.
As it relates to the business model, a subset of the stories on Medium are behind our paywall and contribute to our Membership. Our Partner Program is designed for writers and publishers who wish to get paid for their work.
. . . .
We have no writers on staff and don’t plan to add any (except for marketing). However, we have a growing editorial team that is commissioning world-class writing by professional journalists and authors. The team is also partnering with some of the world’s most compelling writers on ambitious projects (like this one we just did with Roxane Gay).
We’ve also found that many great writers — especially, people who are experts in their field — are writing on Medium already. Since a little editorial guidance — a better headline, some nice art, a copy edit — can help stories reach even more people, we’re now working with folks to take their work from good to great and help it get the audience it deserves. This is a very efficient way to get more professional quality stories.
Link to the rest at Medium
As far as payments to authors are concerned, here’s what Medium says:
Our system is designed to reward quality content, not clickbait, so we focus on the depth of engagement on your stories. We distribute a share of each member’s monthly contribution in proportion to his or her individual activity on stories written for members that month (with reading time and claps as the primary signals we use).
In February 2018, 56% of authors who published at least one story for members earned money — making $58.45 on average for the month. $9,491.12 was the most earned by a single author, and $1,136.78 was the most earned for a single story.
In Medium’s FAQ about its Partner Program, the following appears:
How much will I make?You’ll be paid based on a variety of signals including the number of claps your stories for members receive, who is clapping, and the time spent reading your story. We calculate the share of each member’s monthly contribution in proportion to his or her individual activity on stories written for members that month.
PG would be interested in additional information about payments to authors from Medium (not for any specific purpose, but for increasing his general understanding of how authors receive compensation for their contributions).
Medium is a new model publisher of short-form non-fiction and fiction. While PG has enjoyed many of the Medium articles he has read, he is always interested in how much publishers of all types pay the authors who make the magic happen.
I wonder how scalable such a model is for READERS.
Consider paying a few tens of $/year for a subscription site you like. Then there’s a content bundle you like and you pay again. And a third one. And you already have your Spotify and Netflix subscriptions. Then you stop and note money is going to add up pretty fast beyond what you can afford.
Medium and a bunch of other paywalled resources are enjoying moderate success because they are just a handful. As readers start thinking at how much this is costing them I’m not sure the trend is going to continue.
They did not include how many opted out during the same time as the new sign-ups.
I guess their “claps” are equal to “likes” on Facebook and elsewhere, except “likes” are only clicked once, but “claps” can be clicked more than once?
And how is “depth of engagement” measured? The time it takes to read a page? The elevated heart rate of the reader?
I write for Medium, but not as a paid partner. I’m Australian, and the payment option is so difficult to work out, it’s not even worth my while to apply. The Paid Partners option is pretty much for US writers only. That said, I still think it’s a step in the right direction. Huff Post made a fortune by never paying writers at all. The social media platforms are even worse because the only product they have is us. We provide the free content that makes them billions. -cough-
Before starting with Medium, I spent years blogging on WordPress. Then WP’s push to increase advertising revenue became too intrusive and I went looking for a different business model. The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica mess simply made me hate the whole advertisting model even more.
I’m still blogging with WP, but that’s mostly to keep up with long time friends. Medium is where I post my new stuff. If I could afford the cost and time, I’d create a website that I control, but I don’t have those resources so…
Getting back to Medium, the paid partnership model may be of benefit to some writers, but it makes reading [for unpaid members] a bit annoying. You click on an interesting looking post and bam, sorry, this is for members only.
The three free articles don’t really help as you don’t know:
a) which articles will count against your freebies, and
b) you may not like the article once you start reading it, and
c) by the time you click on an article and discover it’s a members only one, it’s too late. One of your 3 magic wishes have been used up.
My guess is that long term, Medium hopes to get everyone to sign up and pay their monthly subscription. I can’t say I blame them, but psychologically, people have a strong resistance to paying for something they used to get for free.
For now, I’m enjoying Medium as a free, unpaid writer who doesn’t have to look at ads. Next year may be different. 🙂
“In February 2018, 56% of authors who published at least one story for members earned money — making $58.45 on average for the month.”
Oh, be still, my beating heart! I should think that’s just enough to rent a park bench for the week.
“You’ll be paid based on a variety of signals including the number of claps your stories for members receive.”
I had always thought it best to avoid the clap.
lol – you have the option of clapping from 1 to 50. 1 = polite recognition, 50 = fervent agreement. Oh and the weekly stats also tell writers how many views there were vs how many reads. I guess if you click on and click off straight away, that’s a ‘view’. Click on and clap equals a ‘read’? Click on and clap wildly or leave a comment and that equals major engagement?
Sorry, not really sure how it works, but the stats are interesting.
“This is a graph of something going up. By how much you’ll never know. And we couldn’t even format the X-axis dates properly.”
Like their payment schedule, it’s easier to lie if the data’s ambiguous … 😉
Depending on the Y axis, that graph might actually look more like this:
__________________________-
I’d be more interested in the number of members using it daily/weekly/monthly/not since getting an account and never looking again. Heck, that could be a chart they copied from facebook – and tells you nothing of actual use.
“You’ll be paid based on a variety of signals including the number of claps your stories for members receive, who is clapping, and the time spent reading your story. We calculate the share of each member’s monthly contribution in proportion to his or her individual activity on stories written for members that month.”
In other words you’ll never be able to prove we shortchanged you to pay our good friend ‘Paul’.
Dang, I didn’t think anyone could do it, but this makes the KU mess look good!
Computer crashed – my update to superseded (correct spelling) didn’t make it – sorry!
But Medium only pays for those with a lot of claps, IIRC, and those will probably go to specialists and people with big followings. I met someone who wrote beautifully in a small niche – not much money in that.
we have a growing editorial team that is commissioning world-class writing by professional journalists and authors
Not encouraging for other writers – you will be superseded and outgunned by people you can’t compete with because they have ‘names.’