A Foolproof Way for Medium to Increase Writer Income by 20%
But don’t blame me if you really, really don’t like how they’ll do it.
Second only to writing itself, the thing many Medium authors enjoy most is complaining about how their earnings are too low.
Let me start by acknowledging this is indisputably true. All of us hardworking authors deserve more money. How can anyone contest it?
The only problem is that, despite the ongoing U.S. experiment to test the hypothesis, the supply of money is limited. Thus, if Medium authors are going to earn more, the money has to come from somewhere.
There is a completely obvious source of money for Medium writers, and it’s one that would guarantee us all 20% more in income.
I’ll explain the guaranteed method momentarily, but first I want to call out a few well-meant and superbly-written articles I’ve seen recently.
- Robin Wilding 💎wrote Are You Missing 28.2% of Your Earnings Too? in which she raises the alarm about Medium writers who are not MPP members.
- Lesley Dewar highlighted the apparent flaw in Medium’s system that allows Facebook users to read an unlimited number of Medium stories despite being non-members. See Clapping by Facebook? WOW!
The points discussed in these articles are spot-on, but the proposed solutions aren’t guaranteed to help Medium writers.
DISCLAIMER: Even though I’ll be saying it out loud momentarily, I am not the one giving Medium this idea. Trust me, they already know about it. Thus if they implement it, please don’t blame me. Just take your extra income and consider it a lesson that everything in life comes at a price.
Ideas That Will Not Make Us Richer Anytime Soon
- Having Medium pay authors for external views
- Preventing freeloading non-members from viewing unlimited stories
- Growing the number of paid members
These are all excellent ideas, of course, albeit unlikely to work. “Why is that?” you ask.
Number 1 is the U.S. equivalent of just expecting Medium to spend money it doesn’t have. Nice idea, if one can just print money. The rest of us who are not Central Banks must actually generate income before we can distribute it.
Number 2 would cut down on the number of unpaid views. But it is wishful thinking to assume that these freeloaders will convert to paid members merely because their free workaround is closed.
To be clear, I’m all in favor of closing the loopholes. But we can predict most of these opportunists will go elsewhere. So no pot of gold here either.
That leaves Number 3, which is a tried and true method any business has of increasing revenue: organic growth. More paying members means more revenue to distribute.
This is no overnight fix, however, and requires steady effort. Medium is already doing this to the best of its ability.
How Medium Could Immediately Increase Revenue by 20%
The biggest source of immediate revenue gain any company has is its existing customers. “Uh oh,” you might now be thinking. “Where is James going with this?”
Anyone who’s worked in the corporate world knows exactly where this leads: raise the membership price for all users.
If Medium raises the monthly price by $1, they increase their revenue by 20% overnight.
Now, to be fair, there is a risk that some current members will object and cancel their membership. Not as many as you might think because Medium is unique.
Perhaps the incremental increase can only be 5% or 10% at a time to avoid too many of us quitting in disgust. It then requires two or three steps to get to the 20% in a relatively short time.
The fact remains that it is current members who represent the greatest guaranteed revenue boost for Medium.
Be careful what you wish for. We might all get more income, but it is likely to come at the cost of higher membership fees.
Be well.
If you like plain talk about writing well and navigating Medium, check out my stories on writing here.
