MEDIUM PARTNER PROGRAM
Are You Robbing Medium Writers of their Reads?
And if you’re a Medium writer yourself, are your own read ratios suffering from this same problem?
This is just a quick heads up to anyone interested in Medium read ratios or to allow anyone who doesn’t know why they’re important to understand them.
Read Ratio vs. Views
Payment for writers through the Medium Partner Program is now heavily based on reading ratio instead of claps.
The read ratio is determined by how many people who click into a story (a view) actually count as reading the story.
So, it’s READS / VIEWS = READ RATIO
How Writers are Duped Out of Reads
I don’t have any inside information about Medium’s algorithm, but I have a sneaky suspicion that a story will likely not get credit for you reading it unless the algorithm is triggered by a reader’s time on the page PLUS scroll to the bottom of the story.
And, from what I’ve observed, time on the page doesn’t necessarily have to be the entire read minutes of a particular story, because different people have different reading speeds. But, I’m sure it needs to be longer than it takes to click on a story and speed scroll to the bottom just to clap.
If you are one of many people who clap for a story without opening the story at all (which is possible), or if you scroll down to the bottom really fast just to show that you’ve clapped for the story, it hurts the writer’s read ratio.
For example, notice the low read ratios compared to views for some of my stories below.
Now, this could mean that readers may have started a story and decided it was not as interesting as first thought and clicked out of the story. And granted, sometimes we skim through stories to get the best nuggets instead of reading word-for-word, but I for one don’t skim through so fast because I want to be sure the writer gets credit for me stopping by to read the story.
But there’s evidence that some of the disparity in reads vs views is because it looks like some people are wanting to get credit for engaging with a story without triggering a read. This is seen with more fans on a story than reads, as shown in the red circles.
How can a story show more people who clapped for it than who read it? It’s because they didn’t all stay on the page long enough and/or finish to the end or they clapped without opening the story.
Why You Should Care
If you truly are a fan of particular writers, then I’m sure you would want them to get credit for you enjoying their stories, and you can ensure that they do, by not robbing them of the benefit of your read.
Read the story, highlight what moves you, or slow down your skim a bit all the way to the end — and then kindly clap and/or comment.
And, if you are a writer on the platform, then you should care because you should do what you’d want others to do when viewing your stories. So, when you are engaging with stories written by new (or seasoned) writers, you should be so kind as to do so genuinely and not just to get their attention for a follow or to come read your stories.
Just my 2 cents.
