Humor
Attention Medium Writers: Let’s Implement the “Roz Rule”
Full fiscal disclosure in subtitles
Medium is flooded with articles about How To Make Money on Medium. Nothing wrong with that. What brings in the bucks around here is always worth considering.
There’s just one problem. Reading along in a HTM$OM post, you begin to suspect the author dispensing all this fabulous advice about how to make megabucks writing on Medium is actually earning next to nothing on the platform themselves. What makes you think so?
They can’t write.
They only have 12 followers.
They’ve only published 8 posts.
They’ve never been picked up by a publication.
Nobody is clapping.
It makes no sense to take advice about how to make money from a writer who is not making money. Which is why I hereby propose what I am humbly calling the Roz Rule — if you publish an article whose title promises to teach writers how to make money writing on Medium, you have to disclose exactly how much money you yourself made writing on Medium last month — in the subtitle.
Which would you rather read?
How to Make A Hundred Dollars On Medium: Last Month I Made $4.37.
or
How to Make a Hundred Dollars a Month on Medium: Last Month I Made a Hundred Dollars on Medium.
The answer should be obvious.
Although if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably read both. One for the useful advice and the other for the laughs. Because there’s nothing funnier than a writer who is making pennies telling the rest of us how to pull in the big bucks.
If you aren’t willing to disclose your actual monthly take in a subtitle? At the very least you should be required to tag the piece with MALARKEY, THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN TO ME, HOGWASH and I’M ACTUALLY BROKE.
Now that I’ve proposed it, will Ev Williams implement the Roz Rule? Sure. Absolutely. Right after he changes the algorithm to pay poets, cartoonists and humorists a living wage.
Writing Coach and editor-for-hire Roz Warren, who writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, can help you improve and publish your work. Drop her a line at [email protected]. (That’s Ros with an “s,” not a “z.”)