Be patient, stay for ‘alf a minute or more
Newsletter: 30 seconds is longer than you think…
Instead of leading with a story, this month’s newsletter starts with information about the latest Medium updates, as well as looking at the current prompt: Victoria Regen.
What is there to say When every dream just fades away In half a minute?
Lyrics by Matt Bianco
General changes: From 1st August
- A writer no longer needs to have 100 followers to join the partner program and earn.
- Medium membership will be a prerequisite for joining the Medium Partner Program.
- A writer will no longer receive a bonus when a person joins Medium via their referral link. (The ones you have at the moment will be honoured.)
- A read will only count if the person stays on your story for 30 seconds or more… Try this with a stop watch. It’s a long time. If the reader hits the back button, closes the tab or swipes away from the story before 30 seconds, it will not count towards earnings.
How you get paid examples: Remember only member views count
- A member views and reads 30 secs+, no other engagement. This will be counted as a read and the time reading will add to your earnings.
- A member views, reads 30 secs+, and some engagement. As above. If the given reader also claps, highlights and leaves a reply, each type of engagement will increase the earnings for the story the first time they happen.
- A member views, reads 30 secs+, engages and follows the author for the 1st time within a couple of hours of reading, this leads to increased earnings for that story.
- Follower Bonus. Stories that are read by existing followers (of the writer or the publication), earn an extra bonus in earnings.
- Boost Bonus. If you have had your story boosted, then you receive more pay for engagement too. Call it a double-boost — or Doost :-)
Adjustment
This is a little complicated so I will copy a quote from Medium and let you read and decide for yourself. I have asked for clarification from Medium and if I receive any I would add it to this post later.
After all of the above engagement points and bonuses have been applied for a given story on a given day, we do one last adjustment… Stories with a lower than average read-through rate will be adjusted down in earnings, and stories with a higher than average read-through rate will be adjusted up in earnings. Read-through rate is calculated as:
Total number of members who read your story for 30+ seconds / Total number of members who loaded your story…
(NB: in the calculation / means, divided by.)
Please don’t get too bogged down in all of this. As always, the time a member spends reading your tale, adds to your earnings. So, if you click on a writer’s story, be polite and read until the very end. And if you are writing a tale, make sure the first paragraph grabs your audience’s attention immediately.
Find out more by reading this very popular post.
NB for erotica writers: It appears that erotica often gets reads, but not the engagement. There is nothing to stop you encouraging your readers to clap and comment.
Community Clapping Scheme
A few months ago, we introduced our own community engagement scheme with this post from Posy Churchgate. The idea is more relevant than ever with the new changes above.
We ask that on the day your story is due to be published you-
- check out a couple of stories which went live just before yours, then read and engage with them.
- If for some reason, one of the stories appears it is not to your taste, then look for another one published during the past week, that you would prefer to engage with.
- This way we can share the love and get to know our fellow writers a little more.
Remember, you get back what you put out… Sunny A Morgan is an example of this. Forever promoting others, engaging with their stories, and also hosting a fabulous, popular erotic magazine.
Victoria Regen — Prompt
The current prompt is to write a story inspired by an image of this prolific model. It is proving popular so we have decided to carry it over for August with the same end result I wrote about last month:
the editors will get together over a bottle of wine and choose our favourite response to the prompt.
The chosen story will be featured at the top of Tantalizing Tales for the month of September, or if you publish with another magazine and your tale is chosen we will promote it with a teaser…
Here are the stories we have so far — take a look, they really are exceptional.
Find them on this list…
From Marie A. Rebelle, Mark S R Sterling, May More, Marsha Adams, Grandma Smillew, Lucy and Richard Steele.
With stories coming out over the next week from Jacques Gerard, Smillew Rahcuef, Debdutta Pal, Alexander A gibbons, me, Marie and Lucy again.
I do hope I have not missed anyone!
Next month we will feature all the prompt stories in the newsletter — along with any tales that have used past 2023 prompts, and announce which Victoria Regen inspired tale we like best.
2023 Prompts so far
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” — Michael Altshuler