MEDIUM

Dear Medium, Can We Have a Word About MPP Transparency?

Because I’d really like more information about my earnings

Dear Medium,

First of all, let me thank you for the opportunity to work with you providing valuable content for readers. This opportunity has given voice to my writing, put my work in front of a diverse group of readers, earned me a bit of author platform and name recognition, and earned me a few bucks along the way.

But I have serious concerns about the payment arrangement we have.

I provide well-written, reader-focused content, offer assistance to my coworkers whenever needed, and I show up for work here every single day without fail. In over a year I have been here every single day — even when I had surgery last year. I am doing the work.

I work with integrity, follow all of your rules of engagement, and interact respectfully with my peers as I value professionalism as well as creativity.

My issue is with the Medium Partner Program (not that it exists!) regarding the lack of transparency. At no other job has it been more difficult for me to figure out earnings. For example, what is my highest earning article? If I want to know this, I have to dig through stats and perform magical guess-ery on exactly how to find this information. It makes absolutely no sense that as writers we cannot evaluate our work based on what is earning the most.

Here are a few suggestions regarding MPP, from myself, one of your humble (and very dedicated) writers:

• Provide a way for us to view lifetime earnings at a glance for our body of work. We should be able to see lifetime earnings, organize ascending or descending in order of lifetime earnings, and we should be able to view monthly earnings in this way as well. We should not have to go into stats, sort by views or reads and open each article one at a time to try and figure out what each one is making. One MPP stats page with metrics by which we can organize and view in list form.
• Provide a way for us to view at a glance our lifetime earnings per article comparable to internal vs external reads. Some of my work has several thousand reads and yet has earned less than 5.00. It would be nice to evaluate how our articles are earning in this manner. It helps us to decide what to continue writing and the best placement for that work. I cannot adjust my own income (by writing what works) with little information or with information that is extremely labor-intensive to find.
• Please, provide more data to us regarding the earnings here on Medium as a whole. More than the top article of the month or the top earner of the month. What genre was this top-earning article? Was it a curated article? What were the top earning genres or topics overall? Some of us would like to work toward our goals fully informed. Full disclosure does not have to violate the MPP privacy of any writer. There are ways to provide earnings data that is more helpful than just those two pieces of information. If there is a Medium (overall) data disclosure in place, I have not gotten the memo.

Regarding other forms of advancement and achievement:

• Provide a way for us to advance by our own merit. Yes, readers propel our MPP forward, but readers are not always the best metric for value. (No offense to readers.) There must be some way that well-written work is valued as much as well-read work — and no, they are NOT always the same. Here is how I propose this can be done: Writers that work for longer periods of time and are dedicated to the platform should be rewarded for doing so. Even if it is simply a tiered system of badges: One-year writer, 500+ articles writer, Curated 100+ times writer, etc. Recognition for our efforts goes a long way for contributor motivation, adds credibility to our work and possibly encourages wider readership of our work.

One quick recommendation regarding curation — which is essential to the distribution of our work:

• Please provide some source of curation-recommendation. A button or something on articles so other writers / coworkers here can recommend the story for curation. Each writer can have a limited number of these recommendations they can make per month so it does not become a friends-helping friends thing. When I read something great, I want to tip off curators to the great content.

I think that sums up my recommendations, and please forgive the intrusion of a formal letter. I know the Medium-powers-that-be are very busy people and I do not intend for this to come off as complaint. It is not complaint — I am very excited to be here. Just as excited as I was over a year ago when I signed on here as a contributor.

Only, I would like to have more information, more transparency, and a greater chance to evaluate my earnings and try to improve my profitability here.

Thank you for your time,

Christina M. Ward Medium Content Contributor

P.S. Can we get some doughnuts in the break room please? And someone needs to do something about that Bryan Havoc…someone keeps stealing my sandwich out of the fridge. I saw him posting pics of sandwiches on Facebook so I think it might be him.

Thank you for reading this slice-of-life, semi-humorous office letter from a Medium writer. I truly am extremely grateful for all that Medium has done in my life. Especially for the readers that come here day in and day out and lift up writers, our craft, our art — and make us feel like we are living the writer’s dream. YOU are invaluable!!

More by this author:

Most recent curations: The Ecology of Baby Blues, This ‘Writers Working All Weekend’ Thing

Other Medium-related writings include: Bizarre Spikes in Stats are Just the Bone I need, Why I Keep Track of My Curations