Has Medium Become More Strict With How They Measure Reads?
Reads are down but what if it isn’t simply because users are reading less?
Since the new MPP went into effect I’ve been curious about how it would alter the behavior of long-time Medium users and readers.
Some questions I had were:
Would everyone continue to behave as they always had, reading and clapping at the same rates?
Would people continue to clap even though it has no bearing on payment now?
Would people read less not that that is the metric that matters most for earnings?
It’s this last point about reads that has held my attention the most these last several days and not just for the obvious reasons. Since the changes in the MPP I’ve noticed a fairly significant drop in reads.
Not views mind you but reads.
According to Medium, a read happens when someone reads your entire article. So if someone doesn’t complete the article you’ll still be compensated for the time they read you work (hence the Read Time metric) but they won’t register as a read in your stats.
Now some of my fall in reads is due to me posting less over the last few days as I try to sort out different accounts and social media and other things I’ve been changing on and off Medium as it pertains to my writing career.
But my publishing less frequently only explains part of the change. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
Article 1: Views 41 | Reads 8 | Fans 12 Article 2: Views 29 | Reads 6 | Fans 2
Now never in my time here on Medium have I had such a discrepancy between views and reads, particularly when the primary source of traffic is internal.
Also, the first article is actually a poem, not a haiku, but no The Rime of the Ancient Mariner either. Poems almost always get read all the way through.
I’m not saying it’s not possible to have such a disparity between views and reads, of course, it’s possible, but it definitely made me pause considering all the changes that have occurred recently.
The one aspect of the View/Read disparity that really caught my attention was the claps on one of the articles.
12 claps and 8 reads?
Really?
Now if this happened when claps were still a thing then okay, no surprise, but now when they are essentially valueless?
Side note: I know Medium said they would help with distribution, but they didn’t offer any more details on how that would work other than a one-line comment about in the initial post about the upcoming changes.
Until they offer some detail on how claps help with distribution, how much of a factor they really are in getting people to see your work, I’m going to assume that claps are a feel-good metric similar to highlights but don’t have much value when it comes to earnings.
So the question remains are people reading less or is Medium much more strict with what constitutes a read?
My take: It’s likely some of both.
Similar to the old clap system when people would read and not clap, people are now likely not finishing articles because they know the longer they spend reading something the more money the writer makes.
However, I’d think if you were basing payment on reading time you’d have to get really strict on how you measured how long a person was reading an article and whether or not they finished the entire thing.
Here’s how Medium say they measure reading time:
Reading time is the time that someone spends actively reading your story. As a user reads, we measure their scrolls and take care to differentiate between short pauses (like lingering over a particularly great passage) and longer breaks (like stepping away to grab a cup of coffee).
I’m not saying they didn’t do that before, but considering it wasn’t as important to how they paid writers, I’d bet they adjusted their algorithms to ensure they were getting an accurate measurement for how long users were spending with the articles they read.
I mean, if they didn’t would this system even work?.
I’m thinking the current system catches the skimmers. People in the past whose skimming may have counted as a read are now being tracked more closely and their reads are no longer reads in the new system.
Poems, in particular, are pretty easy to skim or read quickly and I imagine it’s one of the reasons poets are taking as big of a hit as they are under this new system.
With that said, the change in reads hasn’t affected my pay.
At this early stage I”m about 35 to 40 percent up over what I made last month.
So I’m not complaining about anything as much as I’m just observing all the changes that have happened in this new MPP reality we’re all living in.
So what to do you think? Are your reads down?
If they are do you think it’s simply because of changes in readers’ behavior or because Medium has become stricter with how they calculate reads.
Let me know.
This is How I Made $135 Dollars in My First 30 Days On Medium
Only seven to nine percent of writers make at least $100 each month on Medium. I did it in my first month. Here is what I did each week to achieve my goal, hopefully, you can use my journey to $100 a month to achieve yours.
If you enjoyed this case study check out my latest case study:
