How Your Earnings Are Calculated On Medium
Write more profitably.
Understanding how Medium earnings are calculated would help you write and structure your stories in a way that enables you to reap as much reward as possible for your effort.
I know, a lot of people still find it surreal that they can make some money from stringing a couple of words together. Well, you should know that well-strung words are valuable. There have the power to inspire, entertain, uplift, and inform. By reading ‘mere’ words, people have been able to broaden their horizons, gain life-changing/time-saving perspectives, relieved their stress, found solutions to their problems, and so on. I can even go further to say written words have positively imparted, uplifted, and inspired more people than any other form of media dissemination out there. And as a matter of preference, people like me would rather read words than watch videos or listen to audios. There is something magical about written words.
Words Matter
Imagination is valuable. Perspective is valuable. Information is valuable. Any of these can be expressed in the form of written words.
Words = Value
It doesn’t matter if it took a writer a couple of minutes to put together an article, or if it took years. What makes anything valuable is not how long it took to create it, but how much it serves the creator or the user. So the value of your creation is not dependent on the amount of time or resources it cost to create it, it is not factored by any other metrics but how meaningful and useful it is to the user.
When we write, especially if we’re writing for the consumption of others, we have to craft our work in such a way that it would be worth the reader’s time. This is at the core of what Medium is all about.
What is Medium really about?
The answer to this question is simple. What do you see when you open a blank page of the Medium editor?
……Tell Your Story!!!
That’s the whole point. That’s the reason why it is called Medium Stories. Medium is all about sharing great, compelling stories and ideas. It has been this way from inception, and the updates that have so far been introduced on Medium have been strategically meant to improve on this core mission of creating a great platform for sharing ideas and stories.
Medium’s founder Ev Williams had this to say in one of his posts:
“We believe people who write and share ideas should be rewarded on their ability to enlighten and inform, not simply their ability to attract a few seconds of attention. We believe there are millions of thinking people who want to deepen their understanding of the world and are dissatisfied with what they get from traditional news and their social feeds. We believe that a better system — one that serves people — is possible. In fact, it’s imperative.
So, we are shifting our resources and attention to defining a new model for writers and creators to be rewarded, based on the value they’re creating for people.”
How Writers’ Earnings Are Arrived At
In the Medium ecosystem, having a lot of followers can be some sort of validation on the number of people who have come across your work and find it valuable enough to want to connect with you, but beyond that, it doesn’t count that much as you can have 10k followers and still have articles with just 20 views. Never forget that your followers probably follow thousands of writers. Your follower count does not influence your earnings that much, and that is why even newbies have as much shot as anyone else on this platform.
Clapping for an article is cool. I strongly encourage it. It shows how valuable you find an article, and it can also be a source of morale boost and encouragement to the writer. But claps do not influence earnings.
Getting people to View your article in the first place is important, it is the reason why knowing how to craft great titles for your articles is an essential skill. No matter how interesting, entertaining, or valuable your article is, if you do not put up a great title that would make readers want to know more, then your aim of publishing would not be optimally met.
With that said, you should know that viewing an article does not translate to reading it. The time spent on an article is what is used to determine if it was read or viewed. If a reader opens an article, and exit it almost immediately, that’ll count as a view.
Back when earnings was based on claps, some readers might read and thoroughly enjoy an article, yet forget to clap, and as a result, writers had to put ‘Please Clap’ reminders at the end of their articles. Writers do not have to do any of such anymore. If readers enjoy or value your work, they’ll read it rather than just flip through it. It’s a win-win for everyone. And since the Medium platform is optimized to encourage great, and compelling articles, it makes sense that they base writers’ earnings on ‘Read Time’.
Medium earnings are not based on Views, Claps, or Followers count, but on Read Time.
How To Get Readers To Spend More Time On Your Articles
What you should know about readers is that they are humans, not robots. And it is established that the way to get what you want is to help others get what they want.
If you desire to get readers to spend more time on your article, then you should write what resonates with them. You should provide valuable insights in a manner that is engaging and perhaps entertaining. Writing is about communicating. If the readers find an article that holds their attention, the writer would get what they deserve — read time. This is a win-win for everyone. If you do this well, readers might go on to check out your other articles as well. Medium is optimized for everyone to win.
Great stories and ideas, if well presented and positioned, do well and bring in considerable reward for their authors. Some of the highest-earning writers here have mastered the art of crafting great stories and writing compelling articles.
Words are valuable, do not take it for granted. Master the craft and the art of writing so you can better serve your audience.
No writer will ask a reader to spend more time on an article just so he/she can earn more from it. If you do your part, the reader will be more than pleased to savour the words you’ve shared. The more entertaining, or informative, or compelling the article is, the better for both writer and reader.
In conclusion, you might be able to amass a huge following, your article titles might be ‘clickbaity’ enough to attract ‘Reads’, the Medium community might applaud your article generously to encourage you, but if readers don’t spend time reading your article, its earnings would be meagre. And it wouldn’t matter if you publish 10-minute Reads. I’m certain you’ve opened articles, read the first paragraph, and passed on them. You owe it to your readers to reward them with an article worthy of their time.