I Found Out Who Broke Medium’s Piggy Bank
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s own and are not based on official announcements or confirmed facts from Medium. The author is sharing personal insights and interpretations of the platform’s payment methods, and there has been no official statement or confirmation from Medium regarding the matters discussed. Readers are encouraged to rely on official communications and updates from Medium for accurate information.
A follow up to my previous (extremely) short form, I have now understood that Medium has reverted to its former revenue-sharing method (pre-August) but instead of only considering reading time, engagement rates are also “shared”.
This approach does make sense from a business standpoint. After all, Medium is a for-profit organisation. If everyone pays only 5 dollars and earns more than 5, they will incur a loss. According to my Google search (don’t quote me on this), it seems this platform has about 400,000 to 700,000 subscribers, with 175,000 of them being writers. It’s important to note that Medium also has to compensate its staff and cover other expenses such as maintaining servers and overhead costs.
So, how do you earn money from Medium?
The best way, in my humble opinion, is to have a small niche where your readers are specifically interested in your work and/or from a small pool of writers. This is because a reader’s read/engagement is only valuable if they don’t read/engage with a lot of writers. Basically, you need super fans who are loyal to YOU only.
The challenge lies in finding such readers. For most of us, our “readers” are mostly fellow “writers.” Medium operates like a marketplace where we engage in barter trade. I sell apples, you sell oranges, and we exchange our products. And it’s not just an exchange between us; it involves hundreds of others too.
One positive aspect is that we can’t easily manipulate the system. Even if we set up small engagement teams or buddy systems, it won’t work. Engaging with a selected few might make our engagement more valuable, but you’ll only have those few “buddies” to exchange with, resulting in not earning much either.
I honestly believe that the only way we can earn more is if Medium also earns more. The potential solution lies in Medium running ads, but I’ve read that it’s not a viable option for them. Alternatively, they could run ads for non-members, though I doubt this would happen with the implementation of the hard paywall, preventing non-members from reading for free.
With the expansion of the MPP to more countries, Medium runs the risk of losses, as each subscriber has the potential to earn more than 5 dollars if the post-August payment methods continue.
So, to address the question from my previous article, sorry guys, being from Malaysia which is new to the MPP, the person who most likely broke Medium’s piggy bank is me.
If you enjoyed this post and would like to support me, please buy me a coffee. Thank you very much! https://ko-fi.com/samtzelin
Feel free to follow me on X & Instagram!
