If You Could Force Your Audience to Read, Would You?

I would. Actually, I already did it.

You read that right. I force people to come and visit my stories. I don’t trick them. There is no magic. I make them come here. The bad news: you can’t do this. The good news? Well, I am not sure there is any.

The past couple of months I have been developing a Chrome extension for Medium-authors. It allows you to see all kinds of information regarding the coveted Chosen for further Distribution-status (formerly known as Curated) for your stories. It also also allows you to see information on other people’s stories. Were those stories Chosen? And if they were, what topics where they distributed in?

In this story, I share some of the results in terms of views, reads and earnings for stories that are forced upon a reader as well as stories that a reader decided to visit of his own volition.

With great power comes great responsibility

Before I get into detail of views, earnings, and ethical considerations, I need to provide you with some background about exactly what I am doing and how Chrome extensions work.

Chrome extensions are not all-mighty. The Chrome architecture makes sure an extension can’t harm the user’s computer. Whenever you install an extension, just like an app on your phone, the user is notified of what an extension can and cannot do. As a developer you are encouraged to only use a limited set of rights for your extension. The code is under the scrutiny of the Chrome Webstore team and they block publishing of any extension that does more than it is supposed to do.

My extension augments Medium’s pages with additional information. The core lies at the stats page. There the extension shows which story is Chosen and which is not. While reading a story, it tells you which Topics a story was distributed in, if applicable.

Among the core features, I have also implemented a little side gimmick. A lot of extensions do this, actually. And I thought my extension and, as an extension to this, the users would benefit from this: whenever I launch an update, I open a new tab with the release notes, effectively forcing them to view my story.

Number of Users

The number of users is critical to consider if you want to analyze the results of the automatic opening of the story. In my developers dashboard for the Chrome webstore, I can pull up all kinds of interesting graphs.

Currently there are 220 weekly users. So, if I were to force the opening of a story, I should expect to get around 220 views for a story.

Forcing the story onto a reader

After two days, the page has seen 192 views. The number of reads is, at the time of writing this story, is 32. And for those curious: that amounts to about $2.50 in earnings. This 8-minute story gets a read time of 3:05 minutes, totaling a 17% read ratio.

The number provided by the Google Webstore more or less matches the number I see on Medium. I am not sure whether the remaining 30 users have turned off the extension or that a user in the Webstore is actually an installation on one machine. If the extension is updated on your laptop, you won’t see the release notes if you update the extension later on your desktop.

Apparently, about 17% of the users are interested in the release notes. I should evaluate whether this number is sufficiently high to force these stories down the throats of all users.

The reader chooses to read

Obviously, I am pro-choice. So, I have posts where users can actually choose to click on a story and decide to read it when they view the page. To have the comparison make sense, I pick a story that is similar in subject.

This is how that looks like for s story about the extension:

Today, this story has 313 views and 140 reads. Given the age of the post, I’d say the number of views is roughly comparable to the one I open for the users. This story has earned $7.50, in case you are curious. The average read time on this 5-minute story is 2:25 minutes. That’s a 45% read time.

If I were to compare the two types of posts, there is a clear winner: if you give the user a choice, the results are a lot better.

How ethical is this?

Rest assured, I don’t spam the users with new stories as I see fit. Only if I genuinely feel that reading release notes is warranted, I open the story as a service to the reader. Minor updates don’t force a story to be opened. Consequently, I don’t feel that I abuse the power granted by the Chrome overlords.

As I pondered implementing the feature to open release notes in a new tab, I wondered whether this was ethical. Although it is common practice to show release notes to a user, I am earning some money with it. Am I really entitled to invade the peace and quiet of users?

My reasoning, in the end, was ‘yes, I can do this’. If my user base does not like the feature, then I will get feedback about it.

Sure enough, soon after the new version went live I got a comment in the release-story:

Hi Martin, this latest update is phenomenal!

I have one question though. Why did this article interrupt the video I was watching […] then hijack the screen to load itself?

Ouch, exactly what I was afraid of. My worst fear: not only did I take control of a new tab, I also interrupted someone’s flow. The commenter also expressed that an e-mail would be a better way to inform her of any updates.

This was the only response I got in the update-behaviour of the extension. I didn’t change it, though.

The upside of doing releases like this: I am provided with wonderful and helpful feedback about the extension and possible features in the comments, right after people have taken the new version for a spin. It works as a reminder to engage with feedback and ideas.

As for the suggestion of the commenter, I don’t want set up a mailing list for the extension. I can use Medium’s email feature, of course, but I am on Medium not to promote my extension, but to write stories. Stories that are not about the extension. Developing the extension is a major timesink. But a fun one, I should add!

Seeing the results of earnings, I am convinced that this income is not that high that it could be seen as unethical. If I wanted to make money, I’d be better of doing a paper round. The change I earn for developing this extension in my free time is in no way proportional to the time I invest in this.

Still, I write this post. Is it unethical to open up a new tab with release notes? My intention is simple: I want to inform the user about new features. It’s a service to them. Yet, the data suggests that about 83% hardly glance at the story. I would like to hear from you: what do you think? Please let me know in the comments!

Curious about the extension? You can read about it here:

Think that that extension is evil because it forces you to read release notes? I have another one that shows you whether your story is Scheduled to be published by a publication (or yourself). This one does not show release notes (and is unlikely to get any updates as I consider it to be feature-complete):