Is Medium Trying to Bribe Us?

Or just trying to fight back against a competitor?

“Can you believe what NewsBreak is doing?” asks one Medium marketing person to another.

“They’re just giving away $1000’s of dollars per month to writers who join their platform,” replies another person in the chat.

“They’re going to kill us and we are going to be losing writers left and right,” remarks the Medium subscription lead.

“Where the writers go, the readers go,” someone chimes in from their kitchen on the Zoom call.

When gloom turns to hopelessness, the Medium marketing team gets themselves back together and asks what can be done about this.

“We need to pay our creators more!”

“Let’s start guaranteeing monthly payments for writing!”

“Spread the income around on Medium!”

Was Medium feeling the heat?

Well, I’m not sure if this was the exact conversation that happened in a Medium Zoom meeting late last year, but this fictional call could have very well been real.

NewsBreak was coming on strong and doling out all kinds of financial benefits for writers which must have had Medium concerned. Every writer on Medium was talking about how good it was over at NewsBreak and why it was time to make a move.

NewsBreak was a direct competitor that was essentially using the same format that Medium was. Paying content creators for sharing their work. Medium was doing it through a subscription model while NewsBreak was doing it through an advertising model.

Medium was doing a pretty poor job of compensating their writers. Only a few content creators (6–10% they said) were earning $100.00 or more. People could immediately start making $1000 on NewsBreak when they signed up.

What was a company to do when their strongest competitor was dishing out lots of money to content creators?

Let’s spread the wealth

If I were the marketing team of Medium, here would have been my suggestion.

“Let’s stop giving big payouts to top writers on the platform. We need lots of writers, not a lot of top writers. Why are we paying out so much for the top writers when we could compensate many writers with a bigger share of the wealth?”

With that, Medium could have set out to right the world of Medium creators. Let’s right this ship by paying more to everyday creators who produce more content instead of top creators who are writing the best content.

The results?

Many top creators being affected by the algorithm. Falling views, declining readership, and reduced earnings. I’ve seen way too many posts from the top writers on the platform lamenting at falling earnings.

And what about the rest of us small and medium writers? More views, more distribution, and more earnings.

Writers with a smaller following like myself and others who started a year ago suddenly hitting the four-figure mark in the last couple of months.

Let’s sweeten the pot

“What else can we do to entice writers to stay,” the Medium team might have pondered during these tumultuous times with the future of their writing model at risk.

“Hmmm …we can’t be paying out thousands of dollars per month but how about a one-time bonus,” they might have brain-stormed. Of course today, Medium gave out $350 and $500 to more than 1000 writers on the platform.

Medium rewarded us for being top writers but even more interestingly, they rewarded us for getting the most engagement on our posts. They gave us a bonus because people read our work, clapped, commented, and highlighted our posts more than other writer’s posts on the platform.

Why does engagement get a bonus? It means that more people will stay on the platform if they enjoy reading and engaging with the writing of their favorite writers.

A bribe or a business decision?

What exactly is going on here? Why is Medium spreading the wealth and giving out money to so many people on the platform?

Are they trying to bribe us to stay?

I would say they are trying to reward and boost as many writers as they can so those writers will stay. Anyone who sees their earnings increase every month is likely to stay on the platform that they are already on instead of leaving it. They are likely to become more loyal writers on it.

But more than anything to do with us, I believe Medium wanted to stay competitive with an up-and-coming rival. People were leaving Medium every day for the greener pastures of NewsBreak. NewsBreak was valuing the writer more and paying writers more.

Medium, in my very humble opinion, was just trying to stay in business and keep going. They sweetened the pot for smaller writers and reward writers for engagement, which will make their platform even more competitive with their hot-shot rival.

Is this a good strategy for writers? We think so.

Is this a good strategy for Medium? They’re hoping so.

What’s your theory on what Medium is doing? Please share your best conspiracy theory below.