Medium Mad Money! The $500 Bonus
Why? What For? And How Often?
After Medium tossed an extra $500 into my bank account, I jumped around the room shouting “Yippee! Hurrah! I’m Rich! I Can Finally Put a Down Payment on that Yacht I Had My Eye On! Thanks, Ev Williams!”
Then, of course, I settled down and wrote about it:
Medium sent the lucky members of the $500 Club a brief explanation about why they’d given us this extra dough. It was “because the stories you published in April received the most member reads, claps, and follows.”
The funny thing was that April wasn’t a strong Medium month for me. I spent two weeks on vacation in California, where I continued to read (and highlight and comment on and applaud) the work of other Medium writers — but I didn’t write that much myself. And when I did write, it was for News Break, because I wanted to earn that guaranteed flat rate for each story.
So maybe I was being rewarded for all of that engagement with other writers? Or to lure me back to Medium and encourage me to turn my back on News Break?
We’re all speculating about why certain writers got this cash bonus and others didn’t. People have floated all kinds of theories. Are Top Writers being rewarded? Is this a way to reward short form writers whose earnings plummeted after the algorithm began to reward Read Time rather than Claps? Are claps finally making a comeback?
I’d thought it might be because I’ve been on the platform for over two years — but plenty of writers who got the bonus are relative newbies. And it’s not to lure News Break writers back to Medium — plenty of writers who got the bonus don’t write for News Break.
Are there terrific writers who didn’t get the Medium Mad money? Yes! (I’m looking at you, Ramona Grigg.) And why is this? Who the hell knows? Will there be an additional round of bonuses so that those writers will be recognized and rewarded? I sure hope so. But I have no idea.
The only thing I knew for sure about giving a fat but rather mysterious bonus to a bunch of writers is that a bunch of writers would write about it. And so they did. Some folks have complained about the sudden surge of Medium articles exploring all of the whys and wherefores of the $500 Bonus. But I’m glad they were written and I plan to read them all.
Because if we can figure out exactly why Medium did this — maybe we can make it happen again!
Writing Coach and editor-for-hire Roz Warren, who writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, can help you improve and publish your work. Drop her a line at [email protected]. (That’s Ros with an “s,” not a “z.”)
