Medium Earnings
Medium Responses — Why Are Writers Not Paid for Medium Responses?
Medium Partner Program Suggestion
One of the unique features of Medium is the comments section. Comments on Medium are referred to as responses.
As Ev Williams described in an older post:
Responses are posts. They are the same object in the system. They live at their own URL and can have responses and all the other features of posts on their own. This means, when someone replies they are on an equal playing field, which we’ve seen encourage substantive discourse.
Some other features of responses that make them like a Medium story:
- Responses may link back to the original story but they are hosted on their own URL and act like any post on Medium
- Responses allow images or embeds
- Responses can be structured with a title, subtitle, and all the other standard formatting features
- Views, reads, and other statistics are tracked related to responses
- You can applaud for responses just as you do for stories
And perhaps most importantly:
- Writers take the time to write responses, which help enrich Medium as a platform
The only major difference between Medium stories and Medium responses is that responses include a link back to the original story, at the top of the article.
So if responses are virtually identical to stories, why are they not eligible for the Medium Partner Program and monetization?
A lot of shorter articles (like this one) could easily be written as a response to a related question, however there is little incentive for writers to write detailed or lengthy responses, if there content cannot be monetized.
I know that I have written some responses, answering questions from readers, that took me quite a bit of time, and were several minutes in estimated read time.
If responses are meant to be unique and meaningful posts why not monetize them as well? If nobody is reading the responses then Medium doesn’t need to pay out on those posts. However, if there are comments which are receiving large amounts of reads, it would seem smart to reward those content creators.
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Casey Botticello is a partner at Black Edge Consulting. Black Edge Consulting is a strategic communications firm, specializing in online reputation management, digital marketing, and crisis management. Prior to founding Black Edge Consulting, he worked for BGR Group, a bipartisan lobbying and strategic communications firm.
Casey is the founder of the Cryptocurrency Alliance, an independent expenditure-only committee (Super PAC) dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain advocacy. He is also the editor of several Medium publications, including Medium Blogging Guide, Investigation, Strategic Communications, K Street, and Escaping the 9 to 5. He is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in Urban Studies.