Medium vs Quora: Which Partner Program Pays More Money?

A data-driven analysis of the two partner programs

Attention!

This article does not compare both the platform — they are like apples and oranges. However, we are examining something that they both offer- a Partner Program that pays you.

Table of Contents

1.Differences

2.Similarities

3.Medium Partner Program — Takeaways backed by Data

4.Quora Partner Program — Takeaways backed by Data

5.Which Partner Program gives a better Return on Investment?

6.Which Partner Program is better for you?

Differences

1. Quora Partner Program is invite-only, Medium Partner Program is not.
2. Quora pays for asking questions, Medium pays for writing articles- however, this is too obvious as most of us are familiar with both the platforms
3. Quora does not pay the members, the advertisers do. Medium directly pays its members. This is because Quora allows external entities to post ads on their platform — this is their revenue model, but that also makes Quora a free platform for all the users. However, Medium has an ad-free policy. Medium’s revenue model is a subscription model — to be a member you would need to pay $5 every month.
4. Medium pays for ‘member-reading’ time, this makes the external views and engagement more or less useless. Since Quora is a free platform, the payment is not limited to activities or engagement made by ‘members’ only, because there are no members.

Similarities

You earn money based on engagement- this is true for both Quora and Medium. Medium itself says that they pay for ‘member-reading’ time, which means how much time a member of medium spends on your article and goes through it. The exact calculation of it is not transparent, but they say that the payment calculation is not stable because they pay more as their member base increases — which is a good thing.

Quora pays for engagement as well, but there is a small catch here. Quora payment methods act like a monetized website that you own. You get paid for each click on the advertisements on your website. This can have a negative impact — meaning even if readers engage with your questions and give quality answers, as long as they don’t click on the ads, you won’t earn a penny! Also, the payment is not stable as different advertisers pay differently.

Medium Partner Program

I started writing actively on medium only starting from this month.

As you can see in the above stats for my Medium account, I have written 32 articles so far. Out of the 32 articles, 2 of the articles got curated by the Medium Curators. If you know about curation, you know what it means fo the writers and why it is a critical factor for earning more money. If you don’t know about curation, please read the below article by Medium on their Curation process and guidelines.

https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006362473-Medium-s-Curation-Guidelines-everything-writers-need-to-know

But on a nutshell, getting curated is a good thing because Medium by itself will circulate your articles under different topics- subsequently getting rewarded by more readership and engagement and in effect more earnings.

Below is a screenshot of my best performing article so far:

This article took me half a day to write — for research as well as polishing up the language and format.

The Medium curators distributed it under three topics as shown below:

I think you now understand the connection between getting curated and earnings. But you may also ask,

“But the earnings are not much eh?”

It is not, I know. I was on cloud nine when I got the mail from Medium saying that my article got curated. I would check now and then to see my stats. It has been more than a week since I published it, but it just got a little more than a hundred views!

This brings me to the first lesson I learned:

“Articles that get curated might perform better than other articles, but not always. Also, curation alone won’t guarantee good earnings, Medium members have to read and engage with the content!”

Now I will give you an example of a non-curated article that earned me some money:

This article just got 20 views but earned that much, which is not significantly lower than my best performing curated articles. The clue here is the Average Reading Time. The average reading time for my second article which had only 20 views is 47 percentage times higher than my best-performing article.

The second lesson I learned:

“Write for your reader and not for curators — curators might not always be correct. Research on topics that engage people, topics that people love to read.”

To know more about Quora Partner Program, please visit the below official link:

https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011694187-Join-the-Partner-Program

The third lesson I learned:

“Focusing on SEO for Medium articles won’t benefit you much!”

I have an example to demonstrate this. Please have a look at the below screenshot:

This article got more views because of the SEO- the topic was trending. This is also the article that got the highest views for me, but look at the earnings. This is because most of the reads have been from external sources, meaning ‘non-members’ of Medium.

91% percentage of the views were from External Sources. Like I explained, this won’t cause any movement in your earnings- because at the end of the day Medium earnings are based on the reading time of members of Medium.

Quora Partner Program

I started on Quora program earlier as I mentioned before. Below image shows the stats for the best performing question that I ever asked on the platform.

Yes, it has a staggering amount of views, but look at the AD impressions. Only 3 percentage of the people clicked on the ads!

This is the problem with Quora program:

“No matter how good the question is and how much people have answered or viewed it, it won’t benefit you unless they click on the ads!”

Medium does the opposite: it rewards the readers for genuine engagement.

To know more about Quora Program, please visit the below official link:

Which Partner Program Gives a Better Return on Investment

Here the ‘Investment’ would be your ‘Time’.

An article takes longer to write. While a question is just a sentence long, even that takes time to think- ‘time’ to think of creative questions that have not been asked before, questions that are unique, and questions that will add value to the readers.

That being said, let’s calculate the RoI:

Note: I am not normalizing for the days — Even though the question on Quora was asked on September last year, it earned that much money within a week or so, similar to the time duration the Medium article has been live for. So I am assuming that it won’t make a huge difference.

I think you have the answer for a better RoI. However, this RoI is only for people who looks at ‘monetary’ value. Also, the calculations are not always going to be this straightforward, there are going to be other factors that will influence the earnings. But — Which Partner Program is better for you?

Which Partner Program Is Better for You?

If you refer to my ROI calculation, you will know that Quora Program offers a better RoI. However, this does not mean that it is the best program for you.

I switched from Quora to Medium. Because it is the one thing I love the most — Writing! At the end of the day, at least for me, it is not about money. Yes money matters, but doing what you love matters more.

“I am just a month old in Medium, but I am going to continue to write. I am sure that the rewards will knock at my door once the time is right.”