Publish Often, and Medium Rewards You With More Valuable Readers
I have discovered a pattern. Whenever I write daily, my earnings go up. And it doesn’t matter how much money the new stories make.
Much has been written about the need to produce new content on Medium continually. You have to constantly stay in the readers’ minds and promote the old articles with new stories, they say.
All this is undoubtedly true, but it doesn’t explain one thing: Why do I earn up to twice as much on days when I publish a new article as on days when I don’t post anything? Even if the recent article only brings in thirty or forty cents, my earnings go up steeply. So there must be a push for my old articles every time. There’s no other way to explain it.
This push for old articles cannot be explained by the fact that I link to older ones in new articles. Even if I don’t include backlinks at all, the effect shows up.
It seemed even stranger to me that I have neither significantly more views nor more reads when I publish new material, but the income still increases significantly.
So it seems that I get better reads instead of more reads on days when I publish new articles. Medium seems to ensure on such days that those readers get to see more of my formerly successful articles, whose reading time is worth more.
What do I mean by that?
As we know, a portion of a paying member’s membership fee is distributed to the authors whose articles that reader reads. We don’t know how much of the contribution is distributed to the authors, but we know that it is a finite amount for each reader. If a reader reads a lot of articles, his contribution must be divided among these articles. Therefore, the reading minute of a frequent reader is logically worth less than that of a reader who consumes only a few pieces in a month on Medium.
If you write regularly, Medium will show your articles to the more valuable readers.
Of course, I cannot prove this theory. But it seems to be the only logical explanation that I earn more with almost constant views and reads if I write a new article every day.
Why should Medium do it this way?
If I put myself in Medium’s position, the whole thing makes perfect sense. A large crowd of hungry readers is facing a massive horde of writers vying for their attention. How does the platform decide which author to give more visibility to?
Will Medium reward the authors who publish new material only once a week, or even less frequently? How will such authors attract new readers to the platform?
Or will Medium give preference to authors who provide regular, preferably daily, content for their readers? If I had any say in Medium, this is how I would do it.
Money is the best way to motivate authors to publish more frequently. But since more money is a very weak motivator, Medium seems to rely on motivation through fear of loss. Anyone who has experienced how much their income drops as soon as they haven’t published anything for a few days will think twice about taking long breaks in the future.
I am therefore convinced that Medium prefers to show articles by authors who publish little to frequent readers. The valuable readers, whose reading time is worth more, will instead mainly see authors who publish daily.
Conclusion
Medium works with carrots and sticks. If you publish more, you’ll be rewarded with more valuable readers for your older articles. If you slack off, you’ll be punished by less income, getting mostly reading time from frequent readers.
This is a pretty treacherous system if it actually exists, but it’s also very effective — for Medium.
What do you think? Can you confirm my observations? Do you believe that the algorithm really works like that?
I would like to hear your opinion.
René Junge a published author writing on The Full Time Writer
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