Quora has just introduced a passive income payment model for writers. They have also partially copied Medium by asking writers who want to partake to pay the $50 annual fee. They will be paid a part of the advertising revenue — 95% of the take. Naturally, the written responses will need to be behind a paywall, and, as with Medium, payment will depend on whether those with paid subscriptions viewed the content. For those unfamiliar with advertising shares — the norm is 60%. So 95% is very high.

Payment is only for English writers, and there is a link to say which countries qualify. These are essentially first world countries, and are the countries where Stripe operates. It also offers the ability to download a list of email addresses for your followers, and you can build a paid subscription list. You also get a referral bonus for new members.

Writers are paid through Stripe — same as Medium. This means that people who live in the third world will once more be omitted from a revenue sharing opportunity for writers.

I’m guessing that tech has suddenly decided good writers are worth having!

Addendum

This piece was written in August. Since then it has transpired that Quora doesn’t pay much at all. This has partially to do with people being unwilling to pay Quora to read everything and partially to do with Quora being free to offer the work of paid subscribers free anyway.