Quora + Just Launched Its Killing Spree For Creators

That monetized popcorn better be ready for you’re about to witness a platform murder itself or absolutely reinvent its brand

If Medium is anything to go by then someone like Sean Kernan will be the oil baron of the online writing community within the next 3 months or so.

As I am writing this, Quora has just launched its subscription service much like Medium’s, You pay $5 a month and in turn, you can view all the content that selected creators (by Quora) have chosen to put behind an adaptive paywall, These creators then get paid by how subscribers of Quora + have engaged with it or something or nothing, yes?

Now, As others have pointed out (Nicolas Cole),Quora is approximately 10 times bigger than Medium for if this platform has 30 million active users then Quora has 300 million active Pseudo-Intellectuals and wannabe wolfs of entrepreneurial get-rich-somewhat-quick postmodern success stories…youtubestreet.

So the logic follows that if the top writers here blah blah blah can make 10k a month then blah blah — theoretically — blah blah you could earn 100k a month over at Quora, blah.

Question is, will it work-ish?

The answer is, That depends on how seriously the overall majority of content creators take this newfangled opportunity.

$5 is an inconvenience for something that is not (yet) associated with having to be paid for at all like Internet Q&A’s which is what Quora’s about, and so people have to be convinced (read: pressured) to buy into it through their favorite creators restricting certain content that they would still like to consume.

If not enough creators paywall (it’s an adaptive paywall) enough of their answers then it’s gonna be like a bucket under a tap with holes in the side, it will not reach that critical mass of legitimacy it needs to begin to transform into Medium's program which is of course MUCH finer tuned and established given that it’s had years to mature and cement its legitimacy, it’s brand.

The idea generally is, that by having this monetization opportunity then selected Content creators (including this dude writing this rubbish at 1:39 am on a workday) will be significantly more incentivized to produce more so engaging long-form content with regards to the questions asked and so make Quora more appealing to damn good writers who apparently have ignored the free platform for a long time.

Now I might actually be completely wrong about the long-form content aspect but quality writers 100%, Quora really wants more Sean’s who himself has recently become more active on his place of writing birth on the announcement of the program a little less than a month ago (as of writing).

That little star (of mine) to the upper-right of my one-good-pic ™ signifies my goodwill subscription to the creation of pressurized great writing which will hopefully power away at the low-quality narcissistic-Esque grime that envelopes too many legitimately good questions on that platform.

If my 300k average views are anything to go by then you better believe I’ll fight to keep it that way now with even better and harder to produce content.

Incentive, Incentive, and incentive is an eternal truth of good economics; may that translate into a better, broader decentralization of quality content creators relative to what we already have now.

Just remember before you completely dismiss Quora +, There was a time when people would’ve never paid (or that it was at least thought people would never pay for) a pretty informal content mill like Medium, yet here we are.

The intention of Quora + is a great thing like with Medium’s Partner Program, actually get fucking compensated for shit that requires skill and effort, Content creators have historically been taken for granted to the moon and back; making pennies (if that) on time and products they could’ve spent making dollars doing jobs that require a lot less skill and perhaps even less effort as well.

16000000 + ad targeted consumers of content have viewed my stuff that collectively took (easily) 150+ hours to produce and all I can say is I’ve earned more money off of a free 14 cent online scratchcard that took me all of 20 seconds to win and scratch, hmm.

Don’t get me wrong, I‘m not some rabid capitalistic monetizer only in it for the green — Most on Medium aren’t here just for the money all the same — but for me and many others, the passion is sustained at its optimal level when it is complemented with some dough you know?

On Medium you can expect to earn around $1 per 100 views if your internal engagement is anything resembling half-decent (but also a lot more) and if Quora’s new Partner Program is to be THAT good then I could’ve — yes theoretically — made $16000, but much more realistically if Quora + is not to be just a stupid failure then one should expect an average of at least $1 per 1000 views in which case that’s still a give or take — $1600 sum of valued appreciation and proper incentive for my commitment to it all.

All-in-all may Quora + hopefully grow to be another cancer upon the democracy-eroding corporate media and a notification of salvation from our banking apps just the same.