Sure Fire Ways To Increase Reading Times and Earnings for Your Poetry

With these strategies you won’t have to worry about Medium’s new focus on reading times or give up writing poetry in order to maintain your earnings.

I have read a number of comments and articles since the new earnings criteria took effect. I must say that I’m not sure how well this new system will work compared to the old one, but I’m willing to sit back and give it a chance. Since there is only one day of earning reported through the new system so far, I can’t say that I have the information to base an opinion on, though I was happy with what I saw from yesterday’s numbers.

One thing that has many Medium writers concerned, is that the new system focusing on reading time will make it so that writing poetry no longer pays or at least doesn’t pay much. Again, based only on yesterday’s earnings, this may have some legitimacy, though I’m waiting to see how other poems I write fare.

One of the poems I published late yesterday received 23 reads for a read ratio of 62% with 18 fans 513 claps, highlights, and two responses. It’s read time assigned by Medium was 2 minutes and the average read time was 1:56, almost exactly what was expected. It earned only 26 cents.

Thinking about my poetry in the past, I can’t say it ever earned a lot. Some poems did better than others and earned some decent money but most I’d say earned less than $5 the month they were published with only a handful earning $10 or more that month. They earned a little more over time but not much. So, it may just be my skill level. Time will tell.

That being said, as I’ve been paying much more attention to my reading times and not lingering on work I don’t feel strongly about a lot of my membership fee going to, I’ve noticed a few things that reflect on some of what Medium has said about poetry earnings as they generally fall under “short pieces”:

“When short pieces are well-written and thought provoking, we’ve found that readers will end up spending more time with the piece. And vice versa: if a long piece is filled with fluff, readers simply won’t reach the end. In a world competing for attention, readers spend their limited time where it counts. Longer stories don’t guarantee more reading time. On average, readers actually spend the most time reading mid-length pieces.”

At first I wasn’t certain this would necessarily be the case, and wondered if this was more of an appeasement to those who predominantly write poetry on Medium. What I have found with my own reading patterns however, is exactly what was said.

When I read a great poem I do slow down and linger over interesting word choices, imagery and other poetic and literary devices used to construct the poem. I often read poems constructed with these techniques more than once and maybe even more than twice, trying to process the depth and levels within them. A good example of a poem that fell into this category for me that I read this morning was, Pulsation by Anna Rozwadowska.

I read this poem three times through, spent more time highlighting, commenting and clapping and was impressed enough that I am now sharing it in one of my own stories. Anna is clearly a very talented poet whose work I regularly read and enjoy. I have no doubt her earnings will not decrease under the new system, and if anything will go up.

I have also spent a lot of time this morning looking at engagement patterns for different poems and poets. While I’m no expert on poetry, I think, like many of us, I can pick out poems when they are skillfully written by a poet with talent as well as knowledge of how to construct a good poem.

Looking through dozens of poems this morning, I noticed a pattern. Without exception, those poems that were well written and high quality received over, sometimes well over, 1000 claps a piece, had highlights throughout made by a number of people and had received a number of comments.

The more thought provoking the verse, whether it’s because it touches on something that I can relate to but never thought about in the way the poem presents it, or because there are several layers to the poem, the more time I will spend on it.

I think the new system will reward skillful poets who compose high quality poems rather than writers who just put words on the page trying to earn money or those who aren’t saying anything in a particularly creative or poetic manner. So perhaps some poetry will no longer earn what it might have with the previous system, but the new system will separate the wheat from the chaff.

How to Increase Reading Times and Earning for Your Poetry

I think there are several things poets can do to increase their reading time. However, there’s no substitution for high quality writing that displays skill. This means continuing to learn the techniques used to construct different types of poetry and working on improving your manner of expression, word choices, and ability to create poems that flow. At the same time, even those of us who are less skillful and who are still learning basic techniques for crafting good poems can do a few things to increase the likelihood that people will spend time reading their poetry.

Add Additional Content

One thing that can definitely increase reading times is to increase the content on the page. This is something that I have done off and on over the past several months when writing shorter poetry to increase the value for the reader. Greg Prince also has discussed this as something that can help increase writing times. A good example of this is his poem Goals Beyond Read which adds poetic prose describing his day to an American haiku beautifully rendered. Another great example is an article by Bill DuBay Jr. ⚡️ called My Writing Retreat Weekend, which is a story about his experiences at the retreat which includes the poem he wrote when he was there.

Instead of just writing a short poem and leaving it at that, you can add comments and commentary that further enlightens the reader. Consider including a paragraph about what inspired you to write the poem. Maybe you want to add a small discussion about the particular poetic form you used. Are you trying out a new technique or focusing more on a particular poetic device such as imagery or personification? Let the reader know.

Create Poems Composed of Verses of Haiku

I have seen many people who have written a single haiku and locked it expecting it to earn money. My position on this which I have stated before is that unless it is a truly skillful haiku that says something and isn’t just any old lines of 5–7–5 syllables I will not clap for it. Now with reading times it doesn’t matter how people feel about locked haiku, the reading time for a single haiku is not likely to earn the poet much if anything.

I have developed a true affinity for writing haiku, even if mine aren’t particularly skillful in their composition. Even before reading times though, based on how I feel about locked haiku, I didn’t want to create a bunch of haiku that were not able to be curated because they weren’t locked and I didn’t want to lock them. So I started writing poems that were multiple stanzas each a haiku based on syllable patterns. Several of these did fairly well. An example of this is More Where Those Came From.

Consider Trying New Forms of Poetry

Learning about other forms of poetry I wasn’t previously familiar with has provided me with new ways of expressing myself through verse. Since I enjoy writing haiku, I am grateful to Greg Prince for helping me discover haibun which includes a prose poem with haiku, such as But For Filled Silence.

I am also eager to try to compose a villanelle, which is a 19 line poem with a pattern of repeated lines. I learned about this style from the article by Bill DuBay Jr. ⚡️. If you enjoy writing poetry but are discouraged over reading times and earnings, try a new form that you’ve never written before.

Include More Than One Poem Per Page

This strategy has been suggested by a few writers and it is something else that I’ve tried in particular with haiku. Three Haiku on Hope and Rebirth include three separate haiku on a single theme with an image for each one.

This method not only will extend reading time through more text on the page, but it gives you the opportunity to add more than one high quality image which, when carefully chosen, can lead to greater engagement along with leading the reader to spend more time with your poems. This strategy seemed to improve the performance for several pages of poetry that I wrote when compared to short poems or haiku presented individually.

Summary and Takeaway

Despite the concerns Medium writers have over the new focus on reading time will make it next to impossible to earn money from poetry, there seem to be a few truths that contradict this. First, even with the old system, it was the highest quality poetry that received the most engagement. The new system may decrease of eliminate earnings with low quality or very short poetry but those writing high quality poetry aren’t likely to see a decrease in their earning and will most likely see an increase. Some other likelihoods about reading times for poetry:

• Good poetry will in fact cause readers to slow down and take notice.
• Good poetry with depth and multiple layers will likely lead many readers to read the piece more than once.
• Good poetry will lead to highlights and comments meaning more time spent on the page resulting in more earnings.
• Comments will also slow the reading time as people who comment often read the comments left before theirs. Some people also read comments even when they don’t leave their own.

For those who still fear that their poetry won’t fare well under the new earnings system can try these strategies to increase reading time:

• Add commentary, comments or a discussion to increase the reader’s insight into some aspect of the poem
• If you write haiku, consider creating poems with several haiku acting as different verses.
• Include more than one poem on the page which is on a single theme or topic, each with its own stunning image.
• Learn how to write longer poetic forms that you haven’t tried before.

While it isn’t advisable to add fluff to your work in order to try to increase reading times, these legitimate strategies will help maintain the readers interest and likely result in greater reader times for your poetry.

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