That Crazy Medium Payment Algorithm

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Abstract

her claps, then that clap pays a little more.Checking my stats, I’ve found that give or take a little here and there, we earn between 2.5 and 3 cents per member reading minute. If the reader isn’t a member? Nada. Unless he or she joins up. Then whatever they’ve read will be credited to the writer retroactive for 30 days.A few weeks ago, I had an article with stats that said members had spent 39 minutes reading the piece on a certain day. But somehow, I only earned 10 cents on the deal. That I interpreted as a case of a member reading the same story again! (God bless any reader who’ll check my shit out once — let alone twice!)Moving on…yesterday’s earnings seemed to be a little inflated. Like to the tune of 6 cents per reading minute. I didn’t know what to make of my bonus rate. But obviously, it wasn’t something I was going to complain about.Now here’s where it gets curious: Checking stats on a

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very old story this afternoon, I accidentally found that yesterday, that story logged zero minutes of reading time — but $1.17 in earnings! If only every story was like that!My question is: how did that happen? I thought about it and decided maybe somebody who wasn’t a member read the article fewer than 30 days ago, and then decided to fork over$ 5 to become a member. Still, $1.17 represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 45–50 minutes reading. And the article is only a 6-minute read!So that would mean at least 8 non-members who did the reading would have to join up on the same day for this to make any sense. And the story itself only has 189 reads in 6 months. So you tell me!Anybody who thinks he or she knows how that worked, let me know because I’m fumbling for a rational explanation. Yeah, it’s just pennies and meaningless. But still, my curiosity is piqued. So I took 10 minutes to write this.</article></body>

Is there any rhyme or reason?

Markus Spiske — Unsplash

Medium experts have already expounded ad nauseum on the subject of the platform’s new payment algorithm. And as a reasonable researcher, I thought I understood how it all worked more or less until a few minutes ago, I saw some data that totally threw me.

First, I was going to ask my question on a Facebook group. But then I figured “what the hell!” It would take too many words to accurately describe the situation. So why not turn it into a blog post and make 23 and a half cents on the deal?

So here’s what’s up: My understanding is that Medium pays us writers based on member reading time and claps. If the reader who claps for you is stingy with his or her claps, then that clap pays a little more.

Checking my stats, I’ve found that give or take a little here and there, we earn between 2.5 and 3 cents per member reading minute. If the reader isn’t a member? Nada. Unless he or she joins up. Then whatever they’ve read will be credited to the writer retroactive for 30 days.

A few weeks ago, I had an article with stats that said members had spent 39 minutes reading the piece on a certain day. But somehow, I only earned 10 cents on the deal. That I interpreted as a case of a member reading the same story again! (God bless any reader who’ll check my shit out once — let alone twice!)

Moving on…yesterday’s earnings seemed to be a little inflated. Like to the tune of 6 cents per reading minute. I didn’t know what to make of my bonus rate. But obviously, it wasn’t something I was going to complain about.

Now here’s where it gets curious: Checking stats on a very old story this afternoon, I accidentally found that yesterday, that story logged zero minutes of reading time — but $1.17 in earnings! If only every story was like that!

My question is: how did that happen? I thought about it and decided maybe somebody who wasn’t a member read the article fewer than 30 days ago, and then decided to fork over $5 to become a member. Still, $1.17 represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 45–50 minutes reading. And the article is only a 6-minute read!

So that would mean at least 8 non-members who did the reading would have to join up on the same day for this to make any sense. And the story itself only has 189 reads in 6 months. So you tell me!

Anybody who thinks he or she knows how that worked, let me know because I’m fumbling for a rational explanation. Yeah, it’s just pennies and meaningless. But still, my curiosity is piqued. So I took 10 minutes to write this.