Summary

The article discusses the unexpected earnings boost from attracting new members to Medium, revealing that even minimal engagement from non-members who later subscribe can significantly impact an author's revenue.

Abstract

The author of the article noticed an anomaly in their monthly earnings, where an older, less engaging story earned more than a newer, more popular one. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the earnings disparity was due to a new member reading the less popular story before subscribing to Medium. Medium's payment system rewards authors when their content converts readers into paying members, even if the reading time does not immediately reflect in the author's statistics. The article suggests that optimizing headlines for SEO can increase the likelihood of attracting external traffic from search engines, thereby improving the chances of gaining new members and earning this "secret sauce" bonus.

Opinions

The author believes that SEO optimization of article titles is crucial for attracting external traffic and potential new members to Medium.
The article implies that Medium's method of calculating earnings, which includes payments for past reading time once a reader becomes a member, is not explicitly shown in the earnings graph but is nonetheless beneficial to authors.
There is an opinion that even a single external view, if resulting in a new membership, can be highly valuable to an author's earnings on Medium.
The author suggests that creating article titles that are appealing to Google's search algorithm can lead to more engaged readers and potentially higher earnings through Medium's Partner Program.
The author provides a personal anecdote to illustrate the potential financial benefits of SEO-driven headlines and the importance of external traffic in the Medium ecosystem.

The Secret Sauce for Earnings: New Members

Collect the bounty Medium offers for enticing new members

Reviewing my statistics for the month, I noticed something odd. One of my under-performing stories from a previous month had suddenly shot ahead of a new, much stronger story.

What was going on here?

Here’s how they appeared in the monthly Partner Program listing:

But if you look at the statistics, you’ll see that these stories were not even close in terms of how much time people were spending reading them.

“How to Challenge Yourself…” had a total read time of 8 minutes, 46 seconds. That netted me a total of $1.02.

“Which is Better Advice…” had a total read time of 2 minutes, 15 seconds. That netted me $1.26 this month.

In fact, all of the statistics showed that Challenge should be the better paying article. It had more than three times the views, and more than twice the reads. It was also a longer read.

So what gives? Why is “Better Advice” earning more money?

I found the secret in the details page.

There were 3 views on the first 2 days this story was out, last month. (I told you it was an under-performer.) That accounted for a payment of $0.05. If you look closely at the green base line in the Earnings chart, you’ll see it gets a little bit thicker that day.

But then, out of the blue, there’s a payment for $1.26! On a day with no views, and no reads!

What’s happening?

The phrase “out of the blue” is the clue. You see that 1 external view? The one in pale blue, on the day a member viewed the article but didn’t read it?

That person was not a Medium member when they looked at (and read) my article.

According to Medium’s explanations of how they calculate earnings, “For example, if a free user reads your story and then, weeks later, subscribes to Medium membership, you will earn for their reading time long after their read occurred. Earlier reading time will not retroactively appear on your graph, even once they become members, but you will earn from that reading time.”

Which means, I got $1.26 for converting that visitor to a Medium customer.

How you can get paid for new members

This “secret sauce” for upping your earnings is easy to add to your articles. Run your headlines through a headline analyzer. Pay particular attention to the second tab, SEO score.

That SEO score indicates how likely someone is to be served your article, if they’re searching for those words. (Or some variation including the same keywords.)

You want to get that SEO score as high as you can. That means you’ve got the best chance of picking up external search traffic from Google. These are people actively searching for answers that Google thinks your article provides.

That means they’re likely to actually read your article, not just skim it.

You can see, that’s where my one external view came from.

I can’t be sure that every new user pays this same bounty. After all, there are a number of different factors that go into allocating money across authors from a single reader.

However, it’s a pretty good bet that Medium gives you something over and above a simple read-time calculation if your story is the one that lured the person into becoming a member.

So if you want to maximize your chances at earning extra money with Medium’s “secret sauce”, make your article titles appealing to Google.

Ready to have a better tomorrow?

I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you increase your confidence and get control of your life. If you follow this daily, you will level up your life very quickly!

Get the cheat sheet here!