What Other Methods Could Medium Use to Assess Writer Payments?
3 alternative ideas to the current Medium methodology of payments
It still remains to be seen if the Medium writing community will be happy with the new payment system that just started on October 28. This seems to be the third major iteration of its payment system for the Medium Partner Program, and I believe it is a further attempt at better refining the methodology.
Their first system relied solely on claps, then they added in an aspect of read-time, and now finally they have shifted to mostly reading with the addition of a form of ‘commission’ for new members if they sign up after reading an article.
Below are some musings I’ve had this past month on the methodology Medium uses, what they’re trying to do, and other possible options they could look at.
As always, I’d love to see your own thoughts on the subject in the replies!
What is Medium trying to accomplish with the Medium Partner Program?
- Revenue growth —and not profit as could be assumed — “I think profit is not something we’re focused on right now, because we’re really focused on growth.” — Evan Williams¹
- Fair assessments (non-scam based payments) — I can only assume that Medium keeps pivoting its payment platforms to both increase creator satisfaction as well as to keep scamming out of the system as much as possible
- Subscriber and readership growth — As of May 2019, Medium has between 200–400,000 paying subscribers with monthly readers approaching 100 million¹, a huge jump from humble beginnings in 2012
- Quality work — to work towards having the most valuable and best work being given first priority, as based on the readers feedback and actions
Current methodology
- Payments issued out according to read-time — the methodology behind this is still a bit vague — ex. what happens to comic creators and poets?
- ‘Commission’ paid out for new members — if someone joins the platform within 30 days of reading a member’s work, that member will be paid an undisclosed amount of money
What are some other options they could look at?
Set payment amounts per full read
This option would entail having a set amount of money paid out per full read, by any user (not just members). It could have two different measurements (as you see today), showing member and non-member views.
The member reads would of course pay higher than the non-member ones.
The system would also likely require a threshold payment system to control payouts on Medium’s side of the business.
On this point, they could even reward authors with bounties if they can reach certain heights of readership with articles.
Let’s say the average member views 80 articles a month and fully reads 30. The views would count for nothing, as is today, and the 30 reads would then account for $5/30 = ~$0.17 a piece.
We could then average that $0.17 down to a safe level of say, $0.10 a piece. That would then leave Medium ample room to pay creators for non-member views.
Non-member views would then have a lower payment, let’s say $0.01 per piece.
In my opinion, this kind of system would be a smoother version of today’s methodology. The ‘commission’ of the system would then be inherent with outside views. Rather than having to wait/hope for someone to signup, the law of averages would play out instead.
People would have an incentive to spread their work and bring in outside traffic to Medium. Not a huge incentive, but I believe this one would be much more apparent than today’s ‘only if someone signs up within 30 days’ metric.
The con side of the argument would be that it would be harder for Medium to control its costs. Subscription payments every month (if you ignore the growth) are consistent amounts. Views and readership are not, so it leaves the risk of having to pay out more than is coming in.
I’d argue that using their massive base of user data and paying on the conservative side would combat this, though.
Author subscriptions
Why not allow members to ‘subscribe’ to their favorite authors? It would be an interesting add-on to growing a following for many writers.
Look at the proliferation of email lists with many of the authors today? Medium could add in their own version within the system.
Let’s say I like reading Wil Wheaton whenever he makes a post. Sure, by following him, there is a chance that his new articles will pop up in my inbox when he does, but its not guaranteed.
He could also have me sign up for an email list in one of his posts, but then there’s a chance I’m too lazy to go through the hassle, that I don’t want to give out my email, or that he doesn’t send updates consistently.
Medium could have an option for authors whereby I dedicate a certain chunk of my monthly fees to that author every month (or remove it when I want to after).
A simple formula for this could be to apportion an optional chunk of every member’s $5 monthly fee to this; say $1 a month.
I could then ‘subscribe’ to as many authors as I want, guaranteeing their articles priority in my inbox and the Medium main screen. These payments would then be split among the $1 fee that is apportioned.
If I as a member don’t ‘subscribe’ to any authors, then its just treated as the rest of the $5 monthly fee.
Voting system combination
My last potential idea on this is a variation of the read & clap system. The idea being that if Medium went back to the previous system, but instead of the previous up-to-50 claps method, they used a 1–5 star rating system to apportion the claps instead.
In this instance, members would only have a certain amount of claps per day to give, with each clap being a weighted scale of subscription money per day.
As an example, let’s say $4 a month of the $5 subscription is available to be disseminated based on my claps per month (with the remaining $1 based on reads).
That $4 could then be divided by 30 days per month to become ~$0.13 per day. Divide it by another 5 clap limit per day and you have a baseline of ~$0.03 per clap per day.
If someone doesn’t use their claps, that money gets spread out over the rest of the claps each month. If I’ve clapped on 5 articles in a day and want to clap more, the most recent one replaces the first one (maybe).
Two things could come from this method of payment. Firstly, it would make each clap feel a bit more concrete in a member’s mind. I know there was a really high limit on claps-per-day before, but in my mind, I had no idea what monetary value was being transferred when I clapped.
I also didn’t always have time to clap 50 damn times when I really liked an article, thereby depriving that one author of the full amount I wanted to transfer (which was an unknown amount for me to begin with).
Having only 5 claps per day makes a reader think more about what they are clapping for and starts to put together a sense of how much money they are transferring.
The last point on this is that it could also allow Medium to open up a star rating for articles. Sure, they could still list how many claps an article had, but they could look at other measurements to help potential readers assess a piece before reading.
Within the member program, their version of this is ‘fans’ — a unique member that claps on an article. But this information is only available on the stats page of an author.
There could be some benefit of showing something similar to potential readers (a highly arguable point of course).
Putting it all together
I’ll reiterate by saying that I love the idea of what Medium is trying to become.
But its certainly taken many sidesteps along the way and pissed off many publications and authors at the same time (just read Laura’s article below for some examples if curious).
I hope these new recent changes to the payment method benefits the content creators and further helps the platform improve. That remains to be seen though over the next few months. In the meantime,it’s always fun to consider what future options may be explored.
‘Rant’ over.
- Thanks to Laura Hazard Owen for this extensive piece on Medium’s history, written in March 2019
- Thanks to Alex Heath for this interview with Evan Williams in May 2019
For another one of my articles looking at Medium as a platform, please check out:
Feel free to check out my other stuff on Medium and follow me here. Thanks for reading and have a great day/dia/dina/deň/روز/journée/день/天/jaj!