Why the Medium Bonus Doesn’t Motivate Me
I only found out I got it by accident
By now, you’ve heard about the Medium $500 bonus given out to the top 1,000 writers. When I saw the articles about it, I thought to myself, “Someday, I’m going to be one of those top writers!”
I had no idea I actually was one of those top writers.
Because of the way my Gmail is set up, notices that are sent to large numbers of people (like a mass emailing to 1000 authors) do not show up on the main email page. They’re filed under the “updates” tab.
The only time I click on that tab is when I’ve requested a new password from somewhere. Otherwise, I have enough trouble getting through my primary emails.
That’s got to be a typo
On Sunday, May 9th, I visited the Medium Partner Program page. I’d finished writing my blogs for the day, and had submitted them to my selected publications. It was time to see how the articles published earlier in the month had done.
The total was not where I wanted it to be. I’ve published some smaller articles this month (mostly about my 30-day challenge), but neither of the bigger articles has found a home yet. And the traffic (and payments) from the challenge articles has been falling off.
Idly speculating about how I should increase my visibility, my eye tracked down the page. And stopped at the April number. It now read: $538.14
That had to be a typo. I’d just finished writing multiple articles in which I described how I had failed to make my revenue target for April. I’d included a screen shot, clearly listing my April earnings as $38.14.
This had to be a mistake.
Why’d they send it to me?
I checked the Stripe account, and it showed two payments. The first was for $38.14. The second was for $500.
Ah-hah! The Medium bonus.
I searched for every email from Medium, and eventually found the payment notification. It confirmed that I was receiving $500.
But why?
I couldn’t find any email explaining it. I read every story I could find about authors receiving the bonus. They all got emails saying that they were one of the top 1,000 authors on the platform.
I’ve only been writing for 2 months. I just cracked 90 followers. There have only been 2 days where I topped 100 views. I couldn’t possibly be one of their top 1,000 writers.
I started looking everywhere to see if perhaps Medium had gotten such a good response from the first bonus that they’d expanded it to the next tier of writers.
Nope. If they had, that would’ve been a major news story. But I saw nothing.
Finally, I went back to Gmail and started looking through all the pages of emails from Medium. Eventually, I found the email from 4 days earlier.
Reader engagement pays off
I’d been following a protocol to grow my presence on the platform. If I liked someone’s article, I’d clap and respond. If someone responded to my article, I’d strike up a conversation with them. If they seemed thoughtful, I’d check out their profile and read some of what they wrote.
You know what? Most of those responses got between 1 and 5 reads. And up to 5 people clapped for them.
I wrote 95 responses during the month of April. That’s in addition to the 31 articles that were published.
Suddenly, things started making sense.
Here’s where the hundreds of fans had come from. Not just the people reading and clapping for my articles, but all the ones reading and clapping for my responses.
Medium was rewarding me for being an active participant in the platform, and driving reader engagement.
So, if I want to win another bonus from them, clearly, I need to continue responding to authors I like and readers who comment on my stories.
Except, I was doing that anyway. And for a much better reason than hoping to get a bonus payout, which may never be awarded again.
Reader engagement is how you connect with people. One at a time, person-to-person, connecting. And that’s why I’m writing on Medium to begin with, to connect to people.
That connection is the real reward. The bonus is just an acknowledgment that my efforts to make connections are working.
Conclusion
I never expected to be one of the top 1,000 writers who received a $500 bonus from Medium. In fact, when I saw it, I was convinced it was a mistake.
After a good bit of research, I realized that I was being rewarded for my focus on reader engagement. I comment on other authors’ stories, and respond to comments on mine. This increases the overall number of reads and claps, in addition to the people reading and clapping for my stories.
I’m grateful for the bonus. But it doesn’t motivate me. I won’t do more of what Medium rewarded me for, in an effort to win another bonus down the road.
What motivates me is making those connections with people. That’s the real reward. The bonus just acknowledges that my efforts to connect with people are working.
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