Your Story Has a Lot of Reads, But No Earnings? Let Me Tell You Why

Tweak one of these or all of them to see an increase in earnings

As a writer here on Medium, regardless of whether you’ve started writing for money or not, you still want to see some fruits of your labor.

Aside from views, reads, and comments, earnings are also important metrics that help you evaluate the “quality” of your work.

And I say “quality” between quotes because it’s a relative evaluation, an evaluation done by Medium’s algorithm.

So you’re here because you have reads but dismal earnings.

Why?

That’s what I will try to explain.

As you know, Medium has updated its partner program and with it the way earnings are calculated.

Before the update, earnings relied mostly on reading time. However, after the update, reading time still contributes to earnings, but a few things were added.

These new variables that are part of the earning equation are:

1 — Reading time:

Reading time was and still is an important metric. The more, the better.

1 read = the reader spending 30 seconds or more on your story.

The first problem that you might be facing is that readers churn just a little bit after spending more than 30 seconds on your craft. And this could be for various reasons:

• The content may not capture the reader’s attention
• Poor structure
• Repetitive or redundant information
• Poor formatting
• Technical Difficulty

Unfortunately, the reading time stat has still not been brought back by Medium to the stats page. They promised they would. That’s a good metric to keep an eye on.

2 — The read ratio

The read ratio is a percentage that represents the number of people who read your story for 30 seconds or more divided by total views.

And this variable has more weight in the earning equation.

A low read ratio indicates that your title is clickbaity and you get penalized for it.

“Low read ratios imply that the title and preview were perhaps a bit clickbaity. A story that gets 100 reads in a day with a 80% read ratio will earn more than a story that has 100 reads and a 20% read ratio, even though they had the same number of reads.” — Medium

This puts more emphasis on the read ratio.

The average read ratio is said to be around 70%. Anything at or above 75% is exceptional.

“As a rule of thumb, stories with a read ratio below 65% might want to consider a new title, subtitle, or primary image in order to improve earnings.” — Medium

3 — Engagement

The level of engagement on your stories also helps you earn more. The more claps, highlights, and replies, the more earnings you’ll get.

And for this, there are no shortcuts. You must engage with other writers and connect with them. This is key.

When I say that you must engage with others, I don’t mean you should pick whatever story is in front of you and just highlight random sentences and then write a comment like: “Great article. Thanks for sharing” or, even worse, use AI to write comments.

No!

If you want to do it, do it genuinely leaving thoughtful comments and feedback. Quality over quantity. Less is more.

4 — Wait

Wait…yes

Let’s say you checked the stats for a story today and noticed that you had 20 reads more than yesterday, but the earnings didn’t increase much.

Let’s say that John is a premium member, and he pays $5/month for his subscription. Let’s say that he joined the platform as a premium member on the 1st of January.

John read some of your stories and other writers’ stories. He also highlighted some text, clapped here and there, and left some comments.

The earnings from his engagement on your stories won’t show up until the 1st of February.

Why?

Medium needs to gather all the data of his engagement throughout the month and then calculate how much of that $5 (after they have taken their share, which of course is taken immediately) goes to you, and how much will go to other writers.

But there are a lot of Johns out there and not all of them became premium members at the start of the month. So only the earnings from those who have already closed their subscription cycle are added to yours.

Quick Reminder: If you liked this story, please consider giving it claps
and dropping a comment to share your thoughts with me :)