Just received an email this evening. In it, Medium say:
"The change shifts 5% of the payouts toward stories that get this external traffic and especially to external traffic that converts to members"
I'm not on Medium. I've heard a lot a complaints about the platform lately.
I can't figure out how this will work. In order to get paid, we have to put our articles behind the paywall. But non-members of Medium, i.e. external traffic, cannot read anything that is behind the paywall, so how is this going to benefit Medium writers?
I've been writing on Medium for five years. One thing I have learned is that every time they make a change to the earnings, especially if they tout it as being beneficial to their writers, our income decreases significantly. I've gone literally from earning thousands of dollars a month to about a hundred dollars a month even as my follower and subscriber count has increased.
Maybe it's just a carrot-and-stick, loss-leader thing to encourage people to stay and write more. Only 5% of the payouts is mentioned.
Non-members can read. It used to be up to three articles free, I think. Not sure if that has changed.
I've got one behind the paywall that has had thousands (22k) of external reads but has only earned $45 or so.
I share OldRoses' cynicism. Medium tout new schemes like they're going to be a positive transformation, but it always seems to result in lower earnings. So I will wait and see.
They've had a lot of financial issues, so it's hard to see anything improving without a fresh injection of funds, which is unlikely to happen.
Do you still earn there Bev? I thought that they dropped writers from the earnings program if they didn't publish anything for four months?
I have a small balance that rolls over, but I did get paid a couple of months ago. I haven't kept up with the changes for a while.
Because of the scheme where writers received payments for gaining subscribers, I automatically got payouts every month until Coach Tony stopped that a few months back.
I struggle to reach the threshold now. I earn cents/day rather than dollars/day, much like HP.
Coach Tony's outpourings and announcement make it sound like the site is going from strength to strength, but most of the Medium publications have closed down or are ailing, the most popular writers have left, and earnings and views continue to disappear down the toilet.
That said, if you read between the lines, Coach Tony's main focus is to stem the (financial) bleeding and keep the site going. It's maybe a way to survive short term but not thrive in the longer term.
I agree with him trying new ideas, it's just condescending when he tells us how well we're going to do and it's another thinly disguised cost-cutting exercise.
I don't know if that's the case this time, just explaining why there's a dearth of credulity.
The answer to all of Medium's woes is so simple: increase the subscription price. It's been the same for years, while everything else has gone up. It's ridiculous to keep it at the same $50 that doesn't even begin to keep the site in the black.
I feel less than qualified to say what they need to do financially. Running a media company is a tough business. But maybe with the number of subscribers already in freefall, they're reluctant to raise the price.
I think that Friends of Medium scheme was an attempt to rake in more money without losing subscribers. It seemed desperate to me.
I think the only road to success is to improve the reader experience. Then they could get more subscribers, and it might be possible to raise the prices.
Previously, under Ev Williams, most of the money came from private investors, but that was always unsustainable.
Coach Tony now claims the site is standing on its own two feet, but I'm far from convinced it has a future without gaining way more readers/subscribers.
I still don't think he's stemmed the bleeding yet.
I understand what you are saying, but how can they improve the readers' experience and then gain more subscribers when they have lost all of their best writers and continue to hemorrhage the remaining writers? I think you have it backwards. They need to raise their subscription rate so that they can pay their writers better, encouraging them to stay and for writers who left to come back.
That's encouraging to know, Eugene. I hope this proposed change works out well. Thank you for sharing.
They posted the update here too:
https://medium.com/blog/partner-program … cb28f75bc9
I'm going to remove the canonicalisation from some articles to see whether it makes any difference to traffic.
This sounds good as I get regular traffic from Google and it’s in greater quantities than my internal traffic at Medium.
The development may also mean that moving certain articles from HP to Medium is now worth it.
I hope it’s as promising as it sounds.
This is good news as a few times something I have written on Medium has unexpectedly gone viral with external views, but up until now that hasn’t paid. Now if that happens there should be a nice boost in earnings.
I have had a medium account for many years, the free one. Only recently, I was thinking of publishing there. There are two articles so far.
I can’t say I’ve seen much membership gains due to external traffic, though, so maybe I should keep my expectations low. I guess we’ll see what happens.
Paying for external views should make a difference to this paywalled article.
I have a few Medium articles that get big Google traffic too, but I see no change so far in earnings.
In fact, October so far has been particularly poor, and we're already a week into the new system.
I hate to sound negative, but I'll believe it when I see it! ![]()
I've become skeptical of the language that Coach Tony uses.
For instance, him saying that 5% of earnings will now take into account certain types of external traffic leaves a lot of room for him to decrease overall earnings again.
He makes it sound like we may benefit until you look closely and then you realize that you may not fit into the category. It's very possible that only a tiny minority of external traffic may fit into the category that he's highlighting.
We can't know for sure, as he gives no clear definition of which traffic he means.
He does this sort of thing a lot. It's tiresome and deceptive.
by Janis Masyk-Jackson 7 months ago
I was just curious for those of you who write for Medium and/or Substack, how your earnings compare to what you make on Hubpages. Do you think it's worthwhile writing for these sites? I look forward to everyone's insight. Thank you.
by Amy 2 months ago
There’s so much talk about Medium and how great it is. After all these years I’m still a huge hubpages fan. It’s more laid back and passive income from a website that’s been around for so long is more valuable than anything. I even reached out to hubpages and they let me know that if I passed away...
by Linda Lum 12 months ago
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Ad Program earnings have skyrocketed over the past week. Is there an explanation for this? New ad revenue stream or some kind of malfunction?
by Teri Silver 22 months ago
I know, it's going down and down for everyone. We have good writers, good editors, and the game plan is similuar but different, to keep up with the internet. But this month was very disappointing. I've been writing for HubPages for 13 years. Amounts should hold steady or go up. Is our...
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After two years of non-stop decline, traffic hit a new low today, less than what it would normally be on Christmas Day.
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