Medium: "We're Rewarding External Traffic"

1. 68

   eugbugposted 41 hours ago

   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"

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      bravewarriorposted 41 hours agoin reply to this

      I'm not on Medium. I've heard a lot a complaints about the platform lately.

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      OldRosesposted 25 hours agoin reply to this

      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.

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         eugbugposted 25 hours agoin reply to this

         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.

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         theraggededgeposted 24 minutes agoin reply to this

         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.

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      Genna Eastposted 92 minutes agoin reply to this

      That's encouraging to know, Eugene.  I hope this proposed change works out well. Thank you for sharing.

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2. 68

   eugbugposted 41 hours ago

   I'm going to remove the canonicalisation from some articles to see whether it makes any difference to traffic.

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      bravewarriorposted 41 hours agoin reply to this

      Let us know, Eugene.

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         eugbugposted 41 hours agoin reply to this

         Will do.

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3. 73

   PaulGoodman67posted 39 hours ago

   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.

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4. 85

   Jodahposted 29 hours ago

   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.

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5. 91

   Venkatachari Mposted 27 hours ago

   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.

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6. 73

   PaulGoodman67posted 26 hours ago

   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.

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