Explaining the Medium Partner Program
By: Bj Campbell
Tags: Guns, Random, Writing Tips, Writing, “Top Writers in Politics” list

Call this a one-year performance review, if you like.

I’m guessing it’s cool to put their logo here, given, you know, it’s also at the top of the page and all

I never expected to make a dime on Medium, and I’m thankful for any dimes I can scrape together from it. I’ve been fortunate enough to be featured once, and I never thought I’d get that, given my content is not infrequently critical of blue tribe narratives. But now that I’ve been doing this for a year, and accumulated a third of a million hits in the process, I figured I’d share what I’ve learned. Perhaps other writers can use this knowledge to best utilize the system, regardless of their tribal affiliation.

Basics

Medium provides statistics on the back end which are very different from what you see as a reader. As the reader you see a clap count, which is basically like a Reddit upvote or a Facebook like, except readers can clap as much as they like. Additional claps don’t necessarily earn the writer more money, because each reader only has a certain amount of their subscription parceled off to pay writers. The money is divided up by clap, so if you clap nine times for one article, and once for another, the nine-clap article rakes in 90% of the payout, and the one clap article rakes 10%.

How much of the monthly subscription is paid out exactly?

$2.50

(ish)

Half the money from everyone’s Medium subscription goes to writers, the other half goes to Medium. I’m almost certain this is the number, give or take a dime or two depending on how many weeks are in the pay cycle, by looking at my Medium Partner statistical histories. In prior months, I’ve had duplicate earnings for articles of $2.35 each, of $2.46 each, and of $2.85 each, and the statistical likelihood of those duplicate entries would be astronomical. Each of those duplicate payouts represent one person engaging with my article, and no other articles, over the amortization period. They aren’t exactly $2.50, though, because math:

Medium charges its readers by the month, and there are different numbers of days in the month. Medium pays out by the week, but does so in bundles of weeks which approximate a month, so sometimes the number of weeks in a Medium pay cycle will vary. This makes it confusing to nail down exactly, but after combing all the data, two and a half bucks seems correct. It also seems like the sort of number the guys who cooked up Medium would have put in their business plan. Nice round number off that five dollar subscription.

Now we know Medium keeps half the cash, and pays out half the cash. Don’t hate. That’s way better than Facebook, who pays you nothing and farms your life out to advertisers and the NSA and whomever. I dig it. We also know that clap count is a bad way of looking at it, which is okay for the writers because Medium gives us three metrics on the back end to look at — views, reads, and “fans.” Fans are unique engagements — “some dude or dudette clapped some number of times.” It counts heads.

Outside Traffic is Meaningless

You get paid nothing for views, and either nothing or next to nothing for reads. Proof inbound.

This article:

..has 37,000 views and 6,000 reads since it’s been published. It is by all objective standards a pretty popular article, but has only earned $37 total on the Partner Program as of today. That’s a tenth of a penny per view, and a little over half a penny per read, but 67 cents per unique engagement. Where does it get its traffic? Google searches, apparently.

Only 3% of its total traffic comes from sources within Medium, which would be targeted to Medium subscribers. The external views, reads, and such, don’t turn into unique engagements, (claps) so they don’t turn into money.

This article:

…was distributed by curators in both Religion and Politics, so it found its way to the front of many feeds of Medium subscribers. It only has 11,000 views, and only 2,400 reads, but 111 unique engagements, and made $89. That’s eight times more per view and seven times more per read than the racism article, but on balance it’s around 80 cents per unique engagement. The “per engagement” number is the only consistent one so far. Where did its traffic come from?

31% from Medium, owing to the curation.

This article:

…was distributed by curators in Gun Control, but was also featured on the main page, given free copy edit services by Medium staff, tweeted out by Medium, email blasted, the whole nine yards. (and for all that I am of course infinitely thankful) It also got some traffic from a Kurt Schlicter Angry Culture War Piece referencing it over on Townhall, and did well on Facebook and Twitter. 184,000 views, 72,000 reads, 858 unique engagements. That’s four tenths of a penny per view, a penny a read, and 95 cents per engagement. Again, engagement is the only statistic that’s remotely consistent. Posting the screenshot because humblebrag.

This 184k click beast could have made the same amount of money only receiving 47k clicks, were those clicks delivered by the same Medium traffic ratio as the second article.

Following the Blue Tribe Narrative is Helpful to Curation, but Not Necessary

Here are the Medium Curation Standards:

Quality: It (almost) goes without saying, but the most important factor is that your stories are insightful, considered, and interesting. They should tell a narrative, convey useful information, or thoughtfully share a point of view. The writing should be polished and free of errors. We recommend spending more time on stories of depth and meaning, rather than simply publishing as often as you can. Headlines: Write a clear and descriptive title and subtitle for your story. Headlines should accurately reflect what your story is about — please avoid profanity, misleading “clickbait” phrasing, and using all capital letters. (And if you really want to get into it: Standard headline styling is title case for the headline and sentence case for the subtitle. This isn’t required but is ideal.) Images: Include a featured image with your story. It appears when we preview your story for readers on our homepage or your profile. It should be an image that you have the rights to use. Free resources like Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash are great for sourcing Creative Commons-licensed images. Citations: Link facts (especially in the areas of science, medicine, health, statistics, etc.), quotations, and excerpts to their sources. Profile: Your profile on Medium helps readers know more about you and your expertise, so they can understand the perspective of your story even better. Edit your profile to include a clear picture of yourself, your full name, and a bio that describes your credentials. Proofreading: Avoid major typos, errors, or formatting quirks in your story so readers can focus on the piece itself.

What they don’t say here, is that the “Quality” bullet includes some ideological bias, and the relative amount of bias seems to have shifted midway through 2018. And that’s fine, I’m not complaining, I’m here as a guest of Medium just like everybody else. But as the only writer to ever make it to the number three spot on the Medium “Top Writers in Politics” list without ever saying the word “Trump,” a record that would have stood forever if I hadn’t just typed it there (doh!), I think I have a unique perspective on this.

Half my material is gun related, and can generally be described as “mathematically pro-gun.” I’m probably the leading writer on guns or gun control on Medium in terms of traffic, if not damn close, in the past year. That gives me a data pool of similarly themed articles to analyze, to see what does get curated, and what doesn’t. Let’s run down the list as a test case.

Distributed by curators in Politics and Gun Control:

These were both critical of blue tribe narratives, but they were also both published before May of 2018.

Distributed by curators in Gun Control:

Five curated articles, total. Only two after April of 2018. From May on, all curated articles were critical of red tribe narratives. The “lane” article was critical of the NRA. The “anatomy” article was probably the worst article I’ve written on Medium, but it was slinging mud at Townhall. It wasn’t even an article about gun control, really.

Not curated:

The article on buyback math was one of the best articles I’ve written. The “lying again” article was one of the funniest. The “solutions” article was the most deeply researched. These were not curated.

I’ve had several discussions with other Medium writers recently who have also noticed this ideological shift, especially in the run up to, and wake of, Kavanaugh. My Kavanaugh article was about using sociobiology to analyze the freakoutery, and although it got about 4,000 hits, it wasn’t curated. Which is fine, the number of Kavanaugh articles the poor curators had to chew through was probably in the thousands. But the ones they did pick were monolithically blue tribe, on an issue that the country was basically divided in half. I expect the writers on Medium break more blue than red, but I highly doubt that every single article worth curating, or featuring, was blue.

And that’s fine as well. It’s their business, and I’m happy they let me publish here, and they do occasionally curate blue narrative divergent articles. (SJCSR above) I do think it’s a strange business decision to curate in this way, because it opens a business opportunity for someone to build a Red Tribe Medium Clone, given Medium has chosen to only chase half the available market share. But the most important takeaway for you, the Medium Writer whose still surprisingly reading this article, is this. If you want to earn money, don the Blue Backpack. I bet umair haque makes bank.

This article won’t get curated, nor should it. It’s quite honestly only really useful for Medium writers anyway.

Summary:

I’m not actually worried about making money here, because I have a real job. But if you are, here are your tips:

1) Count fans, not hits or reads.

2) Get curated, because curation puts you in front of the people who pay you with their engagement. External traffic is fun, but it doesn’t matter. There’s some chatter that being in a publication is important.

3) If you’re going to write culture war stuff, Go Blue Tribe.

Hope this helps.