The More I Read, The Less You Earn. Hahaha. Sorry.

Hope other writing sites are paying attention

Happy Friday

Let’s play a game. Pretend I have 5 dollars to share among 4 friends. Easy peasy. We each get a dollar. Right? Pretty simple. 

Oh, but wait. Plot twist. I’m not allowed to keep any of the money. Oops. The game is that I have to share my five bucks equally among my friends. 

Okay, great. They each get $1.25

That’s a simple game, right?

What if I have 10 friends? 
Still easy. They each get fifty cents.

What if I have 100 friends?
They each get a nickel, obviously.

If I have 500 friends, they each get a penny. 

Hahahaha. Now here’s where it gets stupid…

Go back up to the beginning and change “friends” to stories. 

Voila. Now you figured out how Medium pays its writers.

I am a writer, but I am also a reader. Writers are the minority there. 
More people read at Medium than write.

As a reader , I pay my $5/month for the “all you can eat” word buffet. Then, my pennies are doled out according to how much I eat. Err… read.

So basically, the more readers read, the less writers earn.
On a site where they “want” readers to read.

I don’t need to explain that if we want readers to have stuff to read, we kind of need writers to write all those words, do I?

You think I jest?

Here you go. From the horse’s mouth…

We’re always working to improve our model as we learn. Initially, we will calculate earnings based on three components:

How long members spend reading your story
As Medium members spend more time reading your story (“member reading time”), you will earn more…. (truncated by me)

How much of their monthly reading time members spend on your story
By calculating a share of member reading time, we support authors who write about unique topics and connect with loyal readers. For example, if last month a member spent 10% of their monthly reading time on your story, you will receive 10% of their share (a portion of their subscription fee)… (read more here)

Come one, come all — only $5 to read unlimited stories. 

But don’t read too many or your favorite writers won’t earn shat and they’ll have to leave and go to Substack like Jessica Valenti and Matt Lilywhite and Zat Rana and a whole buncha others already done. 

Yup. Makes perfect sense. 

If wishes were horses…

Where I live, it gets so cold in winter we have news alerts to let us know how fast flesh freezes. lol. Not kidding. Some mornings you wake up to hear that it’s -28, but -40 with the wind chill. They love to remind us that wind chill makes it worse. Yeah? 

Well so does a hole in your mitten. 

I think Medium has a hole in their mitten. 

I dunno. I didn’t invent the system. I’ve been there since before there was a payment option. It’s nice to get paid at all. But sometimes I like to imagine a world where it wasn’t so gosh darn hard for writers to pay their bills slinging words.

Cause it’s hard. Real hard. 

If you write on Medium, how are you doing these days?
Have you seen any improvement yet?

If wishes were horses, poor men would ride. 

~James Carmichael, Proverbs in Scots, 1628

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What I wrote this week… (friend links so you can read free)

• What Tim, Jessica, Umair and Other Top Writers Do That You Don’t

• 10 Dumb and Deadly Things Victorian Women Did To Be Prettier

• “It Wasn’t A Boy Or Girl,” He Said. “And I Think I Made A Mistake”

• Why One Guy Got $6K For 60K Reads But My 75K Reads Paid Less

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Did you know if you click the heart or leave a comment, Substack gives you stars for being responsive? You don’t see them, but I do and thank you! :)

Thanks for reading.

xo,
Linda