Medium rolls out a payment model for writers based on engagement | Hacker News Reader

Medium rolls out a payment model for writers based on engagement

poynter.org

95 pointsdayve84 comments

How do claps == engagement?

I read quite a lot of articles that are well written, but that I don't agree with. So, I'm engaged, but I likely won't "clap".

Wouldn't this drive writers to just pander to the majority opinion?

Or worse, lowest common denominator "10 reasons to get a dog!" BuzzFeed style posts.

That's pretty much exactly what Medium is, except with a self-help / entrepreneurship spin

"10 Reasons Why Getting A Dog Will Help You Achieve Your Dreams"

I also think that it's a mistake to conflate public sharing with engagement, but the renumeration model is sound. Hopefully they'll roll out another redesign that manages to keep the economic mechanics intact.

That's all blogging ever has been. It's been long overdue that we stop pretending it's the new home of the literati.

Has it ever been different? It's very hard to get published if you write things that don't appeal to a large number of people.

Going through an editorial process is an additional gatekeeper that the Internet removed, yes.

But the editor is paid for making your book more sellable, so in theory the Internet removed a barrier for a more diverse set of opinions in publications.

I think we just traded a bad system for a worst one. Could you imagine what would happen if Nabokov attempted to release Lolita in 2017 using a blog? Google/Facebook would ban him before he even got chapter 2 posted and there would probably be a SJW brigade trying to dox him so they can destroy his life.

Same goes for any book that is even mildly controversial. At the end of the day all these platforms are advertising delivery mechanisms and controversy is just not advertiser-friendly.

Well, he published Lolita through Olympia Press. According to Wikipedia, it was "Paris-based", and "specialized in books which could not be published (without legal action) in the English-speaking world".

The equivalent today would arguably be a Tor onion site. Or perhaps Freenet. Sure, Google and Facebook would ban him. But then, in the 1950s, American publishers did ban him. Until the 60s happened, anyway.

not necessarily. pandering to a strongly held minority opinion might get more claps, or a steadier stream of claps over the long run.

(does medium call likes claps? is that what a clap is?)

Apparently yes, with the additional twist that one can give multiple claps to a story.

While the idea of showing extent of engagement is great, I can't help but notice that articles which would only have 10-12 recommends have 200-300 claps mostly bc those claps come from friends of the author trying to promote the story. It makes it incredibly difficult as a reader to objectively ascertain what is actually more recommended by people. Additionally, as a reader, I have no idea what amount of claps is appropriate (eg is 10 claps excessive for a good article or is it not enough?). The recommend model was excellent, don't fix it if it aint broke.

I couldn't agree with this more. And from many other services that have since simplified their ratings, Medium should already know that people are going to give articles either one "clap" or all the "claps" they can, making the additional feedback precision mostly pointless.

I actually find myself using Medium less recently, I think because of this (perceived, at least) additional complexity.

Is there really any way around this? It seams like the cheapest kind of social engineering

Attention Medium writers: If you want claps, then you must insist that Medium drop the dickbars (see: https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/medium_dickbars).

Medium with dickbars? = No claps.

Are dickbars the things that break me reading medium by popping up every time I highlight text? (Which I do frequently while reading).

I highlight text as I'm reading too, clicking very fast as I do. Every time one of those share boxes pops up and because of my fast clicking I accidentally click some 'tweet highlighted text' button I almost have an aneurysm.

I recently did a test of what percentage of HN users highlight text as they read. 11.52%

61% according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4839436, ignoring to increase text contrast.

Would be very interested in what percentage of "regular" people have the habit. My girlfriend looked very puzzled when she first observed me doing it and found it very peculiar.

If were doing that, we should get rid of the mandatory double spacing as well

BTW: A branding statement from Medium shared with Poynter says the new wordmark and branding system "reflects the unique and dynamic nature of the ideas you can find on Medium without compromising the voices and stories shared."

It always amazes me that people can come up with this stuff with a straight face.

Years spent in business school has conditioned them for this.

in my experience you don't come up with it with a straight face, but you do publicize it with a straight face.

Absolutely. Similar things happen in other fields from engineering to showbiz. (aka brainstorming) What amazes me is that people have a different "mode" in publicity/advertising that allows them to consume this stuff seriously.

It's called hustling.

A lot of effort goes into architecting sentences like that.

They should know nobody falls for that

Tracking reading would probably be a better measure than something that a reader has to do consciously.

With the extra action required, you reward agreeable content, not necessarily interesting content.

Seems like a recipe for clapbait.

And clapfraud

and Russian clapfarms

I was going to reply with a "is this reddit?" But these compact comments are insightful into what could happen.

Its about time for facebook to buy medium and roll it into some sort of longer form content portion of their offering.

LinkedIn/Microsoft acquiring them would also be interesting since writing on LI is absolutely horrible.

Seems medium is lost product wise. It is getting progressively worse and the new "clap" feature is hilariously bad.

I like the clap feature. I wasn't quite sure what to think of it at the start but it definitely better than a binary 'like'.

It gives me the ability to drop 'claps' as I'm scrolling through an article and liking certain parts. I get to the end and there's a total of however-many claps I've clapped.

I hope medium are tracking the position each clap was made, along with certain things like if a user genuinely read the article - opposed to those who just clapped from the front page or at the top of the article without scrolling.

Do you really want a writer to wright for claps or to say what she has to say ?

One problem with that is Facebook is likely to hide all content behind a login wall. At least now the text is accessible.

That creates the obvious problem that Facebook would then own it, and use it to feed its own gaping personal behavioural tracking maw.

No. Fucking. Thanks.

"Medium pays authors by dividing up every individual subscriber’s fee between the different articles they’ve read that month."

So if you read one article during a month , your entire fee would go to one source even if you are subscribed to many sources ? Not sure how to feel about this.

Why? It's the consumer's fault s/he over paid for one article. Author got lucky. Good for them.

If I want to support a source without remembering to read every article or clap a thousand times , I can't under this model.

Plus, is this going to be transparent to the readers? Will I know how my 5$ were split among sources?

Well if your trying to support a source and don't read any of their content are they really benefiting engagement to the platform like Medium wants?

Maybe they can add a Patreon system as well.

Once you pay Medium, it's Medium's money. Sending fine-grained monetary support to content creators is exactly what Patreon is for.

Were you serious about your bet?

The fact that you are tracking down my other comments to make remarks completely unrelated to the thread isn't exactly convincing me I was wrong.

That sorta makes sense. If you were the one article that brought a user online that month, and the user is a full paying user, perhaps you earned it.

Really though I think you should give articles a weight that's got a six month half-life or so. Users who read articles 6 months ago are still paying out to those authors, but not as much as they are paying out to the recent articles.

You even incentivize readers to read more. What's not to love?

But it's in the writer's best interest that I only read 1 article, theirs. Also, it's probably best for Medium that I read fewer articles- at least then some writers earn a reasonable amount of money and stick around instead of everybody earning a pittance.

That's a valid model if there are very few readers. The number of paying visitors is probably monotonically increasing with the amount of content. Maybe medium has created a model about the critical mass of paying readers to sustain the ecosystem.

Perhaps a bit off topic but Medium seems to be experimenting and "pushing" writers to write more. I don't write regularly and my articles don't attract much traffic/visitors. However, the followers are increasing exponentially for no apparent reason. I see no correlation with anything and I don't know where to look.

Feels like Medium is clutching at straws after failing with the Members-Only content model...

Medium has a core challenge ahead, and IMHO the opportunity is more akin to Patreon donations and less akin to Facebook likes.

I read many long blog posts especially about tech. I donate money to many authors and creators. I've learned the hard way that paywalls interfere with my ability to share links with more people, and undermine open source discussions. And voting systems tend to be gamed.

Medium's price point is a risk. Flat monthly fees of $5 is too low for what I spend on quality writing, but also too high for many people in less-wealthy areas.

I advocate a tip jar. It's the worst form of payment, except for all the others. I also advocate a sponsorship button to encourage future writing and projects.

I believe success looks a lot like what creators such as Amanda Palmer are doing with fundraising. If you're interested, watch her TED talk or her Patreon page. I don't know if her way would work for part-time writers, or ad-hoc bloggers. I do believe it's a worthwhile experiment.

What works for creators (something like Patreon) won't work for Medium in this case. Medium needs to profit in a substantial way, and billing millions of credit cards every month seems the only way to get there. The clap-funding thing is just an attempt at including creators so they don't stop using Medium.

But, as a product, Medium is only a nice-to-have. My willingness to support my favorite writers is wholly disconnected from an interest in paying Medium for access.

If they hadn't taken so much money, Medium could be funded like Wikipedia. My $5/mo would feel better spent if it were helping fund the operation as opposed to propping up a billionaire's latest experiment.

That said, maybe we should all just be thankful Medium isn't trying to solve their problem with an ICO.

I agree with you and there is no best method. I think the sponsorship kind of approach is generally best. I posted previously that I think some kind pay per read (micro-payment) might work if done right.

Something like this: Any writer can submit an article with a micro-payment pay wall but first they must have previously done the following: They must have submitted a free article (500+ words?) within the last 12 months (and maybe requires some number of likes on your free articles) and the first 100 words are available as a snippet. Then if you like the author and the idea of the article you pay ($1? or ??) out of your Medium balance.

Authors are required to invest and develop a following but then it is easy for them to monetize their supporters. I also removes any kind of fraud since it is direct payment.

I think the other thing that Medium needs to improve on is helping to expose new authors with something interesting to say. Just emailing me all new articles every day is annoying. I'd rather get a list of three once a week that have been vetted and I'm likely to enjoy.

> Essentially, we look at the engagement of each individual member (claps being the primary signal) and allocate their monthly subscription fee based on that engagement.

Reminds me of the sad Jeb Bush quote from last year, "Please clap.".

> To make its new pay-by-engagement initiative work, Medium needs to get enough people to shell out the $5/per month membership fee.

I don't see this model ever working. I just don't see content worth paying for. Most of the articles I read, be it on Medium or elsewhere, are by people who are passionate about a subject who want their content to be as widespread as possible. The content creators I see using this are not those people.

> The paywall will now be metered, mirroring similar paywalls at The New York Times and The Washington Post, allowing non-members a limited amount of locked stories each month.

Surely I'm not the only one that regularly clears their browser cookies. I've never ran into this being an issue for any of those sites.

There's no reason to have the "claps" -- they could easily measure engagement without the readers having to actively do anything (visits to page/time on site, etc.). This reeks of a gimmick/someone trying to do something for their MBA thesis, vs. actually trying to get authors fairly paid.

Wouldn't that invite for more extremist/incendiary texts?

Are you implying certain viewpoints aren't worthy of their own space to be expressed?

There's a valid concern that Medium would be sending money to those with "alt" viewpoints, or that Medium ends up having to censor those same "alt" viewpoints (de-platforming) to avoid that.

People with good content that you don't agree with don't deserve the same opportunity to be paid for their content? I've never used medium but it's starting to sound like I better not bother.

I'm not implying it, I'm saying it: some points of view don't belong on Medium (or anywhere else that I might see them).

So you want an institutionalized echo chamber rather than just an organic one? Are you really so afraid of these people that you believe they have to be silenced?

I can understand certain behaviors not being allowed but viewpoints?

>So you want an institutionalized echo chamber rather than just an organic one?

Yes.

I would love to support a site that puts its foot down and says extreme, offensive viewpoints are prohibited.

And yes, I am afraid of (some of) "these people." Have you not watched the news for like the last fifty years?

>And yes, I am afraid of (some of) "these people."

I am far, far more afraid of you and those who share your viewpoint.

Really, you are more afraid of someone who would rather not support nazis than actual nazis?

The number of actual nazis around is so incredibly small that it's not just statistically insignificant, but had that car related incident not happened recently it would go almost totally unmentioned.

The number of people such as yourself who want to censor speech and police thought, however, is frighteningly high. You are the same as those who advocated for book bannings and burnings at other points in history and it is depressing that your point of view has the strength it currently does once again.

Maybe not Nazis, but violent bigots are quite abundant. 19 trans women have been murdered just this year, and that's just what gets reported. I hear personal accounts from LGBTQ friends daily about threats and actual violence. Then there's all the other stuff people like me deal with: losing housing, jobs, family because we finally got up the courage to live as who we are rather than what powerful sections of society expect us to be.

I'm a lot more afraid of someone who's decided it's time to "show them queers who's boss" with me as the target than someone who wants to keep that same person off Medium. There are ample publishing opportunities for bigots. Unlike refusing to serve someone at the only grocery store in town, one of a million publishing outlets refusing to take an article has minimal effect.

Relevant aside: the picture of the Nazi book burning often shown when talking about free speech was from a clinic in Germany that researched and supported LGBTQ people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...

>Maybe not Nazis, but violent bigots are quite abundant. 19 trans women have been murdered just this year, and that's just what gets reported. I hear personal accounts from LGBTQ friends daily about threats and actual violence

19 people out of a group of 0.3% of the population (self-reported) being murdered is far below the average intentional homicide rate of the general population.

By far I mean it's working out at about 0.2/100,000 compared to the 4.8/100,000 as experienced overall.

Can we not discuss this without leaning on appeals to emotion and hearsay?

>> Can we not discuss this without leaning on appeals to emotion...

No. I'm not a robot. The value and limits of free speech are all about feelings, especially whose feelings matter more and in what contexts. Without feelings, rights wouldn't matter because no one would care how people treat each other.

You seem to be deliberately choosing the least charitable interpretation of your interlocutor's argument or statement.

That's neither becoming nor conducive to discourse.

Expanding the Medium Partner Program

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15074123

FYI

How about a payment model based on PageRank? This way Medium can measure the engagement from all over the web and not just Medium or Medium partners.

The most interesting bit is the footer with links to discussions of the organizations leaving Medium... apparently this time donations will be the answer!

I'm not sure I want to give someone the clap!

(It is slang for gonorrhea, although perhaps a bit archaic now.)

People pay for Medium? I fail to see what useful service it provides.

"Club Penguin for narcissists."

I pay for youtube and medium is basically a text based version of that.

There are not many social media platforms where users pay more undivided attention. Medium is one such platform where Long form articles get attention and they've got an active user base too. Paywall - Medium Member seems to be a decent monetization plan yet without Writers being shared the same income, Quality articles might not flow in. This seems to be a wise decision for a company to get some numbers on their balance sheet and gain some giant's attention for potential acquisition!

Medium is definitely making some major moves and I love it. Especially the claps. They are so many quality posts there and I love giving people standing ovation they deserve.

Can you give us some examples of such quality posts?

Sure thing man. 1. https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/10-cold-em... - was on HN homepage 2. https://chatbotslife.com/how-i-got-100k-users-in-1-month-usi... 3. https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-you-can-land-a-6-figure-... 4. https://medium.com/personal-growth/how-to-use-angellist-to-g...

Those read like spammy, scammy get-rich-quick titles to me.

I love this idea! It's like what a lot of cryptocurrency powered content sites work like https://steemit.com/ where you upvote with crypto.

But this brings it to the fiat world. And members get access to paid content. It's awesome! I just wish Medium worked on their white-labelling a bit more, and added a few advanced editorial features and I'd switch our company blog over immediately.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com