Medium CEO explains how earnings are calculated 🤔

They changed it again.

Hi there,

This month, I published several stories on Medium, each generating a few thousand views.

However, I’ve got particularly interested in the following two stories:

This story was published in Start it up.

This story was published in Better Marketing and was boosted.

I noticed that these articles have very similar views and reads (internal reads). However, the earnings are very different!

Start it up is the biggest publication on Medium, where I published multiple stories. For the same amount of views, I used to make a couple of hundred dollars from one article.

Today, only boosted stories make me a decent income.

I was wondering what might have happened to the Medium algorithm.

You might know that Medium uses this formula to calculate earnings:

However, if engagement and reading time (people who read your story for 30 seconds or more) matter, why do most writers make less? 🤔 

I’ve stumbled upon the following explanation by the CEO of Medium in one of the Medium groups on Facebook.

It sheds light on how the Medium algorithm works:

So, Medium doesn’t only take engagement into account when calculating your earnings, it also considers the quality of engagement.

This way, they try to eliminate fake engagement.

I personally believe it’s hard to distinguish between real and fake engagement.

I often get tons of comments from the same readers on different stories. I diligently read and reply to almost every comment. Does it mean it’s a fake engagement simply because people post many comments and clap many stories?

I don’t think so!

As a Medium writer, you should be aware of these peculiarities to know how Medium earnings are calculated.

I guess it’s temporary since Medium occasionally makes changes to its algorithms.

We’ll see what they come up with the next time.

I’ll keep you updated.

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My goal is to publish less but gain more output from my Medium content. Therefore, I experiment with the format, writing style, headlines, and publications to reach a wider audience.

You can learn more about my Medium writing experience here. 👇

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That’s it for today!

Have a great weekend. 😎

Victoria Kurichenko

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