3 Factors that Determine How Much Your Stories Earn on Medium

Learning how to interpret the stats page

Hello Friends,

I’ve had a couple inquires from some writers who are relatively new to Medium, so I wanted to provide you with a little more insight into the platform. Sometimes people can look through the earnings and become confused.

“Why did this story with 3,000 views make less than this other one that only had 500?”

I hear those questions all the time, so let me try to break it down so the calculations are a little easier to understand. I am a Boost nominator, but I don’t have access to the internal workings of the program. I’ve been writing on Medium for 4 years, and I’ve perceived fluctuations in how stories pay out, but these are the critical elements:

• Boost

• Reads

• Read Ratio

Boost

The reason that some stories can make more even though they have fewer views is because there are “earnings multipliers” worked into the system. In my experience, Boost is by far the single biggest determining factor. A Boosted story with 500 views is very likely to earn more than a non-Boosted story.

I don’t know the “hard numbers” as to what this multiplier is, but it feels like it is occasionally adjusted, though that’s just speculation on my part. There are months where stories earn a lot of money, and there are months where the stories aren’t as great. However, there are so many factors involved with these changes that it’s tough to say why the earnings fluctuate.

I always remind writers not to complain about the system. Instead, we have to focus on the things we can control.

• Good titles

• Engaging writing

• Relevant subject matter

• Appealing featured images

When you handle your business, the earnings will take care of themselves. All that being said, if you’re writing on Medium, you should be striving to get Boosted. The program is looking for quality work, and I find the work you create performs well on any platform even if it’s ultimately not selected.

Reads

It’s important to distinguish between reads and views. Views are the total number of times people click on your link, reads are the people who actually stick around for a certain length of time.

I’m told that Medium used to pay based on claps, but that predates my use of the platform. Still, it’s important to interact with stories by giving them claps because, if nothing else, that keeps you on the page long enough to make your visit register as a read rather than just a view.

In other words, you help get writers paid. On behalf of all writers, thank you!

Reads and views are divided into two categories:

• Internal

• External

You are only paid for internal reads. That means reads from Medium members. Views that come from outside Medium turn up as a gray bar:

This story saw 86K views and 15.6K reads, yet it only made me $142.69 because most of that traffic came from outside the platform.

Read Ratio

Read ratio is the relationship between views and reads. It indicates how effectively you’re retaining your readers. This is a nice little statistic because it provides an indication as to whether you’ve created engaging work.

The article that I used in my featured image only had a 54% read ratio. That’s lower than I’d like. A story that will earn well usually sits in the 70s. A story that does dynamite usually launches at above 80.

Even if a story isn’t Boosted, it’s likely to do well with a high read ratio. I find that stories with high read ratios don’t earn as quickly as a Boosted story, but they have staying power. Here’s one that’s been doing well for me even though it wasn’t Boosted.

Keep producing articles!

It’s kind of addictive to release an article just to see what kind of numbers it generates. However, you can’t let yourself get too wound up in the data. These numbers provide a general insight into how your articles are performing, but they are also easy to misinterpret.

I feel the best practice is to make small adjustments so it’s easier to learn as you go. You shouldn’t completely transform your writing style because your read ratio went from 70 to 50. Maybe your audience simply didn’t like the topic.

Hopefully this helps! As always, leave your questions and comments below:

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