Hey, Sass! This was in the members email newsletter thing that hit the inbox today. It may have helpful info for you:
This was an exciting week here at Medium, as we began our expansion of the Medium Partner Program for writers and publications. I’m here to share some highlights about what’s changed and what it means for you, our members:
Even more member-only stories: With this update, we’re opening up our Partner Program so that more experts, thinkers, and storytellers can publish their most timely, in-depth content directly to our members. We invited hundreds of dynamic Medium creators this week and will be inviting many more soon.
How is this different than before? Previously, writers and publications worked directly with our team of editors and curators to publish member-only content. But we wanted to embrace the strength of Medium as an open platform by letting content creators publish great member-only stories directly to you. There are so many talented writers on the platform and around the world, and we want to build a system that rewards as much quality work as possible.
Direct where your $5/month goes: Now, you can guide where your monthly membership fee goes. At the end of each month, we’ll divide your monthly contribution up and distribute it to the authors of the member-only stories you engage with.
The easiest way to influence where your money goes? Applause. The more you clap for a member-only story, the more money goes to that author or publication from the Partner Program.
We measure member engagement on an individual level, so if you tend to only give stories a few claps, that will never be drowned out by readers who clap more enthusiastically. (And applause from readers with a free account has no impact on the money that goes to that story.)
Tell writers you love to join the Partner Program: If there are great writers and experts that you want to see publishing member-only content, tell them to join the waitlist here. We’ll be inviting more writers and publications in the coming weeks. (Enrolling in the Partner Program is free — you don’t have to be a member to publish member-only stories.)
Our expansion of the Partner Program was driven by so much of the thoughtful feedback and input we’ve gotten from our founding members. We know you’ve been looking for more exclusive content and more control of where your $5/month goes. This is just the start though. There’s only more to come, so please keep the emails and tweets coming.
