We have a similar model at Skillshare where we pay our teachers based on minutes watched. We found that both short or long content works as long as it’s engaging. If it’s short, it usually gets a lot more viewers but less minutes per viewer. If it’s really long, it gets less viewers but more minutes per viewer. In the end they end up netting each other out as both incentivize our teachers to create engaging content, regardless of length.

We used to have a similar model to what Medium is doing now – paying teachers based on enrollments. This incentived the teachers who were the best marketers and not necessarily the best teachers. We had some classes with thousands of students and barely any minutes watched. Engagement was low but “claps” were high.

We have since switched to paying out on minutes watched to drive engagement. It aligned everyone’s incentives in the network and created a more meritocratic platform.

Tracking minutes read will be harder for a platform like Medium. I agree that some readers read faster and slower than others. But I hope some variation works for Medium to incentivize the right behaviors on the platform.

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    Michael Karnjanaprakorn

    Written by

    http://mikekarnj.com

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