Confusion About Read Time & Earnings Clarified
What you need to know to optimise your earnings
When changes to the Medium payment structure were first announced, I thought read time remained the key factor upon which earnings were calculated, with member engagement, follows, and read ratios added as secondary measures on top of that. However, it seems I was wrong.
There’s been some confusion about how read time affects earnings since the August changes. We know read time still counts, but does it count beyond the 30 seconds recorded to determine whether something has been ‘read’ or simply ‘viewed’? I wasn’t sure, so I asked Medium.
Medium replied, “Reading time generated by users counts as an engagement point. This includes the amount of reading time generated to the first ‘read’ and then incremental points after this.”
So, 30 seconds of read time earns writers one engagement point. This is of equal importance to other engagement points, such as the first clap, the first highlight, or the first comment by a user.
What about reading beyond 30 seconds? There are incremental points to be accrued for longer reading times, but I wasn’t told where the increments fell, so it’s hard to say how long a reader needs to keep reading before a second or third engagement point is earned for…
