Should Medium Compensate External Views?

When you win the search engine optimization game, you get nothing for it.

Photo by Firmbee from Pexels

As most of you are likely aware, you earn money from your Medium articles when the paying members read them.

Medium articles typically rank well on Google searches, even without extra effort on optimization keywords, so there’s a good chance that random people on the Internet have been reading your articles too.

However, unless these people are blown away by your writing skill and buy a Medium membership, you will get $0 for these views.

In early July, I wrote about how two of my articles about relationships had random surges in views, and I couldn’t figure out why. I have not “cracked the code,” and these articles remain huge outliers to my typical view count.

One of the articles was my highest in internal views, therefore the highest in partner program earnings. The other one won the SEO game, but these were external views, therefore unpaid.

It’s cool but also frustrating.

I have officially reached the milestone of 1K external views for Lessons I Learned From My Long-Distance Crush.