Breaking News: The New Medium Pays Writers by Reading Time, Not Claps

How will Medium’s new policy affect you?

Photo by Jhefferson Santos from Pexels (cropped by author)

If you’re a writer for Medium’s Partner Program, you need to read this. They just released a sweeping change that will affect how writers are paid.

Readers? You’re not immune from this either. Read on to find out how this affects you.

If there’s any constant (especially in the Internet age), it is change.

Medium recently announced a new model for determining earnings and engagement for pieces published in their Partner Program. You can read the full explanation on Medium’s blog post, but here are the key changes:

• Earnings per story are now determined based on reading time instead of highlights, comments, or claps.
• Earnings will be updated daily instead of weekly on the Partner Program dashboard. (Payments will still be deposited on a monthly basis).
• Non-members who read an article and then sign up for a paid membership within 30 days will have their reading time calculated in earnings. This incentivizes wider sharing and new signups to the platform.

What they didn’t say