Money, Money

Testing Monetisation for Writers

We are curious and want to break something, because too many writers here are shouting at the clouds, all screaming the same thing:

“Show me the money.” — writer on Medium

And with so much awesomeness in this hinterland of the internet, we think people just might ante up a few quid, bucks, pesos, yen, euros or whatever to see their favourite writers deliver the goods on a regular basis.

While Medium is working on monetisation — it’s monetisation from the publishing end of things. We want to try it from the perspective of writers and readers.

We launch a monetisation test for writers — today.

But, as Ev Williams and many others have pointed out — Medium is a community, not a product — or something like that. And this is why we are testing our idea before just launching a small pilot of the real deal.

When we got close to figuring out a simple test, we asked a small number of writers with varying size of followers to be part of this test — they all said YES! However, any data nerd will tell you that more data is usually better than less data.

That’s where you come in.

If you want to test reader’s responses to paying for writing right here on Medium, we want you to join our little experiment:

• We will be running this experiment for 90 days.
• We will be collecting click through data (how many people click on each type of payment)
• We will be collecting survey data (hopefully people will take an extra 30 seconds to share some feedback).

We are housing all of our data in the publication: Show Me the Money. This allows us to communicate test updates with those interested in either watching or joining the test — without asking for your personal details. It also allows us a space to share all the data publicly.

And we mean everything.

Our analysis, the number of participants involved, the glitches — yes, we expect this test will FAIL in a number of ways, the landing page views and all the survey data from the Google forms.

Because we have a lot going on and quite frankly we subscribe to the slow internet principle — subscribers will get one email per month for 3 months. This will be followed by a final wrap up email. If something really goes haywire during the test, you might get a 5th email over the period.

Want updates? Please be sure to subscribe to Show Me the Money.

“What does the test look like and how does it work?”

Glad you asked. The test consists of three buttons placed at the bottom of a Medium post. These buttons link to three unlisted landing pages on Medium where the reader will be thanked for clicking through, told it’s a test, informed why we are testing and then asked to answer 4 questions. The 4 questions vary depending on their answer to the question: Would you have completed this transaction if it was real? Yes or No.

That’s it.

[We have placed the exact test at the bottom of this post. Try it out.]

“I’m interested, what do I do next?”

Yay! We’re glad to have you onboard. Please follow these steps:

1. Select a few Medium posts for the test. (You can add new ones as you write them. *Remember, you will want to take the icons off these posts when the test is complete — so remember which posts and maybe err on the side of not too many!
2. For each post -> place in draft mode.
3. Go to the post with the test buttons, here
4. At your menu at top left of your screen — on your computer, not on your browser/not in Medium, Select ‘Edit’ then ‘Select All’ then select ‘Copy’ — this will highlight the entire post b/c you are now copying all the text and images.
5. Now go back to your post, which should be in draft mode, and paste at the bottom of your post. Ideally, this will be above any bio information you have included at the bottom of your post.
6. Hit ‘Publish’ and you’re now part of the test. (Buttons don’t work until you hit Publish)
7. Subscribe to Show Me the Money publication if you want updates on the test.

— If you still have more questions or you’re still curious…read on —

“What will happen after the test?”

A leprechaun will appear at your door with a pot of gold. Umm, not really.

We will send a summary email to subscribers of the publication and hopefully provide information on how you can sign up to directly monetise your writing.

We hope the test provides the information we need to implement this monetisation feature. A positive test won’t tell us it will work and a negative test doesn’t tell us it won’t work. Both test results will give us clues into any technology issues, customer issues, writer issues and Medium issues. It’s this data which will help us launch the real deal.

“Who are you and what the hell is this all about?”

Oops! If you are really interested in the background of this movement, have a read of our vision of the future. The following appears on the landing pages for the buttons — explaining to your readers what this monetisation thing is all about.

Monetisation of Art

We believe art is important to life. We believe the artist is both the well from which we get our water and the tree from which we get our air. We believe monetisation, the ability to make a living from art, is critical to the future of society.

Until now, we have marginalised the artist. Not the Hollywood or Christie’s Auction or Pulitzer Prize artist. We have marginalised the important contribution of 99% of relevant, lesser known artists.

This hurts all of us.

We believe we can end the hurt.