Why Am I Making $5 On Medium For Stories With 5k Views?

Mediums algorithm for paying writers is flawed

There are lots of stories on Medium about how much money people are making on Medium. It leaves one concluding there is a bonanza to be had. Write for a while, and within a few months, you can give up your day job. My experience has been different. When I have written a story that gets thousands of views, in each case, it does so through external search engines, such as Google. That means because the view has come from an external link, I do not get paid for the people who read my articles.

In the example above, 5.1K of the 5.4k total views have been external. In each case, it may be the first time the person who clicked on the article has been on Medium. Some of these people will have signed up to the platform as a result.

Airing on the side of caution, let’s say out of the 5.1K external views, 0.5% sign up to Medium, which works out at 26 people. Of those 26 people, let’s say their average monthly subscription of $4.99 lasts for six months. That would work out at $780 of revenue for Medium. While I, the writer who attracted the recruit to the platform, gets none of the money earned as the initial view came from an external source.