
Revenue on Medium - brandonlipman
https://medium.com/the-story/revenue-on-medium-5e7e6218f70c#.ibkwilzmu
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xenadu02
"Select" publishers, with no mention of plans for general availability?

Meet the New Media overlords, same as the Old Media overlords. Sure, anyone
can throw something up on Medium. But only the blessed can get paid.

Also calling it now: special deals for certain publishers while the plebs get
a lower pay rate. Of course if they made it based on popularity / page views
then it will just encourage click-bait articles even more so it's a somewhat
damned-if-you-do scenario.

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laughinghan
> Of course if they made it based on popularity / page views then it will just
> encourage click-bait articles even more so it's a somewhat damned-if-you-do
> scenario.

I've spent some time thinking about this (but eventually chose to pursue a
project where the biggest challenge was technical rather than the business
model), and there's another consideration you don't mention:

The total value that a publisher gets from a platform like Medium does not
grow proportionally with the publisher's size, only a fraction of the value
does. Specifically, the technical work that Medium does to scale the website,
and the exposure that popular publishers get from being featured on the Medium
homepage, Editor's picks, etc. However, the more popular a publisher gets, the
more the balance tips in favor of leaving Medium for something with lower
marginal cost to the publisher, like self-hosting. (These also tend to offer
the publisher significantly more control.) As a result, to keep popular
publishers on the platform, Medium _has_ to lower their margins for them,
whether by special deals or otherwise. This is the downside of Medium's
platform having only a modest network effect: only modest network lock-in.
(The upside was a minimal chicken-and-egg problem.)

\----

Also, re click-bait:

I think it's worth drawing attention to the fact that readers are discouraged
from supporting publishers with one-time payments (it's presumably still
technically possible by signing-up for and then immediately canceling a
monthly membership). If most of a publisher's revenue is from recurring
payments due to the loyalty of readers, rather than one-time payments like ad
impressions or micropayments or a Reddit gold-equivalent, that helps mitigate
the incentives favoring cheap click-bait.

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tonyedgecombe
"Publishers in the beta may create sponsored content on behalf of or in
association with brands. For some publishers, Medium will provide paid
opportunities to execute high-quality native campaigns on behalf of brands."

I guess this is what happens when we all block ads.

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wnevets
I think it's pretty naive to think this wouldn't happen if no one block ads.

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amelius
Why would anyone publish specifically on Medium, if one can publish
practically anywhere on the web (and reap the full benefits)? Is it because
Medium provides discoverability? I can't believe that is true because for me
HN provides better discoverability, and as a bonus it covers more than just
Medium.

~~~
rayalez
There's a lot of value in not having to worry about self-promotion.

I'm not saying medium is great at that - they should have implemented reddit-
like discovery system, with ability to sort by top posts of a year/month/etc,
transparent front page algorithm, and browsing tags you are following
separately from subscriptions. But they still did a lot of things right.

A platform with already existing audience, and a convenient subscribe button
can make a big difference in the number of people who follow your stuff.

Clean design and WYSIWYG editor are very valuable as well. I'm a programmer, I
prefer to use org-mode and markdown for my writing, so it was surprising to me
how much I enjoyed writing on medium.

Beautiful design and being able to immediately see how awesome your final
article looks, is, unexpectedly, really inspiring and makes the process of
writing more fun.

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mbesto
Long story short. Native advertising.

~~~
mixedCase
Long story short: Article blacklisting!

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rayalez
Awww, crap. I love medium, I really hoped they won't go with advertising, what
a way to decrease the value and quality of the platform.

Member-supported publishing, on the other hand, sounds awesome. That's exactly
what I think the modern web needs. A straightforward no-bullshit way to
monetize quality content. If it's worth buying - people will buy it. The major
obstacle was inconvenience, and medium could solve it.

If only they'd keep it to member-supported publishing, it would be fantastic.
They might not have made as much money, but they'd keep their integrity and
have gained a lot of good will.

But now, with sponsored content, I'm not so sure I want to stay on the
platform.

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pboutros
The monetization strategy reveals itself! I'm always intrigued by
subscriptions to individual content producers.

~~~
jonnycowboy
Already successful with Patreon

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techthroway443
Still no idea how this site works.

Is it meant to be a twitter feed for blog posts?

~~~
erikpukinskis
It's more of a blogging engine. Compare to Wordpress.com.

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avivo
I thought there was finally a proven business model pioneered by blendle for
these sorts of articles
([https://launch.blendle.com/](https://launch.blendle.com/)).

Automatically pay per article, but have it be trivially refundable (to
discourage low quality/clickbait). Is it just not profitable enough? Do they
not control a large enough platform?

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cryptos
Paid content will undermine the credibility. It is one of the worst inventions
in the web business!

