Weekly AI Notebooks, News, and Tutorials
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I have been writing for Medium for more than a year. It has been a great experience and I was fairly compensated for it.
It all changed on August 1st when Medium decided to modify its Partner Program. Before, Medium’s writers were compensated given the time that readers spent reading their articles. It seemed fair and correct to me. Now, we are only compensated if readers clap, highlight, or reply to an article, and if they stay on the article for more than 30 seconds.
Readers don’t usually clap or highlight tech articles. Most readers don’t even know that they can highlight text here. As for the reply section, it has one of the worst UX of all social media. Medium has not been built for engagement.
The consequence is that, while I’m writing for Medium behind its paywall, I’m now only paid a few cents a day for it.
All tech writers are greatly penalized by these changes, especially the top writers. PyCoach, who has nearly 100k followers here, wrote a very good article explaining the situation and all the side effects of these changes: