Remember the changes made to the MPP a few months ago? You need the following to get into or stay in the MPP:
- 100 followers
- 1 story every 6 month
- ($10 minimum withdrawal).
Everyone is talking about the 100 followers on this platform. Because this is the biggest deal for newbies on Medium. It seems daunting to get from 0 to 100 followers.
Underrated
Today though, let’s talk about the most underrated of these requirements and the impact it might have right now and in the future.
1 story every 6 months. No big deal, right? Well… let’s see.
I stumbled upon this post recently:
8 Things Every Person Should Do Before 8 A.M.
Life is busy. It can feel impossible to move toward your dreams. If you have a full-time job and kids, it’s even…medium.com
It’s a fairly typical listicle with 8 lifestyle tips. Nothing out of the ordinary on this platform.
What is important here is that this story was written by Benjamin Hardy. If you don’t know that name, I‘m not surprised.
Mr. Hardy hadn’t written anything prior to this very post since September 2020. Over a year ago.
Why is this important?
Benjamin Hardy has 241K followers, he was one of the most popular Medium writers in 2020 and prior.
AND he was one of the if not THE highest paid writer on this platform.
He was the number one ranked Medium writer in 2016!
Some have suggested that Benjamin, in his best month on this platform, was averaging around $50,000 PER MONTH.
His work was read by at least 50 million people. A quick calculation of my earnings per reads times 50 million would give me a number of:
$0.034 per read x 50 million = $1,7 million
Now, these are numbers for me in 2021. Earnings per read were undoubtedly different a few years ago for Benjamin. It wasn’t even based on the same metrics. Claps were much more important back then.
Still, Benjamin made a ton of money here. Crossing a million dollars for sure.
Why is this important TODAY?
Benjamin stopped writing here in September 2020. He didn’t stop earning though. His posts were still read, gaining member reading time, and yes, tons of money. This is true passive income!
All that would come to an end in December 2021 though. Why?
1 story every 6 months.
Otherwise, you and also Mr. Hardy will get kicked out of the Medium partner program at the end of this year. Which means losing thousands of dollars for Benjamin Hardy.
So, he wrote a new article. A quick listicle. Problem solved.
He’ll keep his thousands for the foreseeable future.
In 6 months at the latest, he will have to write another post. To stay in the MPP. And keep earning tons of money.
There’s more
He’s not the only one. That’s why this one requirement will become huge in the next days and weeks. We will see numerous inactive writers with humongous followings and high monthly earnings reviving their accounts to write one or two posts.
Another candidate for this might be Gary Vaynerchuk. He hasn’t been active since 2018. However, I doubt that he’s in need of money from Medium. You never know though.
I suspect quite a few Medium oldies to come back out of retirement to keep their passive income alive here.
The bottom line
This rather unspectacular requirement of writing at least 1 story every 6 months on Medium to stay in the partner program has some huge implications for many highly successful Medium writers.
Think about the money. Not the money that Benjamin would lose if he stopped writing. Think the other way around.
Think about the money Medium could keep if people kept reading Benjamin’s articles… but for free, excluded from the MPP. Thousands of dollars that wouldn’t go into the pockets of a virtually inactive writer.
What do you think? Is this good or bad? Should Medium make that requirement even stricter? Or should inactive writers still get paid?
