Medium to start paying writers based on how many likes they get

Blogging platform Medium has announced that it will start paying its writers based on how many likes, or ‘claps’, their articles get. Authors share stories on different topics here and it has become extremely popular in recent years with many brands using it instead of deploying WordPress on their websites.

Medium introduced the “clap” feature a few weeks back and in order to make it stand out, they want readers to use it to pay the publishers whose stories they read most. For now, the feature has only rolled out to some publishers but Medium intends to get the ball rolling quickly so that majority writers can benefit from this.

Medium will be deducting a specific cost from the $5 per month subscription which the reader has purchased to read the articles on the platform. However, it remains unclear how much the publisher will get paid as they haven’t specified a “cost per clap” or any other metric.

Medium will not be taking any share from the earnings of the publishers for now, which is the same strategy Facebook adopted when it launched Instant Articles.

Medium was founded in 2012 by Evan Williams, who has co-founded several companies including Twitter, for which he also served as the CEO. In just five years, Medium has started raking in over 100 million visitors to its site every month and is a gold mine for avid Internet readers.

Have you ever written or read an article on Medium? What are your thoughts regarding this strategy?

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