Medium Editor’s Program Finally Has Some Clear Requirements

But who is likely going to make it?

First, I have to say this is a pretty detailed update for a long while. It was 8 minutes long, but I only spend like 5 minutes looking/skimming for the stuff that I think would matter to me or the need to bring up some points.

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

Take this with a grain of salt or something.

Screenshot from Medium update about “New: A program to pay publication editors”

This is the first time that we can see how many publications and editors were a part of this new program. I assume they are mostly from the June 1st beta testing publications that had been added to the new editors’ partner program.

What we can see is that there are 100 publications and 300 editors who are in the new program, which means each publication has an average of only 3 editors. They also have to meet the requirements that Medium has just shared publicly this time.

Let’s take a look at the 2 most important things/parts in this update.

How to qualify for the Editor Partner Program

Screenshot from Medium update about “New: A program to pay publication editors”

The first one is simple and straightforward, while I was a bit surprised that they put the “open to all” submission mode into the general criteria, as it does sound a bit off from the last update hinting at higher quality stories; instead, now it is more about gathering the same interest group. I guess we can do both.

I shouldn’t need to explain much about these 2 points.

Next up is the 5 monthly requirements

Screenshot from Medium update about “New: A program to pay publication editors”

I think the first two points deserve a closer look for new publications or anyone that want to know how likely they are to be part of the new editor’s program any time soon.

Generally speaking, it would not be that hard to achieve $200 monthly earnings, as a publication where they allow your publication to publish up to 300 stories a month.

However, let’s give a more realistic example where a new publication gets about 5 submissions a day. The chance of them all hitting over 20 reads is very low.

Let’s say all 5 stories have 20 reads a month, and you times that by 30 days. Where you get 5x20x30 = 3,000 reads a month.

To qualify for the program, each read needs to be at least $0.067. Depending on how each writer earns per read, it may take at least 6,000+ reads, and you have to maintain this monthly, which, for a new publication, is unlikely, unless you have a few writers who can pull in such traffic and are also willing to stay and publish with your publication.

A comment that I left on the Medium official update.

Screenshot of some of my thoughts.

The other 3 points of the monthly requirements are also easy to understand.

The point about “Maintain overall story distribution levels” is something every publication needs to be aware of, since I think it will impact the eligibility, so keeping stories that Medium does not like to see within a publication is not helpful.

In other words, they want to see more stories that qualify for General Distribution than Network Distribution within the publication.

So, too many articles like this one would decrease the likelihood of being accepted to the new editor’s program. (Medium meta stories)

What I’m planning to do with our publications.

Activated Thinker would need to reduce the article publishing to about 10 a day or so to keep up with the 300 articles per month requirements, while we don’t really count how many article did we published a month, but going forward would take additional review of each article on my end to ensure we give the publication a chance for the new program.

Write A Catalyst will be open to all writers at all times. In the past update, I mentioned that it should be open to all writers during the weekend, yet since Medium wants this to be open for a publication to be able to join the new program, we’ll follow this requirement for now.

Creative Loop was originally created to join this new program, yet as of now, I don’t think the growth rate is fast enough, even if we give it 3–6 months more to meet the requirements, but I’ll open to all writers for now as well. We don’t really know; maybe a few viral articles each month can do the job too.

Thanks for Reading

A most read of the official update below

New: A program to pay publication editors

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This story was originally published on [Medium] and is cross-posted here for a wider audience.