I’m Happy to Max Out My Claps for Your Stories

The new earnings structure makes me want to support other writers even more than I already did

“Longtime lurker, first time clapper.”

That’s what I should write in my Medium bio — I’ve been reading on Medium for quite a while now, writing for a lot less. And to be honest, in the beginning I had no idea writers could get paid for what they publish on the platform.

After I learned that, I still didn’t understand how the process worked. Finally, after reading about reading (very meta, I know) I figured out engagement in the form of claps and responses is the social currency of Medium. That is, until they overhauled the earnings system at the end of October 2019.

All of a sudden, that seemed to be the only thing people wanted to talk about it. It was coming up in the Facebook groups, in Medium stories, on social media. Throw in the challenges of curation and getting your work out there in publications, and it’s enough to make a writer want to toss their computer out the window.

Love it or hate it, it’s still a guessing game if you want to know how much a story will earn. No matter how good the quality is, we’re at the mercy of the algorithm and it can be a serious downer to see a story flop even if you’re…