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They do a lot of work, not just traffic, so yeah, there's a lot of room for them to take a cut and for it still to be a good business. Just at the surface leve
by tonystubblebine 7y ago
They do a lot of work, not just traffic, so yeah, there's a lot of room for them to take a cut and for it still to be a good business.
Just at the surface level, they're probably bringing about 50% of the traffic to a new article.
Then, Medium is also a network of authors. And so those authors tend to submit articles to the most visible publications and Medium handles paying those authors.
They've really created a nice situation where people like me who are interested in the content side of publishing can run a publishing business without having to do the business side of publishing.
It might not last forever (nothing does), but they're on the upswing. We were their first external partnership and then did two publications a few months ago. I think they're about to announce deals with about 20 publications from the community. That's good since there's been a lot of noise about pubs leaving. The ones that are staying are pretty happy.
- dmix 7y agoThis is interesting I didn't know this was how their business model works. Is this something you could make a living off being an "editor" of popular publications?
- tonystubblebine 7y agoI think so. I'm most excited about more subject matter experts turning into publishers. The last two pubs I started (programming and marketing) are run by half time editors so that they still have time to be practicioners. The first one I started (Better Humans) has much more ambitious (and expensive) goals for quality but I think it's a bit early for where Medium's economic incentives are.