The Anecdotal Science Behind Profitable Long-form Articles
Unsurprisingly, the math checks out. It’s also a great filter…
Perhaps I made a bit of a name for myself for “hating on short-form”. Perhaps I was too harsh. Or perhaps my view on short-form is just that — my view — and it does not represent a universal truth. Can truth even be universal? Is Universal Studios universal? Feck, no! But while anecdotal evidence won’t hold up in court or save humanity, to me, it does have value, and if I’ve learnt something that is universally true, is that one is never truly alone in their findings, hence my present attempt to explain the true value of long-form writing through maths and numbers while also shedding some light on lesser-discussed tidbits around earnings on Medium. To some extent or another, I’m sure we’re all in the same proverbial boat.
I am nearing 400 articles on various topics like LEGO, tech, coding, accessibility, and writing. I’d say it’s a decent sample size to work with. Sure, there are plenty of other writers here with more stories, catering to different audiences and rocking different styles. I’ll admit, that even in writing, there are plenty of variables, which will affect one’s stats. I’ll share some of mine. Likewise, I’ll also share the conclusions I’ve drawn from them. You’re welcome to decide for yourself if it applies to you or not, but if it does, then you’ll really want to pay attention.
Some stats
For context, I’ll consider long-form everything that’s at least a 6-minute read, but not longer than 12. I think anything above 12 minutes is a missed opportunity for a series of mid-form or long-form articles, but you don’t have to agree with me. Based on this, let’s look at some articles and their stats over time. I will try to pick from a number of topics I usually cover, so I don’t fall into the trap of involuntarily skewing the numbers towards proving a point.
- A very recent article about Elizabeth Holmes, a week old at the time of drafting this story, in the technology category. An 11-minute read with a total of 75 reads so far, generating $39. That’s an income of $0.52/read!
- A similarly recent article about transportation tech, two weeks old at the time of drafting this story, also in the technology category. An 8-minute read, with a total of 16 reads, generating so far $0.40/read!
- A little over one-month-old article at the time of writing about Apple’s Freeform App, in the technology category. A 7-minute read, with a total of 1200 reads, generating $0.29/read.
- From my 2022 catalog, a 9-minute read on controversial software engineering topics generated $0.37/read. You start seeing the pattern, right?
OK, you’ll probably think, fine, but the dude is posting in a popular niche, how is this any proof? Fine, let’s look at another niche, like LEGO. One of the least popular topics so far on Medium. If anything, I am doing the lion-share of the work to popularise it.
The story about the red brick myth is a 9-minute read that generated over 61 hours of read-time so far clocking in around $0.35/read, while another one dissecting the issues around the “genuine” LEGO snobbery, manages to rake in $0.43/read.
Fine, you’re still not convinced. Let’s look at the writing niche then, which, for me, is secondary, as I avoid meta articles as much as I can. My thoughts on Medium after 8 years gets $0.27/read, the anatomy of a $1000 article makes $0.32/read and finally, everything you got wrong about Medium, contributes with a decent $0.24/read. All 8 and 9-minute articles.
I could go on and on, looking at some of my other niches as well, such as software development or accessibility, but I would just regurgitate similar numbers, and bore you to death with stats that already speak for themselves.
Inevitable conclusions
So, where do we go from here? There’s a lot to learn from these stats. Some you might have already suspected, and others you might find mind-blowing. Either way, keep reading.
If you’re catering to skimmers, you’ll also gonna get skimmed profits.
It’s a numbers game, and Susie Kearley is just one of the many writers who ran into this issue. I mentioned in a comment to her, that if you have a shit-tonne of readers who read or skim a gazillion articles, regardless of whether they read or skim, if your paying readers split their $5 to 1000 articles a month, that’s 0.5 cents for one full read. Skimming means even less! And because Medium has to take its cut, you’re left with like 0.1 cents per reader, meaning you need 10 readers just to make a full cent!
I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a vicious circle. You want to read, because you like reading, and you engage because you either feel like it, or you hope that others return the favour, but that’s also what splits a writer’s profits down to divisions of cents/read. In reality, what reader-writers should be doing is actually reading an article properly. They’d read less, but the authors would actually see more cents/read.
It’s better for everyone, including Medium, to have 10 people properly read an article than 500 people skimming it.
People who skim a lot, eventually leave and there goes the membership money for both authors and Medium. Those who actually spend some time reading, get hooked thanks to the many great writers, stay and continue to both give and get value within the platform.
There’s also an interesting reader psychology pattern here worth noticing. Those who read 5+ minute articles spend more time actually reading in general and skim a lot less. This of course again leads to them having time for fewer articles, meaning their Medium membership gets split up into larger chunks.
Short articles only start working once you hit critical mass, and that point is very hard to reach. It works the same way as microtransactions work everywhere else. With a 10s read/article, you need 360 reads to make $1.5. To reach 150 bucks, you need to get 36K actual reads, which is no small feat! Let’s assume you have a 25% read ratio, that means 144K views. Good feckin’ luck to ya! The highest I have is 67K. To make 1000 bucks, you’ll need 7 articles to hit that level of popularity and I don’t like the odds of that. Not one bit.
Finally, there’s one more interesting learning to internalise about longer articles. They have a tendency to make more during their first month so that even if one dies a fiery death later, you’ve already made a good few dollars as opposed to just a few cents. This also makes them great candidates for bringing back to life, just like I did through this article with all the links in the stats section. Clever, ha? 😉
There is no guarantee that every long article ends up being worth the effort, but the odds are a whole lot better that it just might.
Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe and/or become a member for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility! For my less regular readers, I also write about random bits and writing.
