Writer! You’re Losing Your Readers by Closing the Free Gate

I was prompted to write this story by two other writer’s posts about how some authors have lost a lot of money because they forgot to check whether they had the earnings option enabled. Sometimes you can turn it off. The main thing is not to forget to turn it back on later. But the other day I got the opposite problem!

My story was connected to earnings (by the way at the moment I dont earn anything on the medium because of the problems with withdrawal).

The problem was that my story went semi-viral immediately after publication.

Haah!? The problem you say?

Yes . You got that right!

Almost immediately after publishing the article and tweeting about it, someone linked to my article from someone else’s site, which is SmartNews

heh, thanks bro or sis! Do it again! Thanks!

I started studying stats at that time. I suggest you do occasional observations on yout stats, it sometimes gives us great lessons.

What surprised me this time was the ultra-low read rate . Readers went to read the story, which is quite high-quality and interesting in my opinion, but despite its short length only 15 percent of visitors read to the end.

And I got frustrated! 😕

But later I decided to see how my paid article looks like to an unregistered readers who have already read 2 free stories a month.. Want to see how?

Here you have it!

screenshot by author

Medium is a very popular site and it is often referenced from other platforms.

Recently I have received traffic from SmartNews twice.

Unregistered readers of Medium can only read two stories a month, which are for Medium members only. To read the third free story they have to become a member of Medium, which means they have to register, which not everyone wants to do.

That’s why I think my article has an ultra-low read rate and a low average reading time. And it still does! All because it got most of its traffic from outside of Medium.

I can explain this by the fact that many of those who wanted to see my story simply did not want to register for Medium. Nevertheless, the algorithm considered them as readers.

Aha! Readers of the first paragraph!

When an external reader signs up for Medium, it doesn’t mean that you’ll make any money; he can stay a free reader by reading three articles a month.

If first hours after publication you see an explosion of views that come from other people’s sites and social networks, then it makes sense at least for a short time to open the article for free reading.

This way more willing people will read it

When external visits will decline dramatically, and internal visitors from Medium will start to go to your story more often, then you can close the gate and make the story paid

by SusanaPhotos on pixabay.com

Why it makes sense

1. By making the story temporarily free you are guaranteed to be read by more external visitors. Again, it only makes sense when the internal traffic is very low, and the external is very high.

2. If your article is really helpful and exciting to the reader, then he still can become your referral.

3. I don’t claim to be 100% sure, but it’s possible that the average reading time plays a major role in the story’s active promotion by the Medium algorithm.

That is, if an article takes 6 minutes to read, and each reader spends an average of 5 minutes reading it, this indicates that it is very interesting!

This in turn could be a signal to the algorithm that your story is worth recommending to more readers interested in the topic. At least that’s how YouTube’s algorithm works. For its algorithm to start actively promoting you, two signals are required — high click-through rate (high clickability of the title) and high average duration of video viewing.

I’m not sure, but I strongly believe that these two signals also work for Medium. As they indicate an interesting title and an equally interesting fascinating story!

By the way , the story I’m talking about has become a trending in topic “health” and I’ve done a separate study on “trending”, it’s very valuable information. In order not to miss it as well as many other writing, promoting, marketing, seo, and making money tips for your growth, subscribe to my email notifications!

THANK YOU!