Medium has updated its business strategy by implementing monetization options and has announced Medium for Publishers. The new platform is designed to empower publishers and bloggers across the world by offering them a new set of tools to promote and monetize their content.
“We want to make it even easier for publications to do what they do best,” declares Medium in the official statement.
Medium, the blogging service co-founded by former Twitter CEO Evan Williams, has been many things during its relatively short lifetime. It started as being a stable of magazines, then it emphasized its social features, and more recently it looks like it strongly focuses on being an outlet for small publishers and bloggers. In April this year, Medium has introduced two new ways that publishers can opt-in to earn revenue.
Revenue beta: Two new ways to earn money with Medium
Promoted Stories
The first monetization component introduced is ‘Promoted Stories’. Also called native advertisement, this allows publishers and bloggers to host promoted banners from brand partners on posts in their publication.
“Our initial brand partners include Bose, SoFi, Nest, Intel, and Volpi Foods. We see this as a first step in bringing brands and publishers together on Medium to create meaningful partnerships. Over time, we plan to expand this program and roll out additional opportunities for collaboration,” stated Medium in the official statement.
Memberships
‘Memberships’ have been launched with a limited number of publications who offer members-only content, in exchange for a monthly membership fee. A handful of publishers have also been testing out Medium’s membership program, in which certain pieces of content are locked, available only to paying readers. Serious Eats, Electric Literature, Femsplain, Great Jones Street are the earliest four brands to experiment with membership on Medium, and all report being pleased with the early returns.
“These efforts are the first step in helping publishers make money from their content and adopt strategies that suit their publication.”
Branding
On top of the revenue beta program, Medium is now offering a new set of
branding tools that allow publications to customise colors, layouts and navigation.
“On Medium, publishers have full control over their content and spend exactly zero time, money, or effort on tech and hosting, instead focusing their resources on producing great content and reaching new audiences,” announced Medium.
Together with these customization options, Medium is now making it even easier to migrate your content from existing blogs and websites. ‘Migration’ wants to be an easy solution to move your content archives to your custom domain on Medium without having to start from scratch, while your original links and timestamps are preserved.
“We want Medium to be your write-once, publish-anywhere destination.”
In addition to the revenue generation features and design changes, Medium is taking another interesting step – it’s making it easy for publishers to adapt their content so that is compatible with Facebook’s Instant Articles and Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages standards.
For now, Medium’s monetization beta program is available by application only. If you are a qualified professional publisher, you can submit your application here.
