Medium Dynamics
Excellent idea. I would only add one tiny thing. In that option to offer a reader a choice as to how much of their 4 or 5 dollars they pay for their subscription that they want to allocate to the writer of that article they like, there should be an additional option to donate further revenue above what they pay from their subscription. Say they liked the story so much that they want to tip the author an additional ten bucks above what they allocate from their subscription revenue, then they are given that option with the funds taken from their Stripe account or Paypal account or credit card. That gives the reader much more choice than merely deciding how many pennies they want/can spend in the current system. It gives readers more choice and writers more incentive (especially writers with less than 100K followers) to focus on quality rather than quantity. The current system pushes writers to focus on quantity, both in number of posts and length of posts, more so than quality. When a writer spends five hours on a quality story but only makes $1.17 they feel forced to churn out ever greater quantities of posts in order to make enough money to pay for more than a couple cups of coffee. This is when quality goes down and quantity goes up. That’s what the current system encourages.
When a writer with less than 100K followers spends 4 to 5 hours writing a story only to earn $1.17 they are discouraged. When they get an anonymous tip of $10 — which they normally would need to spend 20 to 25 hours writing 4 to 5 stories for — they are far more motivated to focus on the quality necessary to motivate a reader to add a tip rather than the focus of producing as many stories as they possibly could just to make enough money for lunch or paying their electric bill. The restaurant industry has known this secret for many, many years but it is a concept that Medium refuses to consider. Why? Because they are too focused on quantity (scaling). Medium needs to become a five-star restaurant but instead they have chosen to be a fast-food restaurant.
