How many words is 30 seconds?
How stories earn in the new partner program
Medium recently changed the rules for earnings in its partner program. Naturally, this got a lot of people stirred up to write meta stories about it — including me. I usually don’t write meta stories however, this one goes nicely with the topic of word count which I recently wrote about here.
The algorithm will now measure when a person reads 30 seconds or more of a story, whether they are a member or non-member. It will all be displayed in your stats. Anything 30 seconds or less will not count towards earnings. Anything more than 30 seconds will count towards your earnings as long as they are a member. If they clap, comment, and engage with the story your earnings increase.
Sounds simple enough right? Well, if the only reason you are on Medium is to generate a side hustle income, then it might not work in your favor. Many people write up repetitive stories of “I earned this…” and “I wrote hundreds of words for hundreds of days and I earned…” Bleah, too much of the same old stuff. Personally, I want to read helpful, interesting stories that make me learn something new, bring a smile to my day, or tell me something I didn’t know. In the sea of sameness, it’s easy to drown in mediocrity.
So should you be concerned about how many words fit into 30 seconds?
The answer is NO. But if you want to get technical the answer is 60 words (on average) fit into 30 seconds. Plenty of people who do voiceovers and speak for a living have figured out the optimal amount of words that fit in a 30-second sound byte. It’s not rocket science. You can Google it like I did.
What you really should be concerned about is the quality of your content, not the amount of words.
The Hook Matters
Plenty of people have written about the importance of inserting a hook in your writing. Bring the reader in for a closer examination. Don’t leave them hanging. Cast that perfect Title line and slowly reel in the reader toward the shore. Get them in your hands. Easier said than done right?
Some writers get it right the first time. They’ve learned and applied the rules of quality writing and really told a story that matters. It happens on Medium and elsewhere. It should and could happen for all of us. We all write to be heard.
60 words does not equal 30 seconds
Keep in mind, that even if you write 60 words for every 30 seconds read you’d end up with 120 words per minute (not speed but read time) multiplied by the number of minutes to get your word count total. But it’s not important how many words you write because the only thing that matters is the read time when it comes to measuring the algorithm.
Medium has suggested that the average adult reads 265 words per minute. In English. (For other languages it's adjusted accordingly). I don’t know about that. That seems like a lot of words to cram into a minute.
So if someone is reading 265 words every minute which is roughly 132.5 words per 30 seconds you would have a lot more writing to do! Nobody really is speed reading but more likely scanning stories to see if they want to actually read the whole thing. It’s how to keep from suffering TMI and getting blurry vision.
It’s why I prefer writing 3-minute articles on Medium.
I decided that I wanted to focus on niche content writing 3-minute articles to keep people engaged with the topic. This article is going well over that limit and if you’ve read it this far then leave me a comment on why you kept on reading.
Final take on word count and read time
I’m not going to game the system and write to fit an algorithm. I’m going to open discussion on topics I am interested in and hope you are too! I don’t want to figure out stats from a math perspective. (You’re welcome to it). If it’s valuable reading for you, then that’s all that matters. :)