How Much Money is a Comment Worth on Medium?
Famously, it is difficult to determine what your total earnings will look like on a given article.
Virtually every writer that has ever started on the platform has come to the conclusion that it is not easy to figure out what their likely earnings will be on a given piece.
Trust me, if I could completely determine it beyond the shadow of a doubt, I would be tracking that very closely.
Instead, I simply have to be patient and wait until the day passes and earnings are updated.
That is truly the only way to truly know what your article has earned.
You can then use that information to try to craft your next articles going forward.
More Comments Do Not Necessarily Equal More Money
There is a correlation between comments and earnings, but it is not nearly as strong as you might think.
Comments are just one metric of engagement that matters on the Medium platform, and it is definitely not the most indicative piece of information regarding how much you are likely to make on your article.
Let me provide you with some examples of the current earnings on various pieces and their current comment counts (at the time of this writing):
- Cannonball Strategy Article Earnings: $27.13 Comments: 79
- Clickbait Articles are Garbage Fires Earnings: $6.55 Comments: 25
- Discouraged by $0.00 Articles Earnings: $13.25 Comments: 30
- Are 1,000 Notifications Possible Today Earnings: $9.73 Comments: 45
- Gamers are Crying in their Cereal Earnings: $3.56 Comments: 25
As you can see from this sample, an individual comment can equate anywhere from $0.14 to $0.34.
While the pieces with more comments tend to generate more income, that isn’t always the case. The 1,000 notifications piece had 45 comments on it and only pulled in $9.73 or about $0.21 per comment.
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This is all to say that while I am certainly guilty of keeping a close eye on the number of comments received on a given piece, it is definitely NOT the best way to determine what the income on a piece will look like.
Look at the Comment Counts of Some of the Most Famous Accounts on Medium
Yet another piece of evidence that more comments don’t necessarily mean more income, you just need to take a look at some of the most famous accounts on Medium.
If you take a look at the work of those top accounts, you will tend to see high traffic pieces that are well-loved.
However, it is also not impossible or even uncommon for a piece written by a top account to have 10 or fewer comments on it.
That said, we know that some of those top accounts are pulling in significant amounts of money every month. So, it is further evidence to me that comment counts are not the only thing that one ought to look at when considering their potential earnings.
All of that indicates to me that there are reasons to ignore comment counts but pay attention to the individual commentors!
