A Contrast in Creator Stories

Two articles on Medium illustrate the differences in how 21st-century business models are affecting different people.

The first is Erin Biba's short, sharp farewell to Medium. Despite being one of the better-paid writers on the site, she's only getting about 2.5 cents per click on her story. That's not enough even to think about living on, and it's well below the living wage (she doesn't specify how much) that she's getting from traditional media organizations.

The core of her rant is that new media organizations don't value quality, only clicks. This leads to a profusion of listicles, recycled mindless content, and other things designed to drive up pageviews regardless of the content of those pages. In other words, new media are getting what they (don't) pay for.

The other story is Glenn Fleishman's discussion of his Kickstarter experience. Fleishman ran a successful campaign, for the most part, based on lessons learned from other people who have done campaigns that worked. He delves into details, such as how the funding curve works and how much it really costs to ship things overseas. Unlike Biba, Fleishman seems pretty positive.

What's missing from Fleishman's piece is how this relates to a living wage. He calculates his profit at $3000 on over $53,000 base income. That's not even going to pay rent for the time the campaign ran, let alone any realistic calculation of expenses. Yes, the purpose of the campaign was, nominally, fulfilled. But what's the point of artists making these complex and time-consuming campaigns when they can't eat? I talked about this last October, when I backed the 99% Invisible Kickstarter and I feel like if Kickstarter is going to run aground this may be its weak point: however many dollars it can pour into product, we still don't have a reasonable and reliable way to compensate the creators whose products we want.

(h/t Boingboing where I first saw these stories linked)