A 12 months since the launch of the TDS Author Payment Program, we couldn’t be extra thrilled with its influence. Lots of of articles have earned a payout; to us, it’s a robust sign that the work our contributors share with readers every single day stays partaking, progressive, and enlightening.
As a data-focused publication, we imagine within the significance of setting formidable objectives, monitoring outcomes, and iterating accordingly. In that spirit, we’ve determined to introduce adjustments to this system so we are able to higher reward our most prolific authors, and provide the next payout to extra articles. This replace is in impact as of March 1, 2026.
New incomes tiers
We’ve been very pleased with the excessive proportion of articles crossing the preliminary payout threshold (500 engaged views for $100). On the identical time, we’d wish to see extra tales shifting as much as the subsequent incomes tier. To make this a actuality, we’ve adjusted our incomes tiers:
- 500 to 2,499 views: $100. Beforehand, this tier prolonged all the best way as much as 5,000 engaged views.
- 2,500 to 7,499 views: $0.05 per view. This implies a minimal payout of $125, and as much as $374 inside this tier.
- 7,500+ views: $0.1 per view. This interprets to a minimal payout of $750, and as much as $7,500, the per-article incomes cap.
With this new construction in place, we count on lots of our authors to earn significantly extra on their new articles, incentivizing them to contribute contemporary concepts and views regularly.
The next month-to-month article cap
For the reason that program’s launch, authors might publish as many articles as they need, however solely their 4 best-performing ones each month had been eligible for payouts.
We’ve discovered that a few of our best and profitable authors would possibly publish fairly a bit greater than 4 articles a month, nevertheless. We expect that being prolific is one thing to rejoice, not penalize, so we’ve determined to increase the month-to-month article cap to 10. In different phrases, authors can earn on as much as 10 articles monthly (and are welcome to publish extra, if they need; the payout will apply to the primary 10 eligible articles).
We hope these adjustments encourage our present authors to publish extra articles on TDS, and inspire new contributors to send their work our way, too.
We’ll maintain an in depth eye on the Creator Cost Program’s efficiency within the weeks and months forward, and will make further tweaks if we see a possibility to enhance it. As at all times, we all know that our publication thrives when our authors thrive, and their success is certain with ours.
