A 12 months since the launch of the TDS Author Payment Program, we couldn’t be extra thrilled with its influence. Tons of of articles have earned a payout; to us, it’s a powerful sign that the work our contributors share with readers daily stays participating, revolutionary, and enlightening.
As a data-focused publication, we imagine within the significance of setting bold targets, 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 a better 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 share of articles crossing the preliminary payout threshold (500 engaged views for $100). On the similar 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 anticipate lots of our authors to earn significantly extra on their new articles, incentivizing them to contribute contemporary concepts and views regularly.
A better month-to-month article cap
Because the program’s launch, authors may publish as many articles as they need, however solely their 4 best-performing ones each month have 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, nonetheless. We expect that being prolific is one thing to have a good time, not penalize, so we’ve determined to elevate 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 current authors to publish extra articles on TDS, and inspire new contributors to send their work our way, too.
We’ll hold a detailed eye on the Writer Cost Program’s efficiency within the weeks and months forward, and will make further tweaks if we see a possibility to enhance it. As all the time, we all know that our publication thrives when our authors thrive, and their success is certain with ours.
