A yr since the launch of the TDS Writer Fee Program, we couldn’t be extra thrilled with its impression. Lots of of articles have earned a payout; to us, it’s a powerful sign that the work our contributors share with readers on daily basis stays partaking, modern, 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 modifications to this system so we will higher reward our most prolific authors, and supply a better payout to extra articles. This replace is in impact as of March 1, 2026.
New incomes tiers
We’ve been very proud of the excessive proportion of articles crossing the preliminary payout threshold (500 engaged views for $100). On the identical time, we’d prefer to see extra tales transferring 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 way in which 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 recent concepts and views regularly.
A better month-to-month article cap
For the reason that 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 most efficient and profitable authors may publish fairly a bit greater than 4 articles a month, nevertheless. We expect that being prolific is one thing to have fun, 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 per 30 days (and are welcome to publish extra, if they need; the payout will apply to the primary 10 eligible articles).
We hope these modifications encourage our present authors to publish extra articles on TDS, and encourage new contributors to ship their work our method, too.
We’ll preserve an in depth eye on the Writer Fee Program’s efficiency within the weeks and months forward, and will make further tweaks if we see a chance 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.
