So, What's Going on With Medium and What Can We Do About It?
A strategy for handling the drop in earnings
Hello Friends!
Over the last few weeks, it has been very challenging to be an editor on Medium. I have faith in the platform and I expect they’ll get things sorted out, but it’s important to provide some transparency.
Being an editor is a difficult job anyway. For the last year, articles that were selected for Medium’s Boost could be relied on to perform well. That being said, even with a Boost, the success of your articles still comes down to the content.
There have been times when one of my articles has been selected for a Boost and it hasn’t done well. As a writer, it’s important to be mindful that a number of variables contribute to the success (or failure) of your articles. It could be that you have a bad headline or a boring featured image. It could be that you’re writing on a topic that people aren’t interested in reading about.
The point is that there is always so much that you can control that it’s not worth spending your time thinking about the things you can’t.
But since the end of December, earnings have been down across the board at Medium. To their credit, Medium has mentioned that they’re aware of the problem and they’re doing their best to fix it. This kind of thing has happened before, but this time the problem appears to be lingering.
Until last week, I thought the lower earnings applied mainly to non-Boosted stories. But I had a story Boosted last week, and this is how it has performed:
Update: Please check below for a screenshot of how much better this story performed over the last few days.
This is only after two days, but I’ve found that Boosted stories get the majority of their earnings in the first week or so. This month, I’ve nominated 7 stories and only 2 have been selected for a Boost. Unfortunately, I don’t have the numbers as to how those stories performed.
What’s difficult about all this is that the requirements for getting a story Boosted are very demanding. I spend a lot of time editing the stories I nominate. If a story is not accepted for a Boost, I don’t receive any compensation. When I nominate something that is Boosted, I receive $45. But at 2 out of 7, that represents a lot of uncompensated hours.
I also don’t feel comfortable about receiving more for a story because I nominated it than the author receives for the story’s performance.
In the best case scenarios, everyone involved knows that we’re working together collectively to improve as writers and increase our reach. However, the other side of this is that it can be frustrating to spend a lot of time on a story only to have it earn less than a dollar.
Since I’ve been on Substack, I’ve felt it was worthwhile to advise writers to put their articles on Medium in search of a Boost. After that, you can post your articles on Substack and earn multiple times for the same content.
This strategy made sense when Boosted articles regularly brought in $300-$400. But with Boosts becoming less likely, and Boost payouts dropping, and earning next to nothing without a Boost, I’m not sure if the strategy is still viable.
At this point, you’re earning so little that it almost doesn’t justify the time it takes to post on Medium. Again, Medium has acknowledged they’re having an issue with fraudulent activity that’s driving false engagement and draining the payment pool. I expect them to get that fixed, but it hasn’t been fixed yet.
I’ll mention that I remember this happening on one other occasion and Medium did issue an additional payment to writers who had been affected. I believe I received an extra $200 or so that month. Don’t get your hopes up about this happening again, I only offer this to explain why I feel strongly that Medium will get this figured out.
They’ve come through before.
What concerns me right now is the idea of losing the writers I’ve worked with to get stories Boosted in the past. It doesn’t make sense for them to go through the arduous process of getting edited by me, only to make $30 at best and pennies at worst. A LOT of my clout as an editor comes from being able to help people make hundreds of dollars.
If writers are only going to make $30, it’s not worth listening to me.
That being said, the advice I give you that will help you get an article Boosted on Medium will help you no matter where you submit. I try to write everything at the same level of quality. On many occasions, articles that were passed over on Medium, went on to make hundreds of dollars on Substack. Like here:
The advice I give is good whether an article is accepted for a Boost or not, and whether that article ultimately earns well or not. As I said at the beginning, there are a lot of variables involved.
But writing is a “strike while the iron is hot” business, and right now Medium is cool.
So, here’s what I propose.
I’m not about to walk away from Medium. I have 50k subscribers over there, and I will be eternally grateful for the opportunities and connections I’ve made through that platform. I sincerely hope that they’ll get this earnings issue solved quickly.
At the same time, if you’ve got a great story, I think it’s best to hold off on it for a while until the earnings trend on Medium begins to climb again. I will continue to publish my work over there and let you know how it goes. I can be the canary in the mineshaft.
It’s easy for me because I write two stories a day no matter what. For those of you who are holding down a full-time job, I want to make sure you get the most out of the articles you can create in a month.
Together, we can watch the trends and have a better idea of how the platform is currently working. Here’s my month so far (the first one on the list is showing $0 because it was just published when I took the screen shot):
I hadn’t realized that I’d only published 7 articles on Medium this month until I got that image. I usually like to do around 20 articles, but it’s been a busy month.
The simple matter is that I won’t be able to continue on Medium if my stories are only earning $7 or $8. The sad part is that I only need for them to earn around $30 for me to keep publishing there. It’s not that much to ask.
From what I’ve been reading from other writers, it seems I’m lucky to be getting as much as I am, and that makes me sad.
With any luck, the trend will have reversed over the weekend and I’ll be able to offer some positive updates soon. I’ll keep publishing over there and let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I’m still happy to work with you on drafts. Whether you end up submitting to Medium or elsewhere, I want to make sure your work has the best possible opportunity to succeed!
As always, I look forward to your comments!
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UPDATE:
A day after writing this, my Boosted story had a huge view day. Maybe this is a sign that things are already coming around on Medium? I’ll keep you posted.
Walter, you're a peach for the canary in the coal mine thing. I wish I could say the same but I'm going to be holding back things that aren't timely because my last piece made $2 (and it has over 2K claps and almost 50 comments)😆.
It's frustrating, but you're right--Medium are trying to fix it. I don't feel confident we'd get repaid (not that they owe use anything) as last time I got like $14 lol.
My issues with Medium go deeper than that though. To get boosted I have to write watered-down content that my readers don't like as much. I stopped doing that and my read ratios lately have been around 80%, but some boosts were 50-60%. So I can write what readers like, or I can write what Medium likes. It's frustrating. But that's why I'm so happy to have Substack now.
It's not just me either, the writers I love don't get boosted and Medium feels like they're skewing to a high-end, 'fancy' approach. But most of us, aren't. The feed of boosted posts, a lot of them feel like they could all have been written by the same person. There's not enough originality to blow my skirt up.
Also, you said they're working on the AI, however, their solution is to have us editors and readers filter it out and I'm getting tired. Free human labour isn't a solution.
I loooove Medium, I really do, but they have some serious fixing to do. And I genuinely hope they do it. Even if they do, Substack is definitely still going to be a big part of my forward strategy as I'm flourishing here where it's reader-led and stagnating on Medium where it's led by curation.
I'm just not publishing any of my work there while things are like this. I am working on other things. The utter lack of transparency there concerns me. However, I'm hoping they do get it sorted. I'll be back if they do. I used to post nearly daily.