Is Medium a Waste of Time?
There's a huge loophole in Medium's earning calculations. My brutally honest opinion about their business model and my plan to move forward with my writing online.
I’ve been waiting to write about this.
I didn’t want to share it on Medium.
No, I’m not afraid to speak my thoughts freely! I have no problem posting it there and even mentioning the all-famed new CEO Coach Tony to get his view on it.
But I won’t.
Because my expertise is highly valuable and it should be paid for. I’m not giving Coach Tony my knowledge and my advice for free.
I’ll share it with you - the people on my list, the ones who deserve to know what I know. The ones struggling with me or like me to grow on that platform.
And this gets harder every day.
Why?
Medium was(?) trying to survive.
This is not a secret, as just recently was once again confirmed by this post from Medium Employee Jacob Bennett:
But now they claim they’re moving into the growth phase and they call that “Flirting with profitability”.
What the heck does that even mean?!
It’s their business model!
I discovered a huge flaw in the writer’s earnings calculation and they won’t even see this!
Let’s break it down…
How does Medium earn money?
Medium is a publishing media platform. You can sign up and start earning immediately with your writing.
Its business model relies on subscriptions. In a nutshell: Medium collects revenue from subscribers and distributes part of it to writers.
There are three stakeholders in the value chain:
Medium, who aims to gain profits
The subscribers, who pay
The writers, who aim to earn
There are two subscription tiers:
Standard Member - $5/mo
Friend of Medium - $15/mo
The Friend of Medium tier was launched in November 2023. It’s more expensive and there are no benefits to the subscriber other than the promise that their reads will generate to the writer 4 times more earnings. Friends also get the option to share stories via a “Friend link”, which enables the writer to earn from non-member reads.
Writers are often subscribers. Since August 2023 you need to be a paid subscriber if you want to earn from writing. Writers who are not paid subscribers and started earning before that change still earn. For now.
If you’re a writer and also a Friend of Medium, you can’t earn if you share a Friend link to your own story. You earn only if another Friend shares their Friend link.
How do writers get paid on Medium?
You have to enroll in the Medium Partner Program (MPP). It’s valid for certain countries and you can do so after you become a paid member and write at least one story. You will need a Stripe account.
There were some changes in the MPP earnings calculations:
Before August 2023: it was based on reading time subscribers spent on a story
After August 2023: it is based on read-ratio (reads/views) and engagement points (claps, highlights, shares, saves, comments, whether the reader is a follower or not, etc.)
So the more engagement, the higher earnings.
What happens when you publish a story on Medium?
You have three options:
Network-only distribution - only your followers and the followers of the publication you submit to will see the story. These stories usually earn a few bucks. There are specific topics in this category - crypto, erotica, hate speech, and some others, but also stories about Medium, and AI-generated stories.
General distribution - the Medium algorithm tries to guess who is interested in your story and starts recommending it for about 2 weeks. These stories can earn tens or hundreds and even may reach thousands of dollars.
Boosted - Medium curators manually select stories for boost. These stories get significantly more views and reads and can earn hundreds and may reach thousands of dollars. Sometimes they earn less than the stories in general distribution. You know if your story is boosted from your stats.
If you’re a new writer…
The algo has to get to know you first. So you stay to network-only distribution for a while, even if you write about not restricted topics. Depending on how active you are, this can go on for a few months or longer.
Is there a shortcut?
Yes! Two things you need to do consistently:
write every day
engage with other writers every day
You can read, clap, and comment on other writers’ stories to attract their attention. Some of them will come to your profile and read your stuff. Some will follow you. This is how you go on until the algo adds you to the general distribution.
You also can get boosted, but it’s a one-time effect and it’s not under your full control.
A side note: I talked about this with Sinem Gunel - a six-figure writer. She sees this differently. She believes the boost is the only way to earn meaningful income on Medium, everything else will generate just a few bucks.
I’m living proof that’s not true. I’ve been consistent for almost 4 months and I have stories gone viral earning hundreds of dollars.
Sinem is a boost nominator working with Zulie, now a Medium employee, and running a Medium Writing Academy. I see six-figure reasons why this opinion ;) I love Sinem, she’s a great writer.
Are earnings predictable?
No.
Can you rely on stability?
Big no!
Nowadays updates of the algo happen monthly (if not weekly) and often views, reads, and earnings drop for no reason.
You have zero transparency. Most of the time you have to guess what’s happening by looking at your stats and reading other writers’ opinions.
So what’s the problem?
Think about it:
The more money Medium distributes to writers, the less profit it generates. If you earn more, they earn less!
But that’s still not the problem.
It’s in how Medium operates their business to turn profitable. Right now they bend the scales in favor of Medium. Slowly but steadily. With the excuse that they’re working for the best interest of the reader.
Not really!
It seems they’re still struggling to survive, now even more than ever.
The signs that lead me to this conclusion:
The distribution policy - meta stories (stories about Medium) are limited, but they are the highest earners for writers.
Medium’s excuse: the readers are irritated by the large volume of such stories. Yes, but the readers only get what they’re interested in reading and they explicitly show that to the algo by choosing their topics and who they follow!
The way Medium chooses to fight spam and fraud - since March’24 they started hunting writers for activities that “artificially inflate earnings”, referring to excessive engagement.
So, they put that in the earnings calculations, and now they say it’s against the rules!
It’s the only platform I know, that calls itself a “social media”, that fights against engagement!
It’s absurd!
Of course, mistakes happen all the time, but why start hunting their greatest assets (writers) in public instead of just revisiting the earning calculation? It’s not transparent anyway, so no one will know if they correct a mistake or two.
Instead, they start a massive purge, with a lot of writers caught in it.
There’s so much contradiction in the following words from Tony’s answer to a story about that (read the lower paragraph first, then the excuse):
Growth hacking! Why not just simply implement rules to limit it? Instead, you create the loophole, then you go after the writers to stop them from using it!
But that’s not all!
To make it even more exciting, there’s zero transparency on what’s allowed and what's not!
Yes, we have rules, but we also have new reasons for account bans popping up every day. All of them are connected to “organized reciprocal engagement”. All of them conveniently missing in the rules…
First, they banned accounts, now they revoke Medium Partner Program enrollment, and most of the time it’s permanent. Without notice! That’s not in the rules too.
Recently another writer got revoked just because he accessed his account when travelling abroad to a country not included in the MPP. It’s insane!
Imagine this: you write, earn, build community, work hard for years, everything is ok. You decide to go on vacation to some nice tropical place and boom! you got revoked. Permanently! That’s not in the rules either.
How Medium treats AI-generated content. They now penalize this. You cannot paywall these stories. If you do, you can get your account permanently revoked.
So far so good. The problem: they manually decide. So they make mistakes. But the decisions are permanent. There are writers who worked hard to build readership on the platform, who are now revoked without any chance of getting reinstated.
But that’s Medium’s business, my concern is about something else: they decide to ban AI - that’s a huge red flag.
Medium’s excuse: reader’s complaints (of course!)
AI is here to stay. It’s a change in the business environment. You either adapt or you’re out of business. It’s the oldest law of nature. Valid for business too! Many companies vanished because they refused to follow the tech trends.
So if you’re a (social) media company like Medium, and you struggle with low-quality content, then why not simply implement AI to help:
writers write better quality
readers get better recommendations
improve algorithms and spam filters
differentiate you as an innovator and create new competitive advantages
add some real benefits for your highest paying subscribers Friends of Medium, like premium AI-powered features.
That’s the direction I’d think about if I was in Tony’s shoes!
Because someone else will do it the right way and before you know it, you’re devaluated to extinction! Have you noticed the recent changes on X? It’s becoming the new Medium. An AI-powered one.
So why don’t they do it?
My guess: lack resources to build their own AI. Plus, the fact that Google is their minor investor might create a conflict of interest for a potential partnership with OpenAI.
There’s more to it: Tony said they ban AI crawlers because there’s no proper reward for the writers to let AI train on their articles. But Google crawlers are allowed and we all get the amazing benefit of more external traffic. Only that writers don’t benefit from it, because the majority are non-members…
Besides, Google now has Gemini, which is most probably trained on the whole archive on Medium without writers getting a penny. I asked Tony about that and guess what? I got no reply! But I don’t need one, I already know - Google is an investor.
A side note: So Medium fights low-quality AI writing, but the quality of their AI-generated voiceover is simply the lowest low!
All this could have been fun if it wasn’t just sad…
Support response times have become unknown. They don’t even bother to answer most of my requests, even those related to errors in my earnings calculation. That’s another huge red flag!
How are they caring so much about the reader when support is simply not there?
Why not implement AI already!? Many companies did. I was pleasantly surprised when I had two serious issues resolved by the Substack chatbot without the need for any human interaction!
Oh, wait, I forgot Medium bans AI!
The recent changes in the UX only work to limit engagement. They’re not helpful to writers, and readers. Here’s a list of some:
you can no longer see the average length of an article before you open it. This was a convenient feature for readers but it disappeared this month.
all claps now appear black, as if you already clapped on all the stories you see! before they were white and only of you clapped they were black. Now you can easily decide not to read an article because you’ve already clapped!
my favorite: I got asked if I want to see less content from a writer I already follow!
I’ll leave these with no comment…
The attitude of the CEO towards average writers. For this, I have a screenshot from an interview with Tony:
If you don’t call yourself a pro writer, you can’t help but think “Am I writing trash now?” Or the “lowest common denominator”?
You can’t show less respect to the people who work to keep you alive!
They call themselves a startup, but they’re just a normal media company generating losses. Because they’re not starting it up now! They’re already in series C investment rounds! With a total investment of $163M and not a single cent of profit, no, you’re not a startup, just losing money like crazy!
And no, “startup” is not the modern way to call a business generating losses.
Why they lose money?
My guess: the leadership are not business people, they’re media personalities. You have to know business to run a business. You have to know finance to become profitable. They’re a bunch of journalists and coaches. It’s not going to happen…
A spree of leaving writers
All of these changes lead to withdrawal of many writers from the platform. Some because of earnings decrease, some because of the ban of AI, some because of all of the above. Like the recent example - Dr Mehmet Yildiz, the founder of the largest publication group on Medium - ILLUMINATION.
He called his relationship with Medium TOXIC!
That’s huge!
Many writers write about it now. Here’s an example of a recent response by Coach Tony to one of those posts on Medium:
Again: the readers interest!
I’m not buying it anymore…
So why do I think they work in the wrong direction?
I found a HUGE flaw in the earnings calculation!
It’s the Friends of Medium membership. I experimented it with other FOMs writers, yes it give 4 times more earnings to the writer.
But there’s a loophole.
I discovered this accidentally with another FOM writer.