A Glimpse into Medium’s Evolution and the Author’s Path Forward
The new Medium Partner Program is not your enemy
Welcome to today’s article. If you want to experience the same mood I was in while writing it, you can listen to Fever 105 radio station in the background, which came into the world together with GTA Vice City.
For my readers
As you may have noticed, I’m writing less now. I want to share with you the reason for the background, as I appreciate your choosing to subscribe to me.
New Medium Partner Program from 1.8.2023
Since the beginning of the month, a new way of evaluating article metrics has been launched, so you may not currently get anything from what was previously profitable and vice versa. However, I believe there are some people for whom the new way of evaluating articles will work out +- the same.
I felt under the weather, so to speak, for a few days because this change suddenly turned a working profile that was continuously growing into something that won’t pay me a bucket of what I drink at articles. Every change, tree, or mountain that comes your way should be taken as a challenge.
I’m not one of those people who give up, as evidenced here, for example, by the fact that I’m still writing, although not very consistently anymore, which I’d like to remedy. Since Medium appeals to the quality of articles, instead of writing about what interested me the most the previous day, I decided to write about things that fascinate, interest, and entertain me in the long term.
My articles will suddenly be more personal, and you’ll also find that even a NERD like me has interests other than pure technology. If you’re interested in more, I recommend reading the article by Buster Benson (if I have it right, it’s about the father of the new Medium partner program).
Two weeks later, the current CEO of Medium Tony Stubblebine, introduced everything in this article. The publication of this article triggered an avalanche of reactions, both positive and negative.
As part of the comments here, Mark Ellis, a colleague from Mac O'Clock, also responded to Tony, and I joined in with a comment. I followed this article for the next few days because it is full of people’s reactions, and Tony exchanged a few messages with Mark. As well as a reply to Nikhil Vemu. It all culminated in an article where Mark justifies his current stance on the Medium platform.
Your preferences
I would, however, like to find out from you, my loyal readers, if you would also be interested in articles in the style I have been writing so far, as it.
I assume that was the main reason you found me. The reason why you were interested in me. Feel free to give me feedback in the comments.
I’ll try to reply to every single comment, now I haven’t always been able to do that as I wasn’t one of the chosen few who could earn $10k+ a month writing, so I didn’t have to do anything else, but writing has become an integral part of me.
Just because the medium is no longer profitable for me at the moment doesn’t mean it will stay that way, and I’d hate to drag you to another platform where I’d be writing purely for a paywall. I still believe in the concept of Medium, and I know that it’s beneficial for you as a reader to pay less and have content from all the authors on the platform available.
What I perceive as a reader since the end of last year
I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Still, since the end of last year, when the Beta Boost Program was launched, articles from people I subscribe to started disappearing from my feed. Instead, I’ve had articles listed on topics I’m not interested in, probably boosted from my perspective. This trend has gotten worse as time has gone on, so currently, when I go to Medium to read something, I go directly to the authors’ profiles.
However, due to time constraints, I often make do with articles people submit to publications. However, you deserve a look from the other side. As an author of articles, I notice that despite the growth of followers, my articles reach fewer and fewer readers. Practically every additional follow I get reduces my views/day
Here, I would venture to guess that it is a problem related to boosting since the boosted article will be displayed before what I write, even if you directly subscribe to me.
Boosting
During the time the boosting program has been active (beta), 3 of my articles have been boosted in this way as far as I know. I don’t know if the problem is that I don’t write content that is highlighted in the medium guidelines or if it is just the nominators (people who can recommend an article for boost) or maybe even the curators (medium staff with the right to boost) don’t understand the content, but my articles don’t usually get boosted, but until this month I didn’t see it as a problem, after all, I am one of the people who earn something from writing.
With boosting itself, I see the biggest problem as being purely people-based, i.e., someone must find your article first. They have to like it enough to want to share it further. Then your article gets put in a queue where one of the curators will decide if your article is worthy of being boosted.
It’s all very subjective, and if the curators don’t like or understand your content, then you’re just out of luck because I don’t suppose they get the articles in question for consideration without a listed author/publication because that could be the deciding factor for you to say yes I liked the article and the fact that it was written by someone I might not is just a nice surprise after it’s published.
At the moment, I find the medium completely lacking in labelling articles that have been boosted, yes you can read it from the stats, but I think it’s something that should be visible at a glance because, after all, it’s something that determines the passing of the platform as a whole and people should know that they are reading something that someone slipped them.
At this point, I’m gradually getting the impression that without boosting, it’s not going to be a profitable business. Why am I writing business? It’s simple if you devote as much time to something as I have devoted to Medium, you can’t afford for it not to be a profitable business. We’re talking about 1000+ hours of writing in the time I’ve been writing articles.
If you’re interested in learning more about boosting, you can find out from the official medium article, lastly updated by Terrie Schweitzer
Tip button
Medium allows you to add a Tip Button below the articles. I added this button for a few weeks on a trial basis and then removed it again, the reason was simply the cost of processing one-time income from different parts of the world was more than the income itself, so I decided to remove this button, and I refunded the people who supported me this way.
I hope I have not offended you by my actions. I really appreciate your support. If you would like to support me in this way, please let me know in the comments how and especially why.
Personally, I think I can give back such a button with, for example, a Patreon or an alternative where I will offer you some form of extra content for your money, but the question is what you would be interested in since the scope of my activity is wide.
Publications Editor
As you may have noticed, I am also an editor at several publications, the largest of which is Mac O’Clock. From that perspective, nothing has changed for you and I will continue to be active here.
For those of you who may think that this is a paid activity, it is not, editors in publications founded directly by the medium may be paid, but otherwise, it is purely a community activity. So it makes it all the more frustrating when a platform you devote a lot of your free time to practically turns its back on you.
Changes I’ve made so far
I’ve dropped a significant portion of my articles off the paywall since I’m technology-focused. There’s not a lot of engagement in this area in the form of tagging, comments or clicks, so older articles didn’t generate as much traffic as they used to. This will lead to people without subscriptions being able to access the articles and should have a positive effect on follower growth since people who couldn’t before will be able to read the articles.
I have slowed down the way I publish articles. Currently, I am working for hours on research around this. I now have two articles that have taken me over 20 hours to prepare and write, so if it’s an issue that no one reads as a result, it will probably cause me to run away as Tom Kuegler
did on the substack. When I thought about it, it would make sense in the long run, but it makes a lot of sense to transfer 1% of the most loyal 60000 followers versus 1% of 2000 followers.
Another platform
If I decided to move my writing to another platform, here’s how I would do it, I would set up 3 tiers for you. The top tier would have access to behind-the-scenes stuff as well, and once a week/month, we could have a joint session where we would search and go through sources together for the next article. This would let you in on my creative process.
Together with the second tier, we could have a session once a month that would involve writing an article. All tiers would be provided with the final article, with a distinction based on tier level as to when the article would reach you.
The last part I can think of is that the article would be made available to everyone for free after some time. This could also be when it would go to a medium where a canonical link would be used, with a link to the original platform. The advantage of a subscription would be my direct support, which would allow me to allocate more time directly to articles.
So is Medium as a platform in danger?
I don’t really think so. Yes, if they piss off their writers in areas that have become unprofitable enough to leave, then they will lose some traffic, but for Medium to feel that somehow the writers would have to take their articles with them from the platform.
Based on a Medium day, I learned, for example, that before Boosting came along, the platform was gradually dying. After its arrival, we’ve reached a point where new readers are showing up. The whole situation is tense right now, mainly because a lot of people have had their house of cards collapse overnight.
For me, it happened, but I don’t take it as a challenge to start again with what I already know and write better. I just didn’t really expect that something like this could happen. But I can blame myself. If you don’t own the platform, you have to play by its rules.
For me and other writers who have fallen into the abyss from one day to the next, this is an opportunity to bounce back from the bottom and start over and do better. What will our loyal readers say if we suddenly change our writing style?
The positivity of change
However, the changes that have taken place don’t have to be only negative. I believe that, for example, Kristina God, who devotes a veritable sea of time to the platform, will finally become a very profitable writer thanks to the new medium partner program.
The question is how these changes have affected the likes of Zulie Rane, Justin Cox and others. Because the newsletter Sinem Günel sent out says that you either get a boost, or you don’t make money, and if the new affiliate program works like this, then something is wrong.
As a very fundamental positive change, I see the fact that the medium as a platform has started to grow again thanks to boosting, according to Tony, so just because not everyone sees the changes as positive now doesn’t mean they are wrong.
Conclusion
The basic question then remains are we, as readers reaching back to the platform because we are getting irrelevant content in our feeds? Because so far, I only seem to see people complaining about the fact that their working business has ended overnight.
Yes, even I am relieved like this, but it’s time to move on because my articles are not currently performing well may actually be due to the fact that they are not of good quality, and I should be making better content.
Because personally, I don’t write just for money, but it’s the personal development that gives me a good dose of dopamine because every time I absorb information so I can prepare a new article for you, I feel really good. Then when I see that you read my articles, it’s a nice reward for me.
However, the people from Medium think that as an indicator, it’s not enough that you read the articles but you have to react, which is what I would like to see in a non-controversial article without personal bias. Nothing to do but move on.
One last note for fellow writers
Please lay down your arms and instead devote your time and energy to writing better articles. We had the information that changes were coming practically a year in advance. I understand it didn’t make sense to change what works, but now we have a great opportunity to start over and do better.
It’s nice that we’ve been able to make money, but apparently, we’ve only been making money because of the flawed design of the platform. Yes, it was a nice source of passive income for me too, but the platform is not ours, so we have to accept the rules of the game Coach gives us.
Originally published as a medium article on 17.8.2023 — but I think you should know what happens behind the scenes.
Great post Jakub