Hey there,
Hope you’re having a great week.
In this newsletter, I wanted to talk about the current state and future prospects of one of the writing platforms I’m on, Medium!
Medium is a writing platform, home to tons of writers that create content around various topics from money, travel, current events, writing, literature, and more.
I joined Medium around 2016.
I started taking it seriously last year and my income blossomed from $3 to $30 to $400 to over $1,000 per month and my top month, nearly $6,000!
There’s been a shift and I want to talk about it.
What’s been going on Medium?
There’s a new CEO, Tony Stubblebine.
Changes have been happening on the platform and I don’t know how I feel about them.
The writer/publication avatar bubbles are gone. For me, I think it’s contributed to way less views and less earnings, overall.
I also forget to check some of my favorite publications like Better Marketing and Startup. I have to go searching for content more and I’m not a fan.
The new tips feature is cool but honestly, you can’t really rely on tip income. It’s so up in the air.
It takes a lot I think for someone to think your story is so fabulous that they take their time and effort to follow a few extra steps to send you some cash on the side.
I have received tips but, they’ve dried up big time.
My income on Medium has been going down.
September was one of my lowest months in the last year.
This month I’m trying hard to produce more content without sacrificing quality just for the sake of quantity.
It’s more demanding, for sure.
What will happen in the future?
When my income drops for one of my income streams, I try to make up for it elsewhere. I’m doing this with Newsbreak and affiliate marketing. I started making around an extra $2K per month from affiliate marketing and hope to grow that to $4K per month by the end of the year so that helps my income remain balanced.
What about Medium?
Holiday bonuses? More changes in Q4?
Who knows?
What do you think about how things are going on Medium? Are you in support of it all?
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Cheers,
Jenn
I am a semi-newbie on Medium and have not published enough to figure out if it will work for me or not. So far, I've earned... only a few cents.
I've noticed this too and I'm not doing anything differently. I do think things may get a little worse before they get better. I did a little experiment on a brand-new article where I asked 10 people to read a Medium post. 5 I watched do this (all paying members), the other 5 (mixture of paid unpaid) I just took their word for reading the article. I only got 2 estimated reads, very interesting. Since then, the article has gained hundreds of views but only 37 reads. I am wondering now how many people read and it isn't registering - a little worrying. I'll be doing some more experiments.