What No One Really Wants To Say About Medium's Boost Program
And are writing sites doomed in the long run?
Little story. It might seem irrelevant at first. It’s not.
In the middle of August, I opened a publication called On Reflection. The idea was to create a place for writers to reflect on life and such. We’ve had writers reflect on all sorts of things. Grandparents, friends, life, coincidence.
Here’s some of what I’ve rejected...
How to improve your memory in seven easy steps, how to easily conquer your fears, political polemics, Donald Trump rants, more self help, traumatic events that are too fresh to be able to reflect on yet, a review of a self help book…
It’s not just me. I read a post on the Writing Cooperative that said they accept less than 20% of submissions. Most declined stories aren’t even about writing.
One writer sent me an angry email that said how am I supposed to know what your publication wants, I didn’t have time to read the submission guide. There’s too many submission guides to read, who has time for that crap?
Sigh. I wanted to tell her no one owes her exposure if she can’t take 3-5 minutes to read a submission guide. I didn’t. I just deleted it. No point.
It’s not just Medium. When Vocal runs writing challenges, about a third of submissions aren’t on the specified topic. When they ran a pet writing challenge, a chunk of the essays were self help posts and personal essays that didn’t include a pet.
Side note — sometimes the writing is good, it’s just not a good fit. I once submitted a photo essay and got told it’s a great read, but they want more technical info, like what kind of camera I used, and how I framed the shots. Oops. Sorry. My bad.
But really? Most often when someone submits a story that’s not even on topic, it’s usually not great reading. That’s just a sad truth. There is no barrier to entry with writing. Anyone who can type can submit whatever they want.
I once read that more than half of the content submitted to Medium is spam and scams and they need to get rid of that stuff before anyone sees it.
So what do you do when you’re trying to run a writing site in that kind of environment and make it profitable enough to keep the board of directors happy?
Simple. You say anyone can join the partner program as long as they pay their five bucks. And then you send out a posse of humans to find the “good” stuff and elevate it. So when readers come to the site, they see the handpicked stuff.
That’s what Medium’s boost program is.
The upside is human intervention. The downside is also human intervention.
Because not all humans agree on what is a good story. I might nominate something that I think is f—ing stellar. If the curators don’t agree, too bad, so sad. It happens. More often than I like. Nothing I can do about that.
The other alternative is letting robots decide what’s good. That’s not better. It’s what they did in the past and the site was overrun by clickbait and how to make money on Medium posts until people started cancelling their memberships.
As Medium grows, as more people are willing to throw five bucks into the pot for the chance of making more than they paid, it’s going to get worse not better.
As a boost nominator, the sheer volume of content makes it harder to find good writers and I don’t know what to do about that. At what point does it become impossible to find the needles in the haystack?
It’s not different with books. The sheer volume uploaded to Amazon makes it hard for new and talented writers to get any visibility unless they are also adept at marketing their book. Every writing platform struggles under the exact same thing.
Sometimes, it makes me wonder if writing sites are doomed in the long run.
I don’t know. Many questions, no answers. What do you think?
On Medium…
The Harsh Truth No One Tells You About Living on This Bitter Earth
Is This What Aging Really Means, Losing All The People You Loved?
The #1 Writing Tip From A Literary Critic And Bestselling Author (*)
If you enjoy my writing, please click the heart or share this post. Thanks. :)
xo,
Linda
That angry email you got made my brain short-circuit a bit. What does she want, for the submission guide info to be beamed directly into her mind?? “Who has time for that crap” Well, uh, the writers who read submission guides and get published. That’s who. 🤦🏽♀️
I would much rather have the sites curated by human beings who have read the articles than bots that aren't paying attention at all. It's way more authentic.
Those people whom you and the WC reject are better off self-publishing. No rules to follow there. I know as a current and (possibly) future publication owner that you need to cultivate a good image for the sake of respectability. I'm guess I'm lucky that my publication topic is very specialized.
But I do know that I have started to benefit from the algorithm changes, so that gives me encouragement to stick around. I used to make between $20 and $40 a month, and this was the first month where I cracked $100.