Why Writers Leave Medium

A conversation we should have sooner than later.

Pour a coffee and buckle up, we’re going to get into some real dirt, okay? This weekend is one year since I became a boost nominator at Medium. Sometimes anniversaries have a way of making a body sit down and think about stuff.

March 30th last year I got an email out of the blue. Said Hi, Linda, I’m Ariel Meadow Stallings and I wonder if you’d like to be one of Medium’s first boost nominators. The boost program was real new and I was one of a tiny handful of nominators.

Truth was, when I got that email I was seriously wondering if Medium was the right place for me. Pondering the stay or go question. Didn’t want to go, but the feed was full of make money posts. Kept asking myself why I’m doing this when get rich quick was getting the views, and dominating the homepage and all the feeds.

Fact of the matter, we are defined to at least some degree by where we put ourselves. Maybe only as creatives, I don’t know. One artist hangs canvases in an art gallery. Another hangs them at the flea market. Is the art any less than? No. But maybe the perception of the people walking by is. I don’t know. But it was a train of thought I had, back then. Do I want to swim with the make money crowd? Wasn’t sure I did.

But I knew Ariel from before Medium. Not personally, but I read her writing before Medium. So I hit reply, said hey Ariel what the heck are you doing at Medium? And told her what the heck, I’d give it a shot. In hindsight, I’m glad I did.

Medium hasn’t “changed” yet, it’s just beginning.

Before the boost program, paid subscribers were leaving like rats off a sinking ship. People were sick of the garbage. That’s what happens when an algorithm gets to drive without human supervision. People click make money posts out of curiosity, and click away disgusted. But the algorithm sees a vote. Shows us more of that. You know?

Before boost, Medium had sunk to 680K paid members. That’s the pot we get paid from. So as paid members left, there was less and less in the pot to pay writers. A year ago, writers were disgruntled with the sinking pay. Lots of writers were so frustrated they were writing about the drastic drop in pay. Some left in frustration.

A year after launching boost, paid membership has shot up and now is just shy of a million. Don’t need to tell you more money in the pot means more money for writers.

Medium has made lots of changes over time. Easy to look at the boost program and say Medium changed again. Truth is the boost program is in its infancy. Truth is, there are more people unaffected by boost than people who are affected.

That’s a factor of numbers. Nothing else.

In February, 2.4 million stories were published on Medium. That’s a number posted on the Medium blog. Verified. That’s 80K posts per day, average. There are 110 boost nominators. You think we can read all that? No. Not a chance. Not a hope in hell.

For every post to be seen by a human would mean the nominators and curators would need to read 20K posts per month. That’s not humanly possible. So most people who post on Medium are not getting seen by a nominator. More aren’t getting seen by a nominator than those who are are.

Currently, there are 9,000 editors and 4,500 active publications on Medium. And out of those, 110 people are boost nominators.

Easy to say get more nominators, right? That’s the long term plan, yes. The long term plan is that any publication owner that accepts writers will be able to boost posts. But it’s also not feasible to just jump straight there. Know why? Training. And volume.

Right now, the average acceptance rate for a boost nomination is 50%. Which means curators have to read two posts for every one they boost. Nominators have to learn what makes a post boostable. Some people say well just hire more curators. Sure, but that’s a paid position. Paid out of the same pot writers are paid from. Then those same people will complain when pay goes down. You know? So it’s a juggle.

The program is still growing. It’s still a toddler, learning to walk. It’s showing great promise for those who are getting boosted. But if that’s you, important to know you are in the minority. And if it’s not you, important to realize that it doesn’t necessarily mean your writing is bad. There’s just not enough eyes yet.

Now the meat… why writers leave Medium

A year ago, people were leaving Medium because the pay was nosediving. They took it personal. But it wasn’t. It was that the pay pot was shrinking as readers left.

Today, some people are leaving Medium because they used to get “curated” in the old days and aren’t getting boosted now. Again, they take it personal. It’s not. It’s just that the number of boost nominators is so tiny compared the volume of content going up. It’s that there are 110 curators and they are focused on nominating from their own publications because that’s how the program works. But that will grow, too.

Some writers leave because of platform limitations. For example, there are no age filters. So people who write erotica won’t get boosted. But neither will people writing sex education. Because there’s no way to be sure people who don’t want to read that content or are underage don’t see it. So the workable solution is to not boost it. That way, only people who want to see it do. And that’s unfortunate. But it’s where we are until the platform figures out how to manage content filtering.

Some writers leave because even though they qualify for boost, they’re not getting boosted. Sometimes, that’s a topic issue. How many “the sky is falling” posts do you think the same small team of curators is going to boost? Because sure, there’s 110 nominators. But the curation team is maybe a third that size. They aren’t going to boost the planet is ending, the planet is ending every day. If they do boost posts about climate change, it’s likely going to be by people working in the field.

Here’s a real valid one. A sincerely valid reason people leave Medium. Because the income is inconsistent. I write twice a week on average. But my income varies wildly. Doesn’t matter what income range you’re in. Doesn’t matter if you range from $50 one month and $500 the next, or $1000 one month and $5000 the next — the wild swings can make a person crazy. Same amount of writing. That’s what rings in your head. Same amount of writing, vastly different income. Who would tolerate a job that did that? No one.

Thing is, it’s not about how much we write. It’s about 2.4 million posts per month. It’s about everything that goes up. Luck of the draw. If I write a killer post but it’s the same day Barack Obama posts something, I’m not getting reads. End of story.

A lot of people say the inconsistency takes a toll. Say they need to move to Substack where it isn’t inconsistent. And that’s true. Earnings are consistent on Substack. But at the same time, there are no viral posts on Substack. Zero odds of writing one post that goes wild and pays what you usually earn for a whole month. Doesn’t happen.

Here’s what I think. If you’re a hobby writer, just happy to get any pay they throw at you for writing you’d do for free, you probably don’t care.

But if you’re a writer who dreams of making a living writing, you need a plan and you have to know how Medium fits into that plan. Because Medium should never be “the” plan. Unless you’re a hobby writer just happy to get what you can.

If you have a dream that’s bigger than hobby writing, but you don’t have a plan much less know how Medium fits into it, the frustration will take a toll. That’s a promise.

Curious to know if you have a plan, and what it looks like. Or if you’re still trying to figure that out. Wondering if that’s something I should write about. Connecting the pieces into a coherent and actionable strategy.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

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