Wow, Frustration With Medium
Putting some hard facts on the table. Then we talk, okay?
Y’all, this post is coming straight from the heart so if some of the words aren’t as polished and pretty as I like to make them, hope you’ll pardon me a little for flying with passion instead of polish today.
Last Friday I wrote a post called Why Writers Leave Medium. Comments are exploding over there. So much frustration with the ups and downs on Medium. And I get it. Trust me, I do. March was my worst month in the whole past year. It happens. To all of us.
So what I want to do is put some hard facts on the table, and maybe we talk. Okay? Because I think that if frustration is leading the pack, misconception is breathing down its neck hard and heavy and the race is too close to call yet.
Here’s the thing, so you know. I’m not writing this to “defend” Medium. I hear that a lot. People saying I defend Medium because I’m in the boost program, or whatever reason makes sense in the face of frustration. It makes me laugh. Because honestly, it’s baloney. Medium doesn’t need me to defend them. Ain’t about that.
It’s about all the writers I’ve come to care about.
It’s about Michelle who is buying groceries with her Medium earnings, and should be earning more. About Roman who had his best month while I had my worst. lol. About Patricia who said woo-hoo at her first $500. About Lisa, Linda, Glenna, Jocelyn, Patrick, Denise, Joe and so many more who are fine, fine writers and should be earning more.
But what someone should be earning and what they are earning — those aren’t the same. That’s why I write about Medium.
And I know I missed people I should be including. But the list is too long. Suffice to say if you’ve commented more than twice on my writing here, I’ve taken notice. And even if I didn’t say your name, if you’re reading this, you are why I write.
Because here’s the thing. Show me another site that lets writers write whatever the hell they want and earn real money doing it. You can’t. Not unless you can win fiction contest after fiction contest over at Vocal. Don’t know about you, but I sure can’t.
You can say substack, but it’s not the same. Substack leans into niche. Pick a topic and cover the hell out of it, you’re maybe going to do okay. Only thing Substack and Medium have in common is your keyboard. No such thing as a viral post on Substack. No such thing as consistent income on Medium.
But the ups and downs at Medium are enough to drive a body crazy.
Here’s the kind of stuff I hear. I used to curated, but now I’m not getting boosted, why is that? Also, why can’t Medium fix the damn algorithm so my followers just see my posts, how hard can that be? Seems like valid questions, yeah?
So let’s start here.
In 2018, Medium was publishing 20,000 stories per day. 591,000/month.
In 2020, Medium was publishing 47,000 stories per day. 1,385,000/month.
In 2024, Medium publishes 82,759 stories per day. 2.4 million in February.
Think about that number really hard. That kind of volume. How do you wrap your head around 2.4 million posts going up in one month? It’s a lot.
Doesn’t matter when you publish. 7 am or 6 pm. Monday, Wednesday or Sunday. No matter when you publish, the very minute you hit publish, 58 other people did, too. And within an hour of hitting publish, 3,500 other stories went up.
Another thing to consider.
I follow 400 people on Medium. It’s not follow for follow nonsense. I follow my writers and my most ardent readers. I follow writers whose work I love even if they don’t know I exist. I follow a great number of my Substack readers. Get to know you here, I go look for you there, too. Pretty easy to hit 400, doing that.
Let’s play pretend. Let’s pretend Medium religiously and faithfully takes every piece written by everyone I follow and puts it into my feed. You think that means I see it? Think again. How much can one person read? It’s not humanly possible. That’s happening with your readers, too. They probably follow a lot of people too.
So here’s the question. Faced with a tsunami of words, how does a writer float instead of drown? I believe it’s possible. I even think it’s actionable.
All the questions and comments posted last week made me stop and think about that. Made me realize how trite and useless most “Medium tips” truly are. I’m working on an actionable plan. It will go up later this month. But in the meantime, curious to know your thoughts about the sheer volume and how to thrive in that atmosphere.
Looking forward to your thoughts.
The more I hear about this frustration with the site, I'm thinking Medium should be more like Reddit. Everyone isolated in their own little genre communities, amongst our own "kind", but still writing the hell out of what they want without a great deal of excessive oversight. We all want to write what we want to get paid, but I don't see the latter part of that happening soon.
I mention Reddit because they just went public on the stock exchange and are selling shares. If Medium went public, you guys could all buy shares within your means. Then they'd be legally obliged to pay you what you're owed, and you'll have some means of calling the shots.
There is only one way in my opinion - have a community (I don't mean R4R or reading clubs or tag bombing). There are those who talk about organic traffic and then there are those who score viral stories and boosts - you mentioned 2.4 million stories were published in Feb alone - my question is: what are the chances of scoring a viral, boost or getting many eyeballs on a post? I am an editor for a couple of well known pubs and I admit I stopped checking the stats of published stories. Let's just say there is a lot of competition out there