No, this isn’t another rant about leaving Medium because of how horrible it has become. No, I’m not upset that my “amazing articles” aren’t getting the reads or attention that they deserve.

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What I do want to do with this article is point out what I see as some major flaws that are currently causing Medium.com to lose good writers by the droves and why so many people wonder whether Medium writing is worthwhile for them as well.

For me, writing on Medium is an experiment.

I currently have many other blogs that I could be investing my time and effort into that I know would bring good results.

I know this because those blogs are already bringing in good results and have been for a couple of years.

So by taking and investing time into Medium, even if I only spend a couple of hours a day writing an article and then engaging with other writers on the platform, that is time I’m not putting into my other blogs.

So why do I feel that so many good writers are leaving Medium and why do I believe that so many others who haven’t left are considering it?

Author’s Screenshot of Recent Views

1. Articles on Medium.com have no staying power

Above is my view graph from the last 30 days. As you can see in the middle I had a couple of articles start to perform pretty well… for about 2 weeks. Then the articles stopped being shown as much and my views dropped back off.

This is despite the fact that I continued putting out new good quality articles 5 times a week.

This is a major issue with Medium and truthfully it is the main issue that I believe hurts Medium the most in regards to losing both readers and writers.

Good articles simply stop being shown.

If someone wrote an excellent article 2 days, 2 weeks, or 2 months ago that got tons of reads, claps, comments, read time, etc. why would Medium then bury it? Now I get that some things are time sensitive (like news or trending things that happen) but so many articles that people wrote many days, weeks, or months ago are still valid and helpful…

But Medium buries them with their algorithm!

Since Medium buries these articles despite them still being helpful and relevant it seriously hurts both writers and readers. As a new Medium reader do you want to read the most relevant and helpful articles that might be a few weeks, months, or years old or do you want to read crappy articles that were written a couple of days again instead?

Obviously the former, right?

But Medium seems to stop showing articles after an incredibly short period of time. Which in turn hurts both the readers (cause they don’t see the best content) and the writers (since their content stops being seen).

My simple suggestion to fix this is for Medium to add sorting into all of the topic categories on both the app and desktop (desktop currently has sort by new but the app doesn’t for some reason). By allowing readers to sort by:

  • new
  • most popular within the last day, week, month, year, or all time
  • most read within the last day, week, month, year, or all time

Medium will make it so that not only can writers with higher quality articles actually be seen more often but readers can also find the better quality articles far more easily.

2. Earnings On Medium have massive fluctuations

I believe this issue is mainly due to the issue mentioned above. Articles are shown for a short while and then stop being shown by the algorithm.

And because of that earnings have massive up-and-down fluctuations.

Now granted I’m pretty new to Medium but when you go from $15 one day to $4 the next day it’s hard to continue to put out good quality articles (and yes that’s an actual swing I had from one day to the next).

I’ve seen another Medium writer talk about going from $955 in June to $361 in July. And honestly… that’s just unacceptable.

How does Medium ever expect to keep good writers when they give inconsistent results like that from month to month?

Now I know it’s a “summer slump” or whatever other junk people want to call it but Medium needs to figure out its crap so writers don’t have gigantic fluctuations like this.

I have many regular blogs and yes earnings fluctuate from month to month as does traffic with the holiday season being the best for both types. However, my earnings stay relatively consistent from January through October and then November and December go up.

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Author’s Screenshot of Recent Blog Earnings

The above is a screenshot for June and July for my ad earnings from one of my sites. Despite July being a “down” earnings month and there being a “summer slump”, my earnings were only down slightly in July vs June.

Now compare that to the earning report below from Mike Lewis in his recent post

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Author’s Screenshot of a Medium Story from Mike Lewis

Like seriously Medium???

This is crap that needs to be fixed if you want Medium to actually be a platform with real writers rather than just a place where people stop by and write for a while before moving on to greener pastures.

There is nothing inherently wrong with writing for fun but with fluctuations like this serious writers will take their talent and go elsewhere where they can get an income that they can actually rely on month in and month out.

3. Writing articles On Medium quickly becomes a hamster wheel

This issue might also be caused by the first point but I’m not sure if it’s a chicken-and-egg situation or what.

For most people on Medium when they stop writing… earnings virtually stop as well.

Heck, I’ve seen people on here posting that they took a one-week vacation, and views, reads, and earnings plummeted. Seriously? One week?

That screenshot I posted above from my ad earnings hasn’t had a single article added in almost a year. But it keeps chugging along as it ranks on Google and I actually get paid for the people that view it via Google (unlike with Medium).

Now try and go a year without publishing something on Medium and see how well that works for you.

I get it, Medium is a different creature than an individual blog but what I don’t get is why it has to be. Why is Medium a hamster wheel of constantly having to write just to keep your current results while regular blogs aren’t?

I really feel it comes down to Medium limiting the people that read your articles through their read limits (for nonpaying members). Can you imagine a business telling people not to come into their store and browse?

But yet that’s what Medium does all the time!

I want people to come to my blog sites, the more the merrier. Because I have ads and even if those people never buy a single thing I make a few pennies for every person that visits and reads.

Why doesn’t Medium do the same and end this stupid hamster wheel?

4. Medium does not enough reward for time/effort

This is an issue that I believe is caused by all the proceeding points. You can put in tons of work, and hours of effort, and write an amazing post, but unless Medium’s magical algorithm decides to show it you will only make a few cents.

It doesn’t matter if your article is the best one on the subject or the worst. The only thing that matters is whether Medium actually shows it.

As I mentioned in the article that I linked above, I feel like this would be fixed if Medium would simply allow much better sorting to take place in all the topics on both the app and desktop. Show everything under a new tab (so every article gets a chance) and then allow us to sort by popularity or most views.

By refusing to do that Medium is arbitrarily rewarding some writers while not rewarding others depending on their algorithm. Also how in the world is sorting by new (and a couple of other things) set up on desktop but not the app???

Want to make more money this month? Hope the algorithm favors you.

With my regular blogs, I can know that the more articles I put out the more money I’m going to make. Even if it takes multiple months for Google to rank them, once they are ranked I can make money from them for many years to come.

With Medium, it’s put in all kinds of effort and hope that it pays off.

And far too often it doesn’t… so writers leave and find a platform where their work is rewarded properly.

5. Time is better spent on your own blogs

For many people who write on Medium (myself included), this isn’t the only place they write. They might freelance, write on their own blogs, write on sub stack, write on Newsbreak, or many other places.

And every minute that is invested into content here is time that can’t be spent on content for those other places.

In my case, I have many other blogs I could be writing on. So if I’m writing 20 articles a month on Medium and only making $200 then I’m making $10 per article. If that grows as a normal blog does and I’m able to make say $1–2 per article per month for many months and years to come then it’s worthwhile.

But if on Medium those articles only produce income for a short period of time (days or weeks) and I max out at even $10–15 per article then it isn’t worth my time.

It would be better for me to invest that time into my own blogs where I could make $1–2 a month per article as within 10–15 months (at most) I would make more than on Medium. And those numbers on my own blogs would be on the extremely low end.

All of us writers have to determine if our time is better spent on Medium or on other platforms. And the way that Medium is set up currently it seems (at least based on many people’s articles) that the time spent on Medium is better spent elsewhere for a lot of people.

Final Thoughts

No platform is perfect, I get that. But if Medium wants to actually have a platform that has good quality content and keeps good writers around then they need to find a way to address these issues that are driving many good writers away or driving them to write less.

I love the idea of the Medium platform and the premise of it but until they figure these things out, keeping good writers around will continue to be difficult if not impossible.

Matt R
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