Why I'm concerned about the future of Medium

And why you should never rely on one content platform

Throughout the Medium Academy, I encouraged my students to think beyond publishing on just one platform.

Relying on a single outlet for your creativity and audience building is a fool’s game. You don’t own the audience, you have no control over how you’re rewarded for your hard work, and the rug can be whipped from beneath you at any second.

How ironic, then, that Medium itself appears to be proving my point so brutally.

I am deeply concerned about the future of my favourite writing platform. I’ll be discussing it more on today’s Solo Club live stream, but I wanted to give you the heads up and provide some context for what has been a really trying few months on Medium.

Medium has played a central role in the Mark Ellis Reviews business right from day one. It took a while to really make its presence felt, but when I eventually broke the $2,000 monthly revenue barrier in February 2021, I didn’t earn any less than that - until March this year.

Medium has made two significant changes in 2023. The first was ditching the original curation system where stories (that’s what blog posts are called in Medium land) were given an artificial boost in the algorithm following a manual review by Medium staff. This was replaced with something called - confusingly - ‘Boost’, which retained the human curation element but added the influence of ‘nominators’. I’m one of those nominators and I’m joined by a bunch of other non-Medium staff who can recommend a certain number of stories each month to the curation team for boosting.

The second huge change relates to the Partner Program, of which you must be a member if you want to receive a share of Medium’s membership revenue in exchange for your writing. It’s being opened up to 12 additional countries, which is wonderful news, but there are also some significant changes that have been made to the ways in which writer earnings are calculated.

Those changes are well-meaning and intended to increase the quality of stories that end up on readers’ feeds. AI-generated content and spam are high on Medium’s hit list, and for good reason - the site has been peppered with the stuff for quite some time. As a result, earnings are now calculated via key engagement signals that include reader highlights, claps, replies, and follows. Equally, if your story is boosted by the curation team, that puts it in line to earn more Partner Program revenue.

Earnings are now based more heavily on read ratio, too - a statistic that Medium measures by looking for readers who engage with a story for 30 seconds or longer, divided by the total views. So, if your story is read for longer than a story with identical views, yours will earn more. Makes total sense, right?

There’s just one problem. Early signs suggest that the Partner Program changes are decimating the earnings of skilled, popular writers on the platform.

I’m one of them.

Over the last three days, I’ve earned $27.48 - despite having one story boosted during that time. You don’t need to be Einstein to work out that I’m highly unlike to hit anywhere near my $2,000 per month earnings target if that continues. In fact, it’s a cataclysmic drop in revenue.

It’s early days for the new Partner Program algorithm and I’m willing to give it time. However, since the aforementioned Boost program was introduced earlier this year, I’ve also witnessed a consistent and colossal drop in views, reads, and engagement on Medium. My stats now average 20,000 reads per month. They used to be around 60,000. More worryingly, the number of people (and regular readers) commenting on my stories has dropped considerably and the referred memberships I’d sent Medium’s way have also been disappearing one by one.

While I’m willing to accept that some of this could relate to my wiring, audience fatigue, and external factors within the tech niche, I’m not convinced those elements are solely responsible for my fall from grace on Medium. I’m still immensely proud of the work I put on there and I know it delivers value for my audience.

This has left me with a platform that has moved from being a profitable revenue generator within my business to a costly overhead. Calculating that overhead is very tricky, but it relates entirely to the time I’m investing in creating content for Medium, which is no longer paying me back satisfactorily in revenue or audience building. I only have a certain amount of patience for overheads like that - I am running a business, after all.

This is desperately sad and, of course, hugely concerning. What frustrates me the most, however, is that I was not once asked for an opinion on the Partner Program changes. As Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine reminded me in a recent reply to a comment I left on his story announcing the changes, Medium has long been told by its users that they want a focus on quality over quantity. I’m all for that and I take a great deal of pride in my work. But when the performance of that work is completely sledgehammered via a ludicrously complicated boosting program and revenue-sharing changes that appear to be driven almost entirely by a fear of AI-driven content, I have a hard time accepting them.

I’m not alone, either. I’m aware of plenty more writers in the tech niche (and others) who have experienced a severe drop in views, reads, and revenue following the changes.

As noted earlier, I’m willing to give the new Partner Program system time and experiment with the content I’m writing on Medium. I just can’t help but think I shouldn’t have to type that last sentence, though. If I was providing value to my audience before, why should I adjust my style to make Medium take note and reward me correctly?