Agree Medium is a place for networking and branching out. If i did not write on medium, i do not think i would have had the confidence to write anywhere else, and of course I would not have met you! You inspire me to push and be better, and your clear analysis of what is happening in the writing world always is refreshing.
Yes! It's such a great point. Gaining confidence as a writer is so important, especially when you're first starting out. And, I feel the same way. I feel like I belong to a nice little community of writers now. 🙂🙏
I agree with this. I started writing on Medium last week and it’s giving me the confidence to post online. I tried on Twitter in the past and I always had so much anxiety around posting.
I’ve heard from successful content creators in the past that the best platform to use is the one that creates the least amount of friction for you to get started and be consistent. For me, that’s Medium.
I loved the website business model. I just got hit with the random suspensions though for commenting on posts. Whoever did the engineering is really bad or there are malicious users attacking me for commenting. I need to email their interns to help me resolve the issue now. That is one issue with Medium lately- people are so competitive for the small pool of revenue that they are reporting anything and everything to get other writers kicked.
Trying to hit some momentum here. Can I ask you a favor Sara? Will you subscribe to me? I’ll be doing a free weekly newsletter which shows you how to make two cocktails and a shot and my goal is to reach 100 subscribers today. Please help me get there!
Trying to hit some momentum here. Can I ask you a favor David? Will you subscribe to me? I’ll be doing a free weekly newsletter which shows you how to make two cocktails and a shot and my goal is to reach 100 subscribers today. Please help me get there!
Hi! I started writing on Medium around 2019, but dropped it because I was doing my master's degree. After a long time, I am now seeking new directions and I returned to writing there. I have been steadily been gaining followers every day just publishing 1-2 articles per week.
As a professor frustrated with the disinterest of my students, I value that greatly. There are people who actually set time aside to reas my thoughts and even comment on them. I am not too concerned with the earnings, I am using it as a place to expose my ideas and gain a following.
My thought align with the ideas you write here. I am building a different life for myself and writing online, especially on Medium, is an important part of that journey.
I think it is a good website for that. The monetization dropped but it is a good flexible income stream while paying for university tuition as well. I used it for computer science engineering and design work portfolio to get more reach. I also use it as a sort of writing portfolio and AI portfolio for freelance work.
As someone considering making more of a time investment towards earning a nominal amount of income on the platform, I am frankly concerned about the periodic spate of days in which a group of writers (some of whom I know and respect) all report being abruptly disconnected from the Partnership Program. What concerns me most is the penumbra of mystery around this. It is a bad sign when a writer feels the need to throw out feelers to other site users to try to get an idea of WHY they have been ousted. Technical glitch? Suspicion of AI involvement? Problem with Stripe?
It is bad enough to deal with the epidemic of ghosting in the traditional job market in 2024, ranging from silence after multiple interviews, to finding out that the job posting itself is a ghost and there is no "there there".
Given people are investing at least a small amount of their own money to be on Medium (with "Friend of Medium" status encouraged for yet more out of a limited budget), I think the process of removing someone from access to profit should be transparent and not a shock to the writer.
Ah, that's too bad. 🥲 And, I totally agree. I think transparency is always the way to go. If you haven't already, you could try reaching out to Medium's help desk. In my experience, they always respond and are generally quite helpful.
Yes, lots of top writers randomly get kicked off. This is because of their engineering backend system which filters for certain things. It is also because other writers and readers will report accounts and then people look into it (presumably lower paid employees) to make decisions. This leads a lot of people being randomly kicked off the website now. It was so bad that even top writers all moved to Substack and other websites completely. The website also got attacked by scams, impersonators, fake accounts, AI story writing mills, spam pieces, and more so a lot of writers (especially top ones) felt completely defamed and mistrust grew on the website. Besides being kicked off, many writers reported earning $0.01 on posts after some update rollouts. I guess they do not do enough A/B Testing and Computer Science Engineering Common/Edge Case testing for quality assurances during those quick production rollouts and the issues come in later. That is something a lot of people dealt with and the inconsistency of revenue is annoying to anyone who wants to work the website more seriously. Substack is good but only if you could get closed sales on paid subscriptions which is much more steady if readers do not decide to cancel subscriptions abruptly. Either way, both website earnings are very variable on work rather than fixed by the hour or salary.
Good writing ABOUT WRITING, Hudson. Getting exposure seems to be the best predictable pay Medium offers me. Even if I can't estimate how much cash I'll earn, I know that my "street cred" grows monthly. I won't be "Tom WHO?" forever.
I'm in the process of closing out my Medium right now. I have a website, I have this Substack, and I get features here that I don't get there. I really haven't gotten anything out of it in the last 4 years, and I get more interaction here and on X.
I am also closing or pausing all social media except for X. That's just me, though.
I don't really have other complaints, and it was just a choice of how I'm going to devote my time. If it's working for others, then great.
I'm slowly beginning to do the same. I've yet to master consistent earnings here on Substack. But, I'm seeing a lot of potential in growing an engaged audience.
"There’s no other platform where writers can sign up, start writing, and get paid as quickly and easily as on Medium. And, while Medium may no longer be a place to earn a full-time living, it has many benefits."
This is the best reason to use Medium. I'm waiting for their customer service support again but this is really the single reason why Medium is better than other websites despite all of its other flaws.
Appreciate the transparency and nuance in your post.
Medium has always valued high-quality work, and I have always appreciated that. I was one of the people who has done really well in the past and lost most of their traffic with the most recent shifts. But, I can’t fault Medium for evolving in the way that they think is best. And who knows, I may return to posting there once in a while.
I think the fundamental difference between Substack and Medium is that on Substack, creators are the customers and on Medium, creators are the commoditized suppliers. After having written for 10+ platforms over 10+ years, I think this nuance is essential.
Over and over I have built a following on a platform only to have it disappear. Therefore, having a platform that is more aligned with the needs of creators is something I really value now.
As a long-term creator, I would rather build on a platform that is a little slower to start on than a platform that is easier to start on, but ultimately takes away 90% of your audience and you have to start over.
And as Notes gains steam, I think Substack is becoming easier and easier to start on.
I believe someone I read earlier had a 40,000 followers and reading account on Medium where the author just got banned so she lost all her 40,000 audience and now she is starting over on Substack as well with like 500 people or something. It is a shame.... it makes it look bad on the writers too, that is something Medium will need to resolve for people in the future.
This is a very informative and timely article. Medium has recently been under attack by bots randomly posting nonsense comments and low quality article. I decided to create a Substack (Generative AI Publication) newsletter to diversify.
As for the Boost program, you need to manage your expectations. Medium’s curation team has only 20% acceptance rate on average.
Before Medium made huge changes that caused the downfall of earnings, I was happily making around $2,500-$3,500 a month. Today, I'm lucky to even hit $1,000.
The only reason why I stayed on Medium is because of the networking opportunity. I have made partnership with brands and startups to promote their products and tools. This is where I make a bigger chunk of my monthly earnings.
You are right to say that writing on Medium is not a full-time job, it's an investment.
Thanks! And, I completely agree with you on all accounts — particularly regarding Boosting. I no longer focus on it and I haven’t found Boosted articles to substantially boost earnings (pardon the pun).
I think diversifying with Substack is a really smart move. 🙂🙌
This is good news to learn about Medium. I went on there for more engineering knowledge beyond the classroom in software engineering. I do get too excited to support writers and that leads to commenting small notes and thanks which the website management actually hates me doing. They do not like supporting writers with positive comments yet there are probably millions of other people doing it the same. They want to see long comments rather than thanks for thanks for sharing or acknowledgement comments. That is strange since once they had rolled out changes, you could sense that nobody on the platform wanted to engage with any articles for some time since people who were active on the website were also often the ones who got targeted for suspensions first. Now... when writers moved from $200 posts to $0.01 posts.... what else should they have done?
I made an account on medium several years ago, and I never write a thing. I didn't think I had enough "experience" to write for that platform, but I'm sort of kicking myself for it. Do you have any thoughts/knowledge on people writing serial fiction on there? I heard at one point that people do, but I'm not sure how well it's received.
Honestly, I’m beginning to see Substack as the best place for serial fiction. Medium stories are dictated by an algorithm, so it’s harder to stay connected to your readers. I actually have plans to begin posting serialized fiction to Substack myself, so I’ll have more information in the future. 🙂🙌
Great. That's actually good to hear because once I'm done with my plans for 2025 (everything already planned out) I'm thinking about doing that as well, or changing my plans and putting out my current work as serialized writing on here, before I self-publish it.
Sadly Medium is not what it used to be - by a long shot. I was a 10 X top writer on the platform with 7000 followers up until April 2023 when they kicked me out because I complained multiple times that I'd been shadow banned since the new (very rude and aggresssive) CEO took over.
I'm a nutritionist,health coach, wellness and healthy living practioner who's been follwing the ket diet for 10 years. Thus, I write a lot about health, food, fitness, and especially benefits of eating meat opposed to veganism.
King Stubblebine, apparently didn't approve of my content and since December 2023 my earnings started to rapdily tumble from $3500 per month to $500 in April!
I asked why many times as my content was only getting better, but I received the standard customer service reply (nothing).
It soon became apparant that most of my followers were not seeing my new stories as I had slowly been throttled out of the algorythm.
So much for Medium and giving a crap about it's writers. I invested 90% of my time and energy into Medium for 2.5 years to get to where I was, then had the rug pulled from me for no reason.
I'd highly recommend being very, very careful with that platform as long as the current CEO is in control. Hopefully, it will improve again one day, but for now my advice to any new writers is to not waste your time!
That's great insight! 🙏 Although, I'm sorry to hear about your drop in earnings. 🥲 I definitely agree with you, I don't think Medium is a place to earn a full-time living for 99% of writers. It seems as though it's best suited for beginners and those looking to develop their writing skills while earning a side income.
I try not to be too critical because I'm sure there are a lot of moving parts, but I do wish Medium's leadership would just pick a direction and stick to it. There have been far too many changes for my liking in the past few years. 🤷♂️
Great update, Hudson. Needed to see this spelled out. I’ve been posting on Medium since 2016, and ridden all those waves of change. Your assessment resonates 100%. Hoping you’ll be seeing more of me there .. and here on Substack too .. more networking, more options .. all good!
Agree Medium is a place for networking and branching out. If i did not write on medium, i do not think i would have had the confidence to write anywhere else, and of course I would not have met you! You inspire me to push and be better, and your clear analysis of what is happening in the writing world always is refreshing.
Yes! It's such a great point. Gaining confidence as a writer is so important, especially when you're first starting out. And, I feel the same way. I feel like I belong to a nice little community of writers now. 🙂🙏
I agree with this. I started writing on Medium last week and it’s giving me the confidence to post online. I tried on Twitter in the past and I always had so much anxiety around posting.
I’ve heard from successful content creators in the past that the best platform to use is the one that creates the least amount of friction for you to get started and be consistent. For me, that’s Medium.
Yes! I think that’s exactly right. I’m glad Medium is allowing you to take that important first step. 🙂🙌
I loved the website business model. I just got hit with the random suspensions though for commenting on posts. Whoever did the engineering is really bad or there are malicious users attacking me for commenting. I need to email their interns to help me resolve the issue now. That is one issue with Medium lately- people are so competitive for the small pool of revenue that they are reporting anything and everything to get other writers kicked.
https://weeklybusinessstory.substack.com/p/how-two-students-turned-a-newsletter
Trying to hit some momentum here. Can I ask you a favor Sara? Will you subscribe to me? I’ll be doing a free weekly newsletter which shows you how to make two cocktails and a shot and my goal is to reach 100 subscribers today. Please help me get there!
well said Hudson and well synthesized. I’ve grown weary of the complaining about Medium (or [enter platform here] bashing).
Change is a constant in the universe. As learned by Napster, Blockbuster, and others. We change, platforms change. Adapt. ;)
Thanks! And, I totally agree. Change is one of the only constants of life. 🙂🙌
Trying to hit some momentum here. Can I ask you a favor David? Will you subscribe to me? I’ll be doing a free weekly newsletter which shows you how to make two cocktails and a shot and my goal is to reach 100 subscribers today. Please help me get there!
Hi! I started writing on Medium around 2019, but dropped it because I was doing my master's degree. After a long time, I am now seeking new directions and I returned to writing there. I have been steadily been gaining followers every day just publishing 1-2 articles per week.
As a professor frustrated with the disinterest of my students, I value that greatly. There are people who actually set time aside to reas my thoughts and even comment on them. I am not too concerned with the earnings, I am using it as a place to expose my ideas and gain a following.
My thought align with the ideas you write here. I am building a different life for myself and writing online, especially on Medium, is an important part of that journey.
I love this. It's exactly what Medium was created for. Wishing you all the best on your journey! Feel free to ask any questions you may have. 🙂🙌
I think it is a good website for that. The monetization dropped but it is a good flexible income stream while paying for university tuition as well. I used it for computer science engineering and design work portfolio to get more reach. I also use it as a sort of writing portfolio and AI portfolio for freelance work.
Write for yourself and it will never be a waste of time…
Well said. 😎🙌
Hello! This related to Medium. (Do come see me at https://medium.com/@ma_murphy_58). : )
As someone considering making more of a time investment towards earning a nominal amount of income on the platform, I am frankly concerned about the periodic spate of days in which a group of writers (some of whom I know and respect) all report being abruptly disconnected from the Partnership Program. What concerns me most is the penumbra of mystery around this. It is a bad sign when a writer feels the need to throw out feelers to other site users to try to get an idea of WHY they have been ousted. Technical glitch? Suspicion of AI involvement? Problem with Stripe?
It is bad enough to deal with the epidemic of ghosting in the traditional job market in 2024, ranging from silence after multiple interviews, to finding out that the job posting itself is a ghost and there is no "there there".
Given people are investing at least a small amount of their own money to be on Medium (with "Friend of Medium" status encouraged for yet more out of a limited budget), I think the process of removing someone from access to profit should be transparent and not a shock to the writer.
Ah, that's too bad. 🥲 And, I totally agree. I think transparency is always the way to go. If you haven't already, you could try reaching out to Medium's help desk. In my experience, they always respond and are generally quite helpful.
You can submit a support request, here: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
I hope that helps! 🙂🙌
Thanks! I am just now signing up for the Partnership Program but will keep the contact info. Appreciate it. : )
Sounds good! It's always helpful to have on hand.
Yes, lots of top writers randomly get kicked off. This is because of their engineering backend system which filters for certain things. It is also because other writers and readers will report accounts and then people look into it (presumably lower paid employees) to make decisions. This leads a lot of people being randomly kicked off the website now. It was so bad that even top writers all moved to Substack and other websites completely. The website also got attacked by scams, impersonators, fake accounts, AI story writing mills, spam pieces, and more so a lot of writers (especially top ones) felt completely defamed and mistrust grew on the website. Besides being kicked off, many writers reported earning $0.01 on posts after some update rollouts. I guess they do not do enough A/B Testing and Computer Science Engineering Common/Edge Case testing for quality assurances during those quick production rollouts and the issues come in later. That is something a lot of people dealt with and the inconsistency of revenue is annoying to anyone who wants to work the website more seriously. Substack is good but only if you could get closed sales on paid subscriptions which is much more steady if readers do not decide to cancel subscriptions abruptly. Either way, both website earnings are very variable on work rather than fixed by the hour or salary.
Thanks for the mention Hudson
Of course! I always enjoy watching your Medium update videos. 🙂🙌
Good writing ABOUT WRITING, Hudson. Getting exposure seems to be the best predictable pay Medium offers me. Even if I can't estimate how much cash I'll earn, I know that my "street cred" grows monthly. I won't be "Tom WHO?" forever.
Thanks! And, haha, I totally agree. Money is important but "street cred" is criminally underrated. 😎💪
I'm in the process of closing out my Medium right now. I have a website, I have this Substack, and I get features here that I don't get there. I really haven't gotten anything out of it in the last 4 years, and I get more interaction here and on X.
I am also closing or pausing all social media except for X. That's just me, though.
I don't really have other complaints, and it was just a choice of how I'm going to devote my time. If it's working for others, then great.
I'm slowly beginning to do the same. I've yet to master consistent earnings here on Substack. But, I'm seeing a lot of potential in growing an engaged audience.
"There’s no other platform where writers can sign up, start writing, and get paid as quickly and easily as on Medium. And, while Medium may no longer be a place to earn a full-time living, it has many benefits."
so, so true!
🙂🙌
This is the best reason to use Medium. I'm waiting for their customer service support again but this is really the single reason why Medium is better than other websites despite all of its other flaws.
Appreciate the transparency and nuance in your post.
Medium has always valued high-quality work, and I have always appreciated that. I was one of the people who has done really well in the past and lost most of their traffic with the most recent shifts. But, I can’t fault Medium for evolving in the way that they think is best. And who knows, I may return to posting there once in a while.
I think the fundamental difference between Substack and Medium is that on Substack, creators are the customers and on Medium, creators are the commoditized suppliers. After having written for 10+ platforms over 10+ years, I think this nuance is essential.
Over and over I have built a following on a platform only to have it disappear. Therefore, having a platform that is more aligned with the needs of creators is something I really value now.
As a long-term creator, I would rather build on a platform that is a little slower to start on than a platform that is easier to start on, but ultimately takes away 90% of your audience and you have to start over.
And as Notes gains steam, I think Substack is becoming easier and easier to start on.
I totally agree with you. I love the idea of speaking directly to my readers as opposed to filtering exposure through an algorithm.
I think Medium is great for beginners and side hustlers. But, Substack is best for long-term growth. 🙂🙌
I believe someone I read earlier had a 40,000 followers and reading account on Medium where the author just got banned so she lost all her 40,000 audience and now she is starting over on Substack as well with like 500 people or something. It is a shame.... it makes it look bad on the writers too, that is something Medium will need to resolve for people in the future.
This is a very informative and timely article. Medium has recently been under attack by bots randomly posting nonsense comments and low quality article. I decided to create a Substack (Generative AI Publication) newsletter to diversify.
As for the Boost program, you need to manage your expectations. Medium’s curation team has only 20% acceptance rate on average.
Before Medium made huge changes that caused the downfall of earnings, I was happily making around $2,500-$3,500 a month. Today, I'm lucky to even hit $1,000.
The only reason why I stayed on Medium is because of the networking opportunity. I have made partnership with brands and startups to promote their products and tools. This is where I make a bigger chunk of my monthly earnings.
You are right to say that writing on Medium is not a full-time job, it's an investment.
Thanks! And, I completely agree with you on all accounts — particularly regarding Boosting. I no longer focus on it and I haven’t found Boosted articles to substantially boost earnings (pardon the pun).
I think diversifying with Substack is a really smart move. 🙂🙌
This is good news to learn about Medium. I went on there for more engineering knowledge beyond the classroom in software engineering. I do get too excited to support writers and that leads to commenting small notes and thanks which the website management actually hates me doing. They do not like supporting writers with positive comments yet there are probably millions of other people doing it the same. They want to see long comments rather than thanks for thanks for sharing or acknowledgement comments. That is strange since once they had rolled out changes, you could sense that nobody on the platform wanted to engage with any articles for some time since people who were active on the website were also often the ones who got targeted for suspensions first. Now... when writers moved from $200 posts to $0.01 posts.... what else should they have done?
I made an account on medium several years ago, and I never write a thing. I didn't think I had enough "experience" to write for that platform, but I'm sort of kicking myself for it. Do you have any thoughts/knowledge on people writing serial fiction on there? I heard at one point that people do, but I'm not sure how well it's received.
Honestly, I’m beginning to see Substack as the best place for serial fiction. Medium stories are dictated by an algorithm, so it’s harder to stay connected to your readers. I actually have plans to begin posting serialized fiction to Substack myself, so I’ll have more information in the future. 🙂🙌
Great. That's actually good to hear because once I'm done with my plans for 2025 (everything already planned out) I'm thinking about doing that as well, or changing my plans and putting out my current work as serialized writing on here, before I self-publish it.
Hmmmm most persuasive but fair argument for Medium I’ve seen. Well-written - really direct and helpful.
Food for thought
Awesome! I’m glad to hear it. 🙌
Is it a good idea to lead Medium's audience to substack account
I think so. Substack allows you to have a much closer connection with your audience. It's a strategy I'm currently playing around with. 👏
Nice article.
Sadly Medium is not what it used to be - by a long shot. I was a 10 X top writer on the platform with 7000 followers up until April 2023 when they kicked me out because I complained multiple times that I'd been shadow banned since the new (very rude and aggresssive) CEO took over.
I'm a nutritionist,health coach, wellness and healthy living practioner who's been follwing the ket diet for 10 years. Thus, I write a lot about health, food, fitness, and especially benefits of eating meat opposed to veganism.
King Stubblebine, apparently didn't approve of my content and since December 2023 my earnings started to rapdily tumble from $3500 per month to $500 in April!
I asked why many times as my content was only getting better, but I received the standard customer service reply (nothing).
It soon became apparant that most of my followers were not seeing my new stories as I had slowly been throttled out of the algorythm.
So much for Medium and giving a crap about it's writers. I invested 90% of my time and energy into Medium for 2.5 years to get to where I was, then had the rug pulled from me for no reason.
I'd highly recommend being very, very careful with that platform as long as the current CEO is in control. Hopefully, it will improve again one day, but for now my advice to any new writers is to not waste your time!
Rob
That's great insight! 🙏 Although, I'm sorry to hear about your drop in earnings. 🥲 I definitely agree with you, I don't think Medium is a place to earn a full-time living for 99% of writers. It seems as though it's best suited for beginners and those looking to develop their writing skills while earning a side income.
I try not to be too critical because I'm sure there are a lot of moving parts, but I do wish Medium's leadership would just pick a direction and stick to it. There have been far too many changes for my liking in the past few years. 🤷♂️
oh! This is so scary
Great update, Hudson. Needed to see this spelled out. I’ve been posting on Medium since 2016, and ridden all those waves of change. Your assessment resonates 100%. Hoping you’ll be seeing more of me there .. and here on Substack too .. more networking, more options .. all good!
Thanks! Yes, I've been more active on here lately and I'm really enjoying it. 🙂🙌