4 Largely Overrated Medium Features In 2021
Number 4 will surprise you… or make you mad.
Medium is a great platform for writers. It doesn’t hurt to say it during this time of “I’m leaving Medium”-posts left and right.
I won’t be leaving. If anything, I’d be focusing more time and energy on Medium. I just retired my newsletter for that exact reason.
Despite the great platform that Medium is, it has some severely overrated features. I have 4 for you today.
These 4 are particularly interesting because as overrated as they might be now, in the earlier days, these were some of the most important features of Medium. To make money, to gain traction, to increase views, and to build a community.
Different story now.
1. Claps
If you’re new to Medium, you might not even know that claps used to be one of the most important metrics on Medium. A few years back, claps were one of the main factors for earnings. Yes, indeed, Medium based earnings on the number of claps (among other things).
As you might expect, that quickly led to a clapping frenzy. Claps for claps was the game to get more money. I guess that’s why Medium changed it.
Nowadays, claps are nice. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy getting and giving claps (does that sound dirty in your head too), but in the bigger picture, claps don’t mean a whole lot anymore. They don’t improve earnings, that’s for sure.
So, yeah, in terms of performance and earnings, claps are overrated.
2. Followers
This one is a little tricky. On the one hand, followers are more important than ever at the moment. I’ll come back to this in the next post which will be featuring the most underrated Medium features. Stay tuned for that.
On the other hand, followers are practically meaningless in 2021 and will be even more meaningless in 2022. For a couple of reasons:
- Followers don’t translate to views. That’s because of the host of “fake” followers. People who don’t really follow to read your stories. And fake accounts.
- The follow-for-a-follow game has been increasing dramatically since the introduction of Medium’s new partner program requirements.
Again, don’t get me wrong, I have celebrated the hell out of every major follower milestone in the last few months. I’m getting close to hitting 3100 now.
Does that mean, I get 3100 views on every story? Of course not. I’m lucky to get 10% of that on a regular basis. This is why followers are somewhat overrated in 2021.
3. Curation
This is a bummer, to be honest. Having curation on this list means Medium has lost one of its most amazing and unique features of all time. Curation used to be handpicked (by humans) stories that got distributed among the platform.
Some of the greatest writers ever have benefitted from this system, on the one hand. On the other, new writers — we have all been there — could have gotten lucky with a curated post that went viral right away. A cornerstone of success.
It used to be that way.
In 2021, Medium moved away from human curation almost entirely, in favor of an auto-curation algorithm (or no curation at all). This is still driving many writers crazy.
Curation doesn’t mean anything anymore
That’s what I hear all the time. And unfortunately, it’s largely true. Curation won’t lead to more views. It won’t lead to more discoverability either.
In other words, curation is completely overrated now. Sadly.
4. Top writer
I’ve saved the best for last. Or the worst, depending on your stance here. This will be controversial, I’m fully aware of it.
But the Top Writer status might be the most overrated feature on Medium right now.
The Top Writer term gets thrown around everywhere. I do it too. In my bio. You’ll find it in almost any bio of top writers. 5x top writers, 10x top writers, 20x top writer.
The biggest bragging term on Medium. Again, I do it too, so no offense.
Let’s break down why it’s overrated.
It’s easy to get
I already hear you screaming but wait for it.
I’ve done an experiment over the last 3 weeks. I picked a few top writer tags. Those are the ones you can get a top writer badge for if you didn’t know. It’s a closed list too, so there are just over 70 to choose from. For now.
But back to the experiment. I picked a few top writer tags, namely Creativity, Future, Advice, and Ideas.
Why those 4? Because I hadn’t previously used them. So, I wouldn’t have a head start on them in terms of stories tagged with these tags.
Then, I wrote a few articles and tagged them with one or more of those 4 tags. Within about 3–4 posts I got the top writer status in all 4 tags. And none of the stories were viral hits or anything.
To be honest, it was way easier than expected. It shouldn’t be that easy because officially only 50 writers can hold the same top writer status, meaning only 50 people can be a top writer in Creativity at the same time. I don’t know why it is so easy then. Maybe Medium changed the requirements here too.
I got the same for Writing and Reading as well, and Writing is one of the most competitive Top Writer tags out there, so they say.
It doesn’t really mean much after you got it
This experiment told me another thing. Once you got the top writer status, what does that lead to?
As it turns out, not much. Views won’t skyrocket because you are a Top Writer.
Heck, I don’t even think Medium recommends more top writer stories in fitting topics and tags than “other” stories. They might promote top writers more in the recommended authors section. That won’t translate to more views and money though, only to more followers which is, as you now know, another one of the overrated metrics.
If Medium did in fact promote top writer stories more, that would make the top writer status instantly more useful and powerful, but without that… it’s just a bragging term, as I said before.
The future of top writer tags
The last thing I want to mention is the future of the Top Writer status. Recently, Medium moved away from topics in favor of tags. So, they moved away from handpicked topics that you can follow (but weren’t able to influence with your story settings) to tags that everyone can use and add to their story.
This makes me question whether the Top Writer tags will stay a closed and rather small list (70+ entries) or if it, in the future, will become an open list that is driven by the algorithm. This means you could get a top writer tag in thousands of categories. This then means top writer status would lose even more meaning.
Unless Medium starts recommending stories based on top writer status.
Think about it like this: The Top Writer status won’t make you a successful writer on Medium, but being a successful writer will get you more top writer status tags.
The bottom line
None of these 4 features is bad per se, let me state that first here in the conclusion. I love to celebrate achievements. And followers, chosen for distribution aka curation, top writer tags, and claps belong to these achievements.
In terms of performance, earning potential, and reach, however, these 4 features are largely overrated. Once upon a time they meant something, but their importance has slowly been fading away.
That’s just my opinion though. What’s yours?
P.S.: First of all, you should get my posts in your inbox. Do that here! Secondly, if you like to experience Medium yourself, consider supporting me and thousands of other writers by signing up for a membership. It only costs $5 per month, it supports us, writers, greatly, and you have the chance to make money with your writing as well. When I started, I made $3000 in 6 months. By signing up with this link, you’ll support me directly with a portion of your fee, it won’t cost you more. If you do so, thank you a million times!
