Are Your Views and Earnings (Still) Down Too?

Did your views get put in the Witness Protection Program too?

Oh, Medium. There’s never a dull moment around these parts. If you’re reading this, your views might have gone more topsy-turvy than the Cheshire Cat. Mine did.

Oh, I remember a time when I would get on average 200–400 views per post, with some reaching over 1,000. This month, most posts got 80ish. My highest was 217. Even many of my regulars have dropped off.

Maybe I started sucking harder than a hooker with rent due. But I doubt it.

Even stories with read ratios over 80% just died immediately — sometimes after the first few hours of posting (all screenshots by author):

Sheesh Meeds, if high read ratios don’t give something a little more algorithmic go-go juice — exactly what does?

Maybe I’m just cursed?

With views going down, earnings follow. Maybe I will have to start sucking like a hooker with rent due…because rent is indeed, due. I’m kidding. Well about the sex work, not the rent being due. But if you see my feet appear on OnlyFeet you know that I in fact did not make rent.

If you have a foot phobia, my apologies. If you have a foot fetish that skews towards size 10s with opposable toes — you’re welcome. What do you think, is there a market for monkey feet on OnlyFeet? Seriously, I may need a new side hustle.

Anyhoo, back to Medium (for now).

Why?

If you’re asking why this is happening, I gotchu booboo. Not why I made you look at my feet, that was for giggles. But why are my/our views lower than grandma’s nipples? Well, I have an answer to that. Get ready.

Drumm rolllll…..I don’t know.

I know, I know — I’m more connected on Medium than a light switch. I’m in three Discord groups and two Slack groups. I’ve got bupkiss. And trust me, I’ve tried to suss this out. But a lot of people’s views are down and I can’t find why.

*Shrug*.

Here are my best guesses based on absolutely nothing other than hunches, edumucated guesses, witches, spirits, eye of newt, and a Magic 8 Ball:

1. Spammers

If you hadn’t noticed, there’s been a whirlwind of spam profiles. Including the clusterfuck of Jason Provencio’s (that’s the real one) that have popped up. He’s been playing whack-a-mole with them for weeks, he knows they exist, don’t be the 837th person to tell him, they get taken down quickly.

Then there was the shitstorm of Everyday Explorers like my buddy Mark Suroviec, M.Ed. reported on, and their inevitable demise.

Medium is aware of the problem and have surely been ripping their hair out over the clusterfucks and shitstorms caused by them. In my opinion, they do a solid job doing it (especially for a company of only roughly 80 people, who cover every aspect of the business).

They haven’t said it affected views, but I have my suspicions. They’ve been awfully quiet, and the last time they were this quiet was when the asspirate debacle happened with the September Scammers.

2. AI

Medium has said that AI content doesn’t make money on this platform. I however call bullshit. I’ve seen the claps it gets, so there are people viewing it. I don’t see a solution on the horizon for this, but I have seen more AI being submitted to the pubs I edit for.

Maybe there was more views this month usurped by that spam, bullshit, lifeless, hacky, drivel that total and utter assholes post. If you post AI content, I’m not sorry — you’re an asshole, thief and fraud. Get a hobby. Or better yet, get a real skill because poking buttons on AI does not a writer make.

3. Boosts

Maybe there are more boosted posts now. This would make sense since they bring on new boost nominators every month. That, and/or maybe some of these boosts got picked up by the algorithm and usurped more of the views.

Maybe the boost has nothing to do with it. But I have been saying for a while that it is coming. Mathematically, 500 views for every boosted post multiplied by the number of nommers and curators is in the millions of views already.

For example, there are roughly 100 nominators and if each one gets 15 of their 20 nominations boosted. That’s 1,500 boosts. Multiplied by 1,000 views (they’re guaranteed 500 but many get significantly more views than that) — that’s 1.5M views.

That’s not counting the ones the curators boost themselves. I’ve heard about 70 stories get boosted every day, so 2,100 per month (that’s 2.1M views applying the math above). It’s also not counting the boosts that get 5K, 10K, and more views. It’s a boostapalooza.

I think it’s naive to think that the boost program won’t be usurping (or ‘redistributing’) more and more views as time goes on. Another factor is that it pays exponentially more than non-boosted stories — so a good chunk of the writer’s earnings pool is going to boosted stories.

4. People Went Outside

Maybe people aren’t feeling as read-ee these days. Maybe readership is having some slow times and it’s just a cyclical, seasonal, or hormonal thingamajiggy.

5. A Combo

It could also be a combo of any of the three.

What Can We Do?

Bupkiss. It’s the system. Just ride the wave until the rollercoaster goes uphill again. I love Medium, it ain’t perfect — but I love it here. It’s their system so all we can do is keep writing what we love and ignore the many behind the curtain. And maybe hope to get boosted.

Of course, you can increase your odds if you take my advice on how to get boosted. Many people have followed that and started getting boosted regularly (not every time, nobody gets boosted every time, but more). The esteemed and venerable Grand Poobah James Bellerjeau also has some amazeballs boost advice here, and here.

Or don’t. You can stay in the rarely-gets-boosted basecamp with Miss Stachio. I could use the company. We can watch our views fall together, reminiscing about brighter times. Wait, that sounds horri-fucking-ble. Go get boosted. If you haven’t been boosted yet, join New Writers Welcome — we’re boosting new writers every month.

~Robin Wilding, reporting from…an internet blackhole searching “monkey-feet-pic profitability”