Do You Care About Being Compensated for Your Work, Tony Stubblebine?
An interview with the CEO of Medium has me fired up
I probably shouldn’t be writing while I’m angry. It would be best to take some time to cool down and then reassess the situation, but I’m the type of person who cannot stay quiet when I feel as though injustices are being perpetrated.
I read an article today by the lovely Kristina God, which I will post down below for reference.
Casey Newton interviewed Tony Stubblebine, the new CEO of Medium, and Kristina’s story highlighted a few key excerpts from the conversation. She discussed how Tony talked about moving Medium toward a place where writers are “subject matter experts.”
I decided to read the full interview so that I wasn’t taking his words out of context. I took issue with a few things that he said. Let me start by saying that I’ve been having my misgivings about Medium for a while now. I’ve been writing on this platform for eight months and I just cannot shake the feeling that Medium doesn’t appreciate its writers. I don’t feel valued here.
Full disclosure, I haven’t had much success on Medium as far as views, reads, and money is concerned. I don’t know if it’s because I can’t grasp the Medium algorithm, or I’m not engaging with enough of my fellow writers, or maybe my writing is just awful and I’m lying to myself.
What I do know is that I started writing on NewsBreak last week. I’m currently working toward monetization, which requires me to have 100 registered followers and ten articles published. I was shocked to discover that I had accrued over 7,000 views with just two stories published and over 100,000 impressions. This occurred while starting with zero followers.
I normally get between 10–30 views on a Medium article. That doesn’t include reads. My stats are abysmal! Some might think that I’m bitter about my lack of success, so my complaints about Medium aren’t valid. I would argue that’s not the case.
Although I have my own biases, in this case, I feel like I’m looking at Medium through a clear lens. I try to be objective when I write because it’s important to gain the trust of the reader and of course, it would be easier to just run wild with my emotions. It’s more difficult to gather facts and dispute them impartially.
“Medium is a place to write if you don’t already have an audience and you’re not trying to build an audience,” Stubblebine said. Subject matter experts “are more interested in reach than they are in money because they make their money somewhere else. So distribution is the first pitch.”
My first point would be if you’re not trying to build an audience, how are you going to get your information out there into the ether? This is contradictory to everything Medium is about. For example, to join the Medium Partners Program, you must gather 100 followers. I never met a soul on Medium who wasn’t trying to build an audience.
This also goes against the way Medium works. The more content you publish, the more likely you will be to get traction and attract more views and reads, which is the point of what we’re doing when we publish our words.
Newton also noted, “Medium fills a niche for people who have something to say only once in a while.” Again, this opposes the natural order of Medium. If I only publish “once in a while,” no one is going to see my work. The algorithm favors those who publish frequently, as evidenced by some of the most successful people on the platform.
Then Tony claims that subject matter experts “are more interested in reach than they are in money because they make their money somewhere else…” I came to Medium to attempt to start a career writing online. I was misinformed by one of Medium’s biggest names into thinking this could easily be a full-time job. I don’t know if that person did so inadvertently or if persuading people to join Medium is a business model for them.
I know many people on Medium who came to the platform for the same reasons I did. This whole idea that writers on Medium should care more about reach than money is crazy! Someone is making money at Medium. Last year Medium raised $132 million (Tony declined to update the numbers). Maybe the executives at Medium should care less about money and more about reach! What an asinine thing to say!
I’m so tired of hearing certain people on and around this platform saying things like “you should be here because you love writing — not for money.” Believe me, if I didn’t enjoy writing, I wouldn’t be here eight months later, struggling to make under $20 a month. People come to Medium for different reasons.
As I said, I was led to believe that I could start a writing career on Medium with relative ease. I was certainly naive for believing the lies I was told. But I was also desperate. I was doing freelance work here and there, but nothing was stable due to my spotty work history and lack of experience in many desired areas. Right now, I don’t have any other income, despite my best efforts.
I don’t know who got the idea in their head that writing isn’t hard work! Writing takes a lot of time and effort. With all that I put into Medium, it does add up to the hours of a part-time job. This is time I could be spending elsewhere, looking for a job that actually pays, or spending time with my family.
But I choose to keep slugging away here at Medium because I believe that I’m good enough to earn a living writing. I do expect to be compensated accordingly for the effort I put into this platform! The executives certainly are. Someone is making a nice living off of us, the writers of Medium, the lifeblood of the company, but it isn’t me, and it isn’t 95% of the people who toil away on stories for this empire.
All of this being said, I do understand that Medium is not an employer. We, the writers of this platform, are not employees. But I don’t necessarily agree with this particular model.
It’s similar to the gig economy in which delivery drivers, personal shoppers, and ride shares take on all the risk and do the job of an employee, but don’t get any insurance, gas reimbursement, or other perks that employees of a company may enjoy.
I see this type of business as taking advantage of the talent or the labor. They work just as hard as a normal employee, but due to semantics, these companies are allowed to take advantage of their work without having to invest in them as proper employees.
In conclusion, I fear Medium does not appreciate its hard-working writers. Maybe I was naive to expect to have any stability or income from this platform, but I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that we make Medium what it is, and we should be compensated accordingly.
I think the business model needs to be revamped. I’m not sure how that would work, but I’m fairly certain that are ways to make the writer feel like what they’re doing is worthwhile. We are like the housewives of the labor industry: people don’t consider us workers and don’t appreciate the struggle of our art form.
I don’t know if anything will be done, and I don’t know how long I’ll stick around on Medium. There are things that I love about this platform. But the bad is starting to outweigh the good, and that’s where I need to stop and reassess if this is something that will benefit me long-term.
I just have to say that after reading the interview with Tony Stubblebine, I am not sure if he understands what we need as writers or where this platform may be headed. I understand that many may disagree. I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts on Medium.
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