How Much Can I Publish and Earn Without Paying $5 a Month?
Is it worth it to you to continue paying $5 a month to write on Medium? Would you be better off elsewhere? Is Medium the equivalent of writing on your own walls? What if you continue publishing on Medium but no longer pay to publish?
It started out great, my earnings quickly rose month atfer month and in less than 6 months I was up to $99 a month in earnings. Medium showed great promise. I could see a future when I would be able to actually earn an income worth the hours I was putting in. But changes in the algorithm changed everything. As of this writing I’ve earned $4.54 in story earnings for the month of November. On November 4, after a month of publishing nothing I published, Goodbye for Now saying, among other things,
“For months my income here at Medium has been falling at a horrific rate. By the end of November I expect my earnings to drop below $5.00 a month for the first time since I started writing at Medium in August 2021.”
I didn’t miss it by much.
That story became one of the better paying articles I’ve written in months with well over 800 poems, stories, listicles, and articles I’ve posted to Medium to date. Add to that, despite not posting, my followers continue to grow even though readership remains static and low. Hummm… Today I’m now at 4,800 followers and growing. I expect to pick up over 100 followers a month by doing nothing.
I know, I know, I should write because I love to write? Well guess what? Just because I’m not posting doesn’t mean I’m not writing. Seriously, those people that tell us to post because we love to write have no business giving advice in the first place.
I’ve also learned that most of the rest of you are experiencing drops in readership despite your best efforts. The membership model simply isn’t working for most. As Lisa Beth Wright states in I’m Tired of Articles Telling Me To “Just Write for Fun”
“As a creative, it’s discouraging for people to dismiss my hard work as somehow not worthy of pay. It really hurts when this shtick comes from another creative who should know better.”
And,
“But some of us actually need the money we make here. Why is that so horrible? You’d think we committed an unpardonable sin!”
Lisa goes on to write,
“It’s some weird badge of honor to “just write for fun.”
I once worked for a local delivery company where the only way to rise up the corporate ladder was to get injured on the job to the point where the only thing you could do was man a desk. We weren’t given the proper tools necessary to unload containers weighing in excess of 500 lbs and experienced many on the job injuries as a result. Those guys wore their injuries like badges of honor. I just got the hell out ASAP, but not before hurting my back.
Give Beth a read as she needs the money.
Something else I learned can be seen in this screen grab from My Interim Stepping Stone by Margie Willis which I was unable to actually read to completion because I didn’t pay my $5 a month fee.
Do you see it? I can clap and comment despite not being a paying member, nor having actually read what Margie has written. The clap and comment features are visible even those the rest of the story isn’t. As a matter of fact I gave Margie 50 claps and commented,
“Hoping the best for you.”
And Dear Margie didn’t earn a penny. Perhaps some of the rest of you will make it up to her. Tell her I sent you as I don’t like tagging or being tagged. Under the current system non paying members aren’t penalized but paying members are being penalized.
Talk about a great tool for spammers… If I were of a mind to do so I could clap and comment on Medium articles all day long in an effort to drive traffic to my stories without ever paying a cent in membership fees. Not that doing so actually drives more traffic, but expect to see a huge increase in claps and comments on unread stories when this news becomes well known. Problem is: there will be no increase in readership and revenue for those claps and comments that waste your time, and stroke your egos.
Then, if I really want to read a Medium story I can go incognito as I did on The Time German Princes Tried To Steal Texas by Grant Piper. Using Google Chrome I copied the URL, typed Control-Shift-n and pasted the URL into the new window that opened, giving me full access to Grant’s story all the way to the end where he wrote,
“There is nothing quite like the wild, wild, west.”
If you enjoy history you won’t be disappointed by Grant’s work. Please, tell him I sent you. You know, tagging and all. I wasn’t able to clap and comment while incognito and just like Margie, Grant earned nothing from my read. Sad, isn’t it? By the way, you won’t be able to clap and comment while incognito but you do have unfettered access to every story published to Medium.
I learned that trick on Quora while searching for info on this story. Everything else I discovered on Quora turned out to be incorrect, exaggerated, or flat out lies. To date I’ve only used incognito this one time. Okay, twice, maybe 3 times….
You see, all one needs to do to earn money here at Medium is collect 100 followers then post one new story every 6 months and spend your days clapping and commenting on stories you never read. You still earn revenue for member reading time even if you aren’t paying the $5 a month fee. Make sure you add a lot of fluff to your story to increase read time. Make sure you add a lot of fluff to your story to increase read time. Did I just say that twice? You can even lie and call it satire despite the fact that it isn’t really satire. After all, controversy always gets the most reads. Or you can just lie about how your last story went viral.
So where do I go from here? Do I just rely on my pinned Table of Contents to generate reads for my stories? Do I paint Wackemall.com on buildings, bridges, and works of art all over town? Do I write elsewhere? Why should I pay $5 a month when doing so doesn't increase my readership and income?
Well? $4.54….
Do I continue the experiment posting my limit each month? And what is the maximum amount of stories I can publish without paying to publish? As I understand it I can publish an unlimited number of articles for free, but can only read 3 articles a month. Give that some time to sink in. Speaking of sinking, perhaps I should just go fishing instead. The city and county parks where I live have beautiful, clean water, spring-fed ponds stocked with bass, brim, crappie, carp, bluegill, and more. Fishing is free off-season and several are close by. You know, catch the supper my writing can’t buy.
Perhaps I should just spend more time riding my antique motorcycle. Those photos were taken in one of the nearby parks.
Something I found interesting is that on this list shared by Kristina God, 7 of the top 10 writers in 2021 appear to no longer be posting to Medium. I can only speculate as to why, but I’m guessing the next paragraph might figure in.
As it turns out, even Kistrina was critical of her own list, later posting,
“Besides Ev Williams only 3 writers — Larry Kim, Darius Foroux and Julie Zhuo — were still active.
Most of the writers were inactive, such as Gary Vaynerchuk
9 out of 10 were male!
Only around 400 out of 200K authors were getting tracked”
She goes on to write,
“From coaching a lot of Medium writers, I know there are people who only have a small following (1K–15K) but have thousands of reads a month.
Followers can be a vanity metric and you shouldn’t be too impressed by it.
Take Gary V for instance: Gary has so many followers, possibly many from social media, who don’t even engage on Medium.”
So much for advice from writing coaches. You can’t score a touchdown if they won’t give you the ball.
Supply vs demand is against us all. Medium isn’t losing writers. Medium may well be losing quality writers but when it comes to making a profit for Medium Inc, all that matters is fingers and eyeballs. New members join every day at a faster rate than existing members go away. The supply of “writers” far exceeds the demand for writers. This is true of every media outlet in the world today. As long as supply continues to grow pay will never increase, and with the use of algorithms pay will only go down. Just because I read an article about UFOs landing on the Whitehouse lawn doesn’t mean I want to read 25 more stories about UFOs.
So what’s next, do I attempt to game the system somehow? Nah, not my style. If I were a gambler I’d invest in used Japanese Domestic Market Mini Kei trucks and vans. By the way, if you’re in or near Greensboro, North Carolina and have one to sell, I’m in the market. At 30 to 40 miles per gallon the market is going to explode. The old Dodge I just sold never topped 15 mpg. I wish we had a used Kei truck dealer here in Greensboro.
For those who don’t yet understand what is going on allow me to explain that Medium has made the transition from publishing company, social media site, and blog host to a business holding company which is in the business of buying and selling other companies. To date Medium is known to have raised $163 million in funding, has secured ownership and or launched 20 companies (counting publications) and moved far away from its stated mission.
“In March 2021, Medium announced a change in its publishing strategy and business model. The change is to its mix of paid journalists working on its own publications — this will be proportionally reduced — versus its support of independent writers, which will increase.”
As most reading are aware, “support of independent writers” has not increased. Almost every writer here at Medium is experiencing reduced revenue.
Medium was founded in 2012. In 2013, Medium founder Ev Williams became a founding partner in Obvious Ventures, aka Obvious Management Services, L.L.C. In June 2022, Obvious Ventures raised $461 Million in venture capital funds. Previously Obvious Ventures had raised over $271 million, $123 million, and $191 million.
“Obvious Ventures, the firm co-founded by Medium CEO and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, announced today that it has closed its third fund, “OV3,” at $271,828,182, a number that the graphing calculator-owning among us may recognize as e or Euler’s number.”
Medium acquired Matter in 2013. In March 2016, Medium spun off Matter into an independent company, owned by Ev Williams.
If Ev keeps this up he may replace Elon Musk as the man the world loves to hate.
Medium.pk was founded in 2016. I can’t verify the Pakistani company is a Medium Inc holding but the logo gives me pause. Are the two companies related? According to their Facebook page, Medium.pk is a non profit.
Medium’s music publication, Cuepoint, was founded in 2014. Cuepoint folded in 2016.
Backchannel, was sold to Condé Nast in 2016.
Embedly was purchased in 2016.
In 2016, Medium hired the founder of the publication Human Parts which last published in July 2021. Edit: Casey points out in the comments that Human Parts is still publishing.
In February 2016, Medium reached a deal to host The Ringer. In August 2017 The Ringer left Medium for Vox Media.
Superfeeder was bought up in 2016.
YesPath and Talkshow Industries were purchased in 2017. Talkshow had previously been shut down in 2016.
In 2019, Medium acquired The Bold Italic.
Medium launched seven new publications in 2019: GEN (Died April 2021) OneZero (died October 2020) Marker (Died April 2022) Elemental (Died March 2022) Focus, Zora, and Level (Died December 2021).
In 2020, Medium launched Momentum.
Knowable Universe and Glose were purchased in 2021. Knowable and Glose were said to be incorporated into the Medium platform to be used by Medium members. Did that ever happen?
“Medium supports a wide range of publishing, from short blog posts to in-depth investigative journalism, and everything in between. With the integration of Glose, Medium will have more than 1.5 million books available within its vibrant ecosystem. Readers will be able to find more of what they are looking for by an author or on a subject, and writers can have their different content forms all in one place, elevating their voice and perspective.”
And
“Today, I’m happy to announce that Medium has acquired Knowable, an audio-first learning company, to bring audio capabilities to our readers, members, and creators.”
While we do have a crude text-to-speech feature, Knowable has yet to be incorporated into the Medium platform.
Perhaps now you can understand what the $162 million in funding has been used for. Not for paying writers but for buying other companies. There is no profit in paying workers but buying, selling, and sometimes shutting down other businesses can be very profitable.
On November 17, Kristina God announced Medium.com Is One Of The Most Visited Websites On The Internet ranking in the top 377 worldwide with 145 million monthly views as opposed to 2016 when there was only 60 million readers. Contrary to what many believe, there is no shortage of readers.
What we do have a shortage of is means for individual writers to increase readership and revenue. Adding more followers has not proven itself to be a means of more reading time. 50 claps have not proven itself to be a means of more reading time. More comments have not have not proven to be a means of more reading time. Commenting on the works of others has not have not proven itself to be a means of more reading time. Writing for publications has not proven itself to be a means of more reading time. Clapping and commenting on articles written by others have not proven to increase the reading time of your articles. Great writing has not proven to increase the time readers spend reading your articles. Not one single piece of advice being passed from article to article by writer after writer has proven to increase reading time and revenue of individual writers here at Medium.
And all of you who have been members for a year or more know that to be true. Algo makes sure of it.
So why should I continue spending $5 a month when doing so will not increase my personal earnings?