Summary

The author reported earning $150.89 in October 2023 on Medium, despite a 33% decrease in views due to Medium's crackdown on bot activity, and shared insights on their writing process, audience engagement, and suggestions for improving the Partner Program Earnings.

Abstract

In October 2023, the author achieved a significant milestone by publishing 96 stories, nearing the 100-story mark. Despite a notable decrease in views, attributed to Medium's efforts to combat bot activity, the author earned $150.89, which is considered a success given the circumstances. The author expressed mixed feelings about Medium's earnings calculation, particularly the 30-second read requirement, which they believe disadvantages short and technical content. They proposed reducing the read time to 10 seconds, adding new engagement buttons, and simplifying the clapping mechanism to better reflect genuine reader interest. The author also discussed their audience statistics, including a steady follower count of 2,224 and a stagnant email subscriber list, and invited readers to comment on how they might reinvest their earnings to enhance their writing.

Opinions

The author is critical of the 30-second read time requirement for earnings, suggesting it penalizes both short-form content like poems and in-depth technical articles.
They believe that the current system may lead to a decrease in the quality and depth of content on Medium.
The author is skeptical about the ease of manipulating engagement metrics and suggests that Medium's algorithm could be more transparent and explicit in how it promotes content.
They are optimistic about their earnings and view the decrease in views as a platform-wide issue rather than a reflection of their content's performance.
The author values reader engagement and sees comments as a way to improve their writing.
They are contemplative about how to reinvest their earnings to further their writing career and are open to community suggestions.

I Earned $150.89 in October 2023

Take a Look to my Results

Hello, My Friends!

Welcome to a new earnings report!

October has been an exciting for me. A lot of work trying to be as consistent as possible and publishing every day of the month.

How Many Stories I Have Published?

October has been a very busy month, writing a lot and researching new topics.

I am preparing some changes for the future, in order to make my proposal of value more impactful for you so, stay tuned!

Do you know how many stories I have published until now?

96 stories in almost 2 months and a half. I only need 4 more stories to reach 100 stories milestone!

As you can see, I have a lot of drafts (86 at the moment) pending to be reviewed and published.

I have some material too that is not written on Medium platform yet.

Pen and paper is the first stage of my writing and actually I have much more ideas on my brain that time to make them happen.

Views

Before we continue reviewing my numbers together, let me tell you something:

Numbers cannot be your (only) motivation

Yeah. It is incredible to see numbers growing and growing but the problem is there are bad days and months.

And October could be considered as a bad one:

September 2023 was an amazing month considering it as my first complete month on Medium.

For me, October views, even being a 33% lower than previous month, it has been a great month.

We finished September and started October receiving an email from Medium saying that they detected a very high unusual and automated activity from bots that where affecting their system and manipulating the Partner Program Earnings.

In my case and a lot of writers in this platform, that reduced our earnings a lot. I suppose the views were affected too.

I have mixed feelings about how Medium calculates the earnings.

Engagement is great but I think it’s also easy to manipulate. Just creating a bot that replicates that behaviour and that’s it.

It’s also possible to detect that kind of bots because they don’t browse like humans. Actually they don’t read our stories 😄.

But at the end, it’s a race of arms. The faster is the winner.

I disagree with the 30-seconds read requirement. I have 2 arguments:

Poems and short stories are affected: sometimes we are able to read them in less than 30 seconds and that’s impacting negatively to the author.
Technical and long stories: they require a lot of research and time to prepare. All the read time after 30 seconds is lost so this new earnings system is affecting negatively. The result could be less useful and interesting stories been published. Less deep stories will be written.

What Would I change in Partner Earnings Program?

I would reduce the 30 seconds to 10. If it is a clickbait article, you don’t need that time to know it.
I would add 2 new buttons, “Show me more stories like this” and “Show me more stories from this author”. Maybe this is integrated in the Medium algorithm but I think making it more explicit would help.
Clapping should be the way we say the platform “I want more content of this type / author”. It should be easier to give 50 claps without waiting seconds to finish.

My Audience Stats

Followers number is not so important when we think about the views. You can see I have 2,224 followers now (thanks so much all!!) even with less views:

I haven’t improved my email subscribers number. I lost some subscribers at the beginning of the month (no hard feelings! I know email inbox can be crazy sometimes 😄) but new people subscribe later so that’s why my growth here is 0.

My Partner Program Earnings

I earned $150.89 in October. I am really happy with the results. It is lower than September but as I said before, it looks like was something general.

For me it’s a very good number and something to celebrate. I am thinking about how to split that number to reinvest it. I’ll create a story in the future to explain it and how I would do it.

What would you do with this money?
What would you buy to be a better writer?

Leave me a comment! They help me to write more and better.

Did You Like This Kind of Content?

Take a look to my All Earnings Reports to see my evolution and how is the life of a Medium writer under the hood:

All My Earnings Reports (Compilation)

How Much Money I Have Earned Writing On Medium

medium.comR

Thanks for reading and engaging!