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I Finally Cracked The Code of Medium’s Mysterious Algorithm

Here’s what the Medium algorithm really wants from you.

I want to share a somewhat personal and honest reflection on my Medium journey. Like many of you, I’m very fascinated by stats and earnings. And December had me feeling pretty good with over $800 earned since I started in November.

January, however, was a reality check with earnings almost halving ($500) despite similar view counts.

This got me thinking. And what I discovered was truly eye-opening.

While views are important, engagement is the real game changer on Medium. Claps, comments, and highlights – these are the things that get you those higher earnings.

How do I know? I made two major discoveries that led to this conclusion.

Discovery Number 1

My most-viewed article has 2.7K views, 2.1K reads and made only $58.92. But I made 3 times more ($186.94) with my highest-earning article that has only 1.6K views and 999 reads.

This highest-earning article is 3 minutes long, has 10.2K claps, 199 comments and is fully highlighted. The most-viewed article however, is 6 minutes long and has only 849 claps, 22 comments and some highlights.

So as you can see, engagement is more important than the number of views. And even the length of an article is not as important as the amount of engagement.

Discovery Number 2

I had a total of 13.5K views and 8.7K reads in December, and earned $837.88. In January I had almost a similar amount of views and reads (12.5K views and 8.6K reads), so I was suprised to see that I only earned $505.76 in that month.

I think the most important reason is that my articles got more engagement in December. I got way more notifications in December.

And another thing is that in December I engaged more with others too. So I think that it’s not only the engagement you get on your stories that count, but also the engagement with others.

It seems like passionate engagement, even if it’s not always positive, is what the algorithm is truly looking for here.

Now, here’s the part where humility really kicked in.

Only about 10% of my work resulted in significant earnings. The rest? Well, let’s just say they didn’t exactly set the internet on fire.

But instead of getting discouraged, I see these ‘flops’ as valuable learning experiences. Each one teaches me what connects with readers and what falls flat.

So, while others might only showcase their success stories, I want to be transparent about the 90% iceberg of not-so-successful attempts lurking beneath. My friend Marcus Musick actually did this too. He’s the one that inspired me:

We all have them and we all need them, they are the driving force behind the 10% succesful ones.

The bottom line here is that I couldn’t have done all of this without you and I owe all my success to you my friends. Thank you!