Content Strategy and Freelancing
I Started Feeling Unappreciated on Medium, Just Like Jessica Wildfire.
But I haven’t packed my bags yet as I am optimistic about the future of Medium and share my observations transparently for potential improvement.
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2023 Update
Introduction
Medium has been home to thousands of writers in recent years. When I found this platform, I thought it was too good to be true from all aspects. Therefore like thousands of writers, I pour my heart and soul into my stories, informing and inspiring my readers.
However, like thousands of writers, I was disappointed after August 2022. The common question from top writers is, “What is the point of pouring our hearts and souls into a platform which gives no appreciation and brings no value to writers?”
As a publication owner, I received over 3,000 inquiries from writers raising concerns about unusual declines in their stats since the first of September 2022.
I provided this feedback to the Helpdesk but received a pushback denying that no change happened to affect the stats of writers. It is hard to believe, as objective data and sentiments tell precisely the opposite that I attempted to articulate in this post.
Purpose of the Story
I usually don’t write about Medium and don’t enjoy sharing my stats in general. However, this piece is an exception to my principles, as the platform has had serious issues since the beginning of September. Despite my optimism and enthusiasm for Medium, like thousands of writers, I am disappointed and deeply concerned.
This piece is not a rant and does not contain destructive criticism. I want it to be useful for writers, readers, editors, publication owners, platform leadership, and administrators. I penned this piece as informed feedback, hoping to positively influence all stakeholders.
As a content developer, strategist, and marketer, I write, read, edit, curate, manage several publications, and promote content to support writers and readers. All these use cases have their problems on Medium. My goal is to provide feedback and contribute to improving this great platform.
I have no issue with the concept and philosophy of Medium. I adore the platform and am passionate about seeing its growth and success. However, I believe the leadership and administrative approach can be improved.
The most problematic part of the Medium is the distribution system and process. Unless this critical part is improved, I don’t see any chance for Medium to grow.
The market is highly competitive. Since the pandemic, many writing platforms have emerged. Some of them offer better benefits to writers. Some have been so competitive that they attracted outstanding writers of Medium who left this platform to earn more income from others.
For example, Karen Madej, who couldn’t get a handful of views and reads from her stories on Medium, has become a celebrity on News Break, getting millions of views and earning thousands of dollars. Karen is not a Medium member anymore, as she did not see any value on this platform. There are many more such examples.
Even though many of my stories went viral on News Break, I always published my best pieces on Medium, prioritizing this platform as I admire the philosophy, audience, and collaboration.
To make this piece practical and useful, I categorize it under a few headings. First, I provide a background with my observations and perspectives of Medium. Second, I share a few stats. Third, I mention my plans and offer a few thoughts and ideas as takeaway points.
Inspiration for the post
Since early September, I have received many inquiries. Thus I started analyzing the stats and conversing with writers to understand their concerns. I identified clear patterns showing drops in stats, particularly views, reading times, and subscribers.
In addition, many writers recently started being vocal about their situation and posted articles on Medium and my publications.
One of the top writers and volunteer editors of my publication Jennifer Geer posted an interesting article titled If Jessica Wildfire Feels Unappreciated by Medium, What Hope Do the Rest of Us Have?
Then I read the article of Jessica Wildfire and found her perspectives exciting and valuable. I believe almost everyone has heard about Jessica on this platform, so she does not require an introduction from me.
I also read two pieces from the top writers contributing to my publications. The first one is by Rob Hourmont titled Medium’s Distribution System Is Purposely Broken — Thousands of Writers Are Complaining That Their Stories Have Lost More Than 50% of Views and Reads.
The second one is from Destiny Femi, who wrote an article titled Why Medium’s Removal of Distribution Tags Can Ruin the Platform For Good. Like Rob and me, Destiny also lost 50% of his stats.
After these concerning yet inspiring pieces, I decided to share my experience and perspectives to extend and enhance the stories of Jessica, Jennifer, Rob, and Destiny.
My Observations Since September 2022
Until September, my stories gained significant visibility and brought me many subscribers, followers, and new readers. Medium distributed almost all stories. I am grateful for that service.
But suddenly, after mid-August, Medium stopped curating most of my articles for unknown reasons. I did not make any changes in my content and delivery method.
Day by day, my new stories received fewer views, but reading times did not get affected much. However, after mid-September, 50% of my views and reading times disappeared.
More disappointingly, I lost four paid subscribers and got no new ones. However, last 14 months, my audience development affiliate link gained many paid members. So this cannot be a coincidence. It happened when they stopped curating my articles. Here is the screen capture to give you an idea. Green is August, and red is September.
Before September, some of my health articles gained thousands of views, and some went viral, making me the number one top writer in health and among the top three in lifestyle, mental health, and science topics. I am grateful for these recognitions that motivate me to write more and better.
I don’t like sharing my stats, but to be transparent, I’d like to provide an indicative picture. For example, before September, my curated stories used to get over a thousand views in the first three days. Now they get under 200 views.
I understand and acknowledge that not all stories will gain visibility due to many factors that a Helpdesk agent kindly informed me of. But getting no visibility for any story of the same quality and similar topics after September concerned me.
Money is not my primary focus as I have a job and investment income to survive, and my earnings from content like articles and books go to charity funds. However, I’d like to inform you that the earnings of my stories on Medium dropped 50%. I understand that this happened to other writers, and it concerns them.
Nevertheless, on a positive note, my older stories (the ones distributed to topics before) seem to perform relatively better than new stories, which seem to be not distributed. I don’t know what it means in this new arrangement, but I feel my content is unappreciated after August 2022.
Here is a perspective from a top writer who observed the decline.
Why don’t I feel appreciated by Medium anymore?
Jessica has different reasons for not being appreciated; however, some of her pain points relate to mine.
First of all, as a writer, I give priority to Medium by sharing my best content on this platform. I follow the curation rules and always write from the readers’ angle, transferring my decades of tacit knowledge and scientific research in clear language.
I support my readers, answer their public and offline questions and tailor my content to their needs. Since the tip service was introduced to writers, I received tips from readers saying my stories changed their lives. This means a lot to me.
For example, my recent story about Immunotherapy, which is close to my heart, was admired by subscribers who sent me tips showing their gratitude.
But the Medium algorithm did not create any awareness for this high-impact story. Thus, it did not receive any additional views from the platform. Only some subscribers and readers from my Slack group found it.
In addition to writing impactful stories, I also support the growth of other writers. I encourage them to follow distribution rules and share my experience by providing guiding content and checklists.
I established six publications contributed by 16K+ writers. Since collaboration features are minimal on Medium, I established a free Slack service for writers and readers to collaborate.
I understand the dilemma of new writers and support them to gain experience and contribute to the growth of this platform. I mentor over 500 new writers reviewing and promoting their content.
I always promote Medium in my networks and bring many new readers. For example, one of my publications, Illumination, is followed by over 60,000 readers.
This publication supports beginners to the most accomplished ones. In addition to thousands of new writers, hundreds of established writers like Tim Denning, David Gerken, Ayodeji Awosika, Sinem Günel, Anastasia Frugaard, Dr. Deborah M. Vereen-Family Engagement Influencer, and many more contribute to it. We cross-pollinate beginners and experienced writers to create vitality on this platform.
Our writers have helped generate hundreds of viral stories in the past and have contributed over eight million reader minutes to the platform in the last 90 days alone. Daily, around 50,000 readers visit Illumination.
We produce these results with dedicated volunteer editors who work diligently to get articles reviewed and published as quickly as possible while following Medium’s rules and standards.
These editors review every submission, screen harmful content, and only publish content meeting Medium rules. They do a free cleansing service to the platform.
Volunteer editors check plagiarism and remove offenders. They removed over 300 plagiarisers since 2020. But this value is overlooked by Medium, and they encourage writers and readers to unfollow Illumination.
What we do here is geared toward helping writers get published and read with as little interference or judgment as possible. What happens once an article or story is posted is beyond our control.
We don’t know what the algorithm may or may not do that will help writers generate reads, views, or some financial reward. As a result, we may suggest, recommend, advise, or otherwise simply act as a collective cheering section for all their pursuits.
My publications do not earn a single cent. Our services are purely to give back to the writing and reading community. I manage them through volunteer editors and administrators who donate their precious time.
I deal with over 100 volunteers across the globe in various time zones every day to juggle the workload to make contributing writers and loyal readers happy. If stories get delayed more than 48 hours, writers keep messaging and emailing me. I am happy to support them.
If this publication is not providing value, why do 16K+ writers contribute, and why do 60K+ readers follow it? Running these publications is not an easy job. It consumes a lot of time and requires substantial unpaid effort.
Furthermore, the administration of publications is challenging on Medium. The publication system is archaic. We had to build our own publishing tool to be able to serve our contributors.
For example, volunteer software engineer Michael Nagy created a tool to ease the publishing load. As Medium restricts the number of editors, like not permitting more than 30 editors, we have to juggle daily to address the workload with editors in different time zones.
Medium is not investing a cent in our initiative. That’s fine by us. We don’t expect any compensation from Medium. However, it hurts the writers, editors, and readers of this unique publication when the leadership team tries to demolish such a great collaboration vitalizing this platform without understanding tangible and intangible values.
In addition to screening content and educating writers, my publications attract thousands of new readers to this platform. My personal website receives hundreds of inquiries daily who want to join Medium. I encourage them to be writers and readers of this platform.
But beyond that, my editorial team is confused about why our activities have come under scrutiny by such a highly placed personage who would want to redirect readers away from our Pubs. Despite perception, we curate content based on our objective criteria. We don’t censor content, but we don’t publish everything submitted. We only publish valuable content meeting Medium’s rules.
Here are sample posts guiding our writers about the type of content we don’t publish.
So my key point is, despite my best effort to go above and beyond for the growth of this platform, my content does not get visibility, and my publications face constraints by Medium, upsetting thousands of writers.
I put substantial effort into bringing writers to one place and attracting readers to my publication, adding value to Medium. Yet, the new leadership team does not seem to be happy with the publishing approach of my publication. I will elaborate on this point in another post to inform writers and readers as the issue is complex.
There are more issues that make me feel unappreciated on this platform, but I don’t want to bore my readers with the details. I will cover the other points in relevant posts in the future.
What are possible suggestions to improve this platform?
As many writers mention, the biggest problem of Medium is not being transparent to writers who are the key stakeholders. In reality, no writer, no Medium will exist. They changed the platform without informing the writers and only informed them after the change was implemented. This happened multiple times.
I provided constructive feedback to VP Scott Lamb in a recent post, and he acknowledged this issue kindly and with humility. I am grateful for his comment in this bulletin.
The second big issue is the distribution service. The curation process has been very problematic, upsetting many writers. It did not work as intended. The subjective taste of human curators did not make writers and readers happy. For example, Medium had to close its in-house publications undertaking curation activities, which did not seem to serve its distribution needs.
However, after removing the curation process recently, nothing seems to be selected, even though Scott mentioned that human curators still exist. For example, none of my stories seem to be selected since the day Mediums stopped informing writers for further distribution. Many writers whom I mentor also confirmed this.
Whatever changes Medium made to the distribution system did not work, even though I read posts from the leadership team that they made substantial improvements. It is simply not noticeable yet.
Perhaps we will see the results later. Thus, I remain optimistic about that. In 2021 Medium made some changes. Initially, it dropped our stats substantially, but after a few months, the problems were resolved. So, I hope the same trend will happen after these substantial changes.
In summary: 1) increase transparency. 2) make changes slower by consulting with key stakeholders like writers, readers, and publication owners.3) improve algorithmic intelligence capability to distinguish between valuable and harmful content. 4) do not undermine the contributions of publications to the ecosystem and support their growth
What is my plan if Medium does not make the necessary improvement?
I remain optimistic and fervently wish that Medium makes the required changes to improve the current situation and grow the platform.
However, if the improvement does not happen within a few months, I will stop posting my high-impact content to Medium and only write simple blogs to share my progress on other platforms that appreciate my content.
In addition, I will stop my publication services and invest my energy in other initiatives to support fellow writers and loyal readers better.
For example, a recent newsletter we published on Substack received many times more views than Medium even though we have more followers on this platform. For example, 6,354 views on Substack versus 134 views on Medium. Here are the screen captures to give you an idea.
Obviously, the Medium algorithm did not show this newsletter to the 7,000 followers of the ILLUMINATION account and 60,800 followers of the ILLUMINATION publication on Medium.
Some might argue about the content, but I am indicating views only. So my point is this example is clear evidence of the distribution problem on Medium.
The bottom line is not even 1% of followers/subscribers seem to view the content on Medium.
Conclusions and Takeaways
As a realistic optimist, I don’t dwell on negatives and try to find positives in every situation. I believe in the silver lining in the Cloud and always forgive mistakes to keep my sanity. I believe that no one and no organization is perfect. I accept everyone and every organization with their imperfection.
As a reader, writer, editor, and publication owner, I invested my valuable time in the growth of Medium more than any other writing or blogging platform in the last three years.
However, since September 2022, I got disappointed and feel unappreciated by this platform’s leadership and administration. Despite these thoughts and sentiments, I remain optimistic and will do my best for Medium’s success as I love the platform, its readers, and its writers more than any other platform as an ardent supporter.
As the number one top writer on health topics, according to the Medium topics page, my high-quality stories are used to get thousands of views. However, since last September, suddenly, the same quality articles now hardly get 100 views. This is a dramatic change and does not make any sense.
As a technologist with academic background, I have two hypotheses. The optimistic one is that the algorithm might be misprogrammed and faulty. The pessimistic one is that the distribution team might be restricting the views of particular writers based on their criteria.
I am not the only one whose stats dropped over 50% since early September. I received thousands of complaints on my Slack group, hosting around 13,000 Medium writers and many emails and social media messages.
The noticeable drop in the number of new paid members concerned me the most. I don’t know how to interpret it. A few thoughts came to my mind. They might be valid or invalid. I have no idea yet. Time will show.
Medium can only grow with engaging, inspiring, and informative content by its dedicated writers. Upsetting established writers like Jessica, Rob, Jennifer, Destiny, and myself, as exampled in this story, does not bring any value to Medium. Therefore, the leadership team should take this valuable feedback onboard and make the necessary improvement to make writers and readers happy again.
My humble suggestion to writers is to keep calm in these turbulent times and focus on writing and delighting readers. I don’t want to mislead anyone with my experience and perspectives, as my goal is the success of writers and readers on this platform.
Please don’t consider or attempt to leave the platform due to teething problems. However, as many established writers advise, it is better not to put all your eggs in one basket for your sanity.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
We updated the guidelines of all our publications after Medium changed its strategy in August 2023.
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Message to New Readers
I write about health and well-being to inform and inspire my readers. As a new reader, you might check out my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting on my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments. Here are sample health improvement articles for new readers:
Brain Health, Brain Atrophy, Anxiety, Dementia, Depression, Bipolar, Schizophrenia, Heart Disease, Strokes, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Metabolic Syndrome, Liver Cancer, Immunotherapy, Dysautonomia, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Cardiovascular Health, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Nervous Breakdown, Autoimmune Conditions, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, and Major Diseases.
I wrote about valuable nutrients such as:
CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients that might help to improve metabolism and mental health.
I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
I hope these stories inform and inspire my readers.
If you are a new reader and find this article valuable, you might check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting on my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments.
Disclaimer: Please note that my posts do not include professional or health advice. I document my reviews, observations, experiences, and perspectives only to provide information and create awareness.
I publish my lifestyle, health, and well-being stories on EUPHORIA. My focus is on metabolic, cellular, mitochondrial, and mental health. Here is my collection of Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.
If you enjoy writing and storytelling, you can join NewsBreak, and Vocal as a creator to find your voice, reach out to a broad audience, and monetize your content.
You may also check my blog posts about my articles and articles of other writers contributing to my publications on Medium. I share them on my website digitalmehmet.com. Here is my professional bio. You can contact me via weblink.
You might join my six publications on Medium as a writer by sending a request via this link. 25K+ writers contribute to my publications. You might find more information about my professional background.
