I Stopped Engaging on Medium and the Results Are Preposterous
Here’s how engagement truly works.
I’m going to call it No-Read November.
I declared it my non-engagement month. I tested a theory and I have the results. I want to share them with you.
This month I stopped engaging on Medium. To critical levels. I stopped reading, clapping, highlighting, and commenting on your articles. Completely.
Don’t come for me yet, it’s in the interest of science!
When I joined Medium I didn’t just start writing into the void. I studied the platform, came up with my own conclusions, applied them, and saw a steep rise, from the get-go. That’s how come in my 6th month I managed to make almost $2000. It wasn’t luck. It was research.
Research is one of the things I do best. And when I find something that sticks, I test it against the market. If it yields good results, it goes into my pile of methods that work.
I’ve gathered all these methods into a book that you can use to get the same results I did.
Here’s a free chapter of it:
And here’s the whole book:
One of the main pillars in the book is Engagement with a capital E. As a new writer, it will make or break your account.
I’ve been advertising engagement like it’s the life and blood of Medium. Because it is.
However, I also wanted to test the opposite theory, which says that you don’t need to engage because the big money comes from viral articles.
Why would I do that, since I already found the method that works?
Just because something works doesn’t mean there aren’t things out there that work better.
And also because the opposite theory is not mistaken either.
It works, it’s just not sufficient. Because the great majority of your articles are not viral. So a viral one will indeed give you a spike in earnings, but the body of your monthly dollars is still made of your boring regular earnings.
Granted, the testing time was not the best. With the dreaded changes in Medium’s algorithm and the drop in views for mostly everybody on the platform, the last thing I needed was to get my views even lower by testing new methods.
But I did it anyway. Because that’s how I got big earnings in 6 months in the first place. Constant testing and keeping what works.
I’m starting to sound like Medium: they’re always testing something new. And sometimes new things just don’t work. Insert passive-aggressive side-eye here.
Here’s why I decided to test it anyway:
I was hoping to come up with something better. And then share it with you.
I want myself and everybody else to win. It makes me feel better than earnings. Knowing that I’m doing something right and helping people do the same.
This is what engagement is all about.
Engagement is made of:
- reading a minimum of 10 articles a day (I advise 30 though)
- highlighting some key sentences
- clapping 50 times
- commenting something thoughtful
As a result, some of the writers will come back to do the same for you. It’s pretty much how society functions: if you come to my wedding, I’ll come to yours. Show me yours, I’ll show you mine, etc.
I will be very honest here: I hate this method. I hate the idea that people are reading my work just because I read theirs.
I hate the implied obligation, the reading just because they have to, like having obligatory intercourse in a defunct marriage.
And that’s another reason why I hoped to be able to do it the other way around.
Also, truth be told, none of us in the community are making much money from each other.
My $5 a month membership fee is divided between how many articles I read each month. If I read 5, each article gets $1. If I read 50, each article gets $0.1. But if I read 500 it’s not even worth mentioning. And most of us in the community do read 500 articles a month because we want to support our fellow writers.
This is a rough estimate, but I did explain it more at length in another article which is a must-read if you want to understand how Medium works.
So, the fewer articles a month someone reads, the more beneficial it is for the writers of those articles because the sum is split between fewer beneficiaries.
Reading this, you might think that engaging is worthless both for you and the person whose article you engage with.
But you’d be wrong. Things are not that straightforward. Hello, it’s Medium, nothing is that straightforward!
This is why engagement is still important beyond your earnings.
When an article you just published gets a lot of engagement, the algorithm also notices that something is going on and pushes that article forward, for more people to see.
There is a caveat to this as well.
If the algorithm sees the same people engaging with your article over and over again, and those same people are the same ones that engage with 500 other articles from the same writers every month, it knows the engagement is not organic. And it doesn’t push anything anywhere. Insert ‘that’s what she said joke here’.
Because of all of the above, I wanted to try the non-engagement method. And I did.
The results are sad. Dramatic. Cry-worthy.
My views dropped. My reads dropped. My hope for the future dropped.
Just kidding on that last one, I still have hope and so should you.
Some of you might be thinking it’s just the changes in algorithm because everybody’s views dropped. While that is a big part of it, it’s not the only problem.
When you test you also need to counter-test.
So yesterday I read and engaged with almost 80 articles. I know, it’s crazy, that’s what I did all day.
And the result? I had an instant spike in views!
Not a viral-type spike, but that green bar finally went a bit above the rest.
Is it worth all this trouble to make a mere $20 a day? Because yes, that’s how low my earnings have been this month.
Well, no, it’s not worth it this month, specifically. But that’s what freelancing is like. One month you make $60 a day and the next you make $20 or even $5. Until you make it big, it’s tough.
It’s not like a job, there is no consistency in earnings, but you still need to have consistency with your writing. A job is the other way around: you have a consistent salary each month but you can slack off from time to time.
Yes, it’s not easy, but it’s well worth it. Because the other option is worse.
I’d rather make $20 a day doing what I want than work for shitty bosses. And let’s face it, most bosses are shitty.
Conclusion:
Engage! If you want a future on Medium, engage!
Is there any other way?
Yes, there is, but only if you’re Tim Denning. Once you’re at that level you won’t have to do it anymore. Until then, put your engagement hat on, and let’s get clapping!
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