Is Medium Putting the Plug On It?

We got excited over nothing…

Some of you might remember that I previously wrote an article in which I tried to find the cause of the dip in my daily profits. I have noticed my daily earnings dropping by 30 to 50 percent, and that immediately alarmed me.

That time I tried to justify it based on some human factors that cannot be helped, such as me and other people being less available during that period. There were also some engagement metrics that did not show up either, so I blamed it on some system error at best.

But now it dawned on me that maybe it had nothing to do with the human element, and that’s just Medium trying to put a plug on the decent earnings that resulted from the new changes in monetization.

This morning, I checked my stats to see how much profit the articles I posted yesterday had generated. Business like usual. I do that once a day.

Yet the whole sky fell over me when I saw that every article barely generated a bit over 1 dollar despite having over 20 reads and an almost equal number of clappers and highlighters.

Look at these stats. This is more than just a dip. It’s a dig!

The profits have dropped so much that they have made a hole in the ground and are on their way to China, or whatever country is on the other end.

Just check this out. This is how much 23 trusted people reading my full article have generated:

This is gruesome!

They say we can’t really use the statistics to predict earnings, but for some reason I always did just that. I couldn’t predict it on point, but I could at least approximate a minimum profit based on the increase or decrease in stats.

As I observed how earnings in August and September went, that wasn’t too hard to gauge either. Based on my level of exposure during these two months, every article I posted generated between 4 and 11 dollars. Others even went as far as 18 to 27 dollars, in some very rare cases.

Before August, it was the same thing. Although the profits were excruciatingly low, I could see a consistency in my earnings. Back then, most of my posts generated between 80 cents and 2 dollars. My most successful posts even went as far as 3 to 5 dollars.

The irony is that the articles I posted yesterday have now generated less earnings than what I would have made before August. And that’s super concerning!

I really did not want to be pessimistic regarding the new chances, but maybe you guys remember how skeptical I was about them when they were announced.

Part of that was because I already encountered the “you made too much” mentality on another platform. But that platform had like 23K total members, and it was quite new in the game.

I told myself that Medium is different, as it has a huge user base and a good reputation. Now that they have expanded the partner program and made people buy premiums as a condition for joining it, there are more premises for them to have the capital to pay us more.

But I guess I was wrong. The focus of these platforms is to pay us as little as they can in the first place. There’s no way they would look forward to paying us hundreds or thousands of dollars each month, even if they make more.

I actually saw this coming, but the overall success in August and so far through September made me want to stay positive and believe in something nice. Now my mood has fallen massively after being confronted with yesterday’s daily earnings.

I seriously don’t know what I’ll do if the earnings go back or are even worse than they were before August. My motivation has always been that as I get more exposure, my profits will increase, and with a bit of luck, I will eventually reach a decent monthly amount. Which happened in August. But now, if they cut back on it, that’s a clear statement that I’ll never make it on Medium.

I’m thinking of taking the advice of those who say, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” and seriously exploring other platforms.

But if they all pay so little while making me split my time among them, I don’t know how much success I’ll have even then or if that would ever amount to how much I made in August or so far in September on Medium.

What about you guys? Did you also notice a dramatic change in your daily profits yesterday?

I guess it was good while it lasted…

I contacted Medium Support and asked them if they switched back to the old monetization system. I’ll let you guys know what they answer.