THE SECRETS OF WRITING ON MEDIUM, PART 6
Is the Medium Algorithm Now Controlled by the Russians? Maybe that Would be a Relief.
My feed seems like it is losing the war for humanity against the Terminators. How about yours?
Has your Medium feed been hacked by SkyNet?
It’s a Sunday night, the football game was boring, and I started looking through Medium.
As I scrolled down, it looked like every article was an “Editor’s Pick” which is nothing more than a story from a Medium-owned publication.
Here’s a break down of each part of the new home page for laptops.
The “New” Nav Bar
I can’t speak Russian, but Pravda’s English page features topics such as “World” “Politics,” “Society,” and “Science.”
Medium’s nav bar now features 12 “subjects” and 9 of them are Medium-owned publications.
If you want to find a real topic of interest — and there are 99 of them — you will have to click on “More” on the far right.
If you click on the boxes with your favorite subjects, you can customize your feed to include the topics you want which will then not show up in your feed.
That’s Terminator humor.
Header
These are the “featured” articles of Medium, disingenuously described as “Today’s best stories, picked by our editors.”
I’ve already done the research that proves this has nothing to do with the best writing:
Only 6 of Medium’s 205 “best stories” came from the 230,000 writers who did NOT write for a Medium-owned publication.
Here is the header screen shot.
Tonight, all five of the “featured” articles came from Medium-owned publications.
No surprise there.
New From Your Network
This tiny sidebar shows four articles from people or publications you follow.
Here’s what that looks like (people I’ll be expecting some kickbacks for the free publicity).
It used to be that your favorite topics would show up in your main feed, but that is rarely the case (see below).
Your best chance to find your favorite topic is to click “more,” on the Nav Bar, and then click on a specific subject.
Or, if you click on this side bar, you will find a small number of stories that contain your customized topics.
If you view that page from the default choice of “All,” you will only find seven rows of articles.
If you click on “People,” your feed will continue, filling in more stories as you continue scrolling down.
If you click on “Publications,” you will get a page showing all the publications you follow, with a small “more” link on the right side of each publication that will lead you to other articles within that publication.
Popular on Medium
This side bar I usually ignore because it contains more content marketing, tech bros, self-help pap, and featured articles from Medium-owned publications.
Two Medium-owned articles, plus one about programming and one about startups. On to the next.
The Feed
There is an enormous image coming so I want to present the text instead of making you smart phone users wait for it to download.
You’ll find the image at the end of the article — it may be slow but it will be there if you want it, which is more than I can say about those Medium Russkie-Terminators
Have you ever scrolled through 26 articles on your phone?
Probably not, but I did that on my computer.
Of the 26 articles, and 17 of them were “Editor’s Picks” featuring articles from Medium-owned publications. Of the remaining articles, 7 were “based on your reading history” which is a euphemism for “topics that are loosely related to someone you read that we want you to read.”
That left 2 out of the 26 articles that were tagged as “Humor,” one of my selected list of favorite topics.
6 out of the 41 total stories on my Medium home page were stories that I would have selected, based on my preferences.
When you scroll through your phone, you probably don’t see a pattern because it’s impossible to remember all the articles and which publications feature them.
That means Medium is sucking in unsuspecting readers to read articles that will enrich Medium, instead of articles about subjects or people you want to read about.
Every time you think Medium can’t get worse, they come up with new ways to surprise us.
Ev Williams is pimping his business model so hard, he should have little avatars of hookers flashing their booty and saying “click on me, honey” instead of thumbnails of each article.
What this means to you as a reader.
It’s still possible to find the articles of your favorite people.
It takes more work by searching for people you like, clicking on their icon, and looking at their profile feed.
On a tablet, I found a “From Your Network” section that makes the search process bearable.
Maybe on phones the feed works differently.
What this means for you as a writer.
If you are an established writer with a large following, I guess you’re okay.
I have noticed that a number of popular writers are complaining about their lack of attention. While they aren’t the very top earners, it’s interesting that they aren’t getting the same results as before.
I don’t know if this is because people are getting tired of the same voices, or if the changes in the curation process are affecting their visibility.
But if some heavy hitters are sweating over a loss of attention on Medium, peasants like you and me have absolutely no chance.
According to The Simple Dollar, here are the odds for playing the lottery:
The odds of winning a $10,000 prize (Powerball plus four numbers) are 1 in 648,975.96.
If you spend $5 in lottery tickets, your odds increase 1 in 129,795.
Now, let’s break down the odds for writers on Medium.
According to Medium’s monthly newsletter, in January 2019, 9.3% of the active authors earned over $100. By August the number of “successful” writers dropped to 7.4%.
That tells us either the money is concentrating into fewer hands or moderately successful writers are leaving the site because of their frustration with the way their work is being distributed.
Now let’s look at how writers might be compensated in terms of writing popular articles. I already did some research on that last month.
According to the data found here, only 1.2% of 230,000 writers had written an article in the top 1% (at least 2,000 claps). Of these people, only 0.003% published 10 such articles. That would mean 9 people on Medium are posting top 1% articles on a regular basis.
On Medium, one person out of 230,000 earned $19,000 in a month. Assuming a normal distribution, only a small number of people would make $10,000 in a month. Let’s assume the other 8 earn that much.
9 out of 230,000 writers means you have a 1 in 25,555 chance to earn $10,000. Those odds are small but definitely better than the lottery.
The only problem is we have to factor in the work required to make money.
A lottery ticket holder only needs to buy lottery tickets and hope, while the top earning writers on Medium treat it like a full time job.
One top earner has written 34 articles in just 15 days in September.
Even if we assume those articles only take a couple of hours each to write, this person is working about 34 hours per week writing, and an unknown amount of time marketing that work.
In one articles on Forbes, a business writer quoted another authority on writing and said that marketing the work makes up 50% or more of a successful author’s time.
That means our star writer could be working 68 hours per week to make that $10,000 in a month.
While most of us would be more than happy to work 68 hours a week to earn $10,000, only 1 in 25,555 of us who would put in those hours would actually make that money.
Have you changed your mind about how easy it is to make money by writing on Medium?
While I guess most people would gamble $5 at a chance to win $10,000, how many people would be willing to work 68 hours a week to have five times better odds at winning?
Maybe you have what it takes to be a top writer. By all means, go for it!
But I know another writer who is averaging $3,000-$5,000 per month and this individual is writing three articles per day, every day, all year.
This is not some fantasy side hustle, where you write a blog every day and sit back to watch the royalties come in.
You’ll have to learn your craft to become a good writer, become a master marketer, and then read market trends to figure out your most profitable writing subject niche.
And remember, the comrades at Medium are not going to help you get discovered by a vast audience. They are doing everything in their power to promote the writers they have on staff.
If you’re a real glutton for punishment, check out the rest of the series:
Part 1: I’ve solved Medium’s algorithms — get ready to become rich.
Part 2: Is Your Social Media Feed Garbage?
Part 3: Know How to Write Powerful Headlines Immediately?
Part 4: 4 Ways of the Wordsmith: How to Be Happy and Successful Now
Part 5: How I Made $14.73 on One Article and Other Lessons Learned in August.
Okay, here’s the insanely long file from my feed.
