Should you stay or go?

Is The Recession Killing Off Medium?

Just in case you haven’t noticed, the number of articles being posted about drops in earnings, loss of followers, and Medium being dead is on the rise.

Now, this could just be that writers are just trying to make a quick buck and scare you into reading a clickbait article or there could actually be some truth in it. If you are a writer on Medium then this is something you need to take notice of. As they say, forewarned is forearmed.

Is Medium too big to fail? Or is the end on the horizon? Read on and make your decision.

No Smoke Without Fire

You would be wise to take notice of this old saying.

Just because one person shouts the end is nigh, it doesn’t mean we have to believe them. But equally, it doesn’t mean we should ignore them. What we have right now is a growing number of people posting about drops in revenue and views. Personally, I am an outlier and I don’t make a lot of money on Medium. In May of this year, I thought I was building momentum but it turns out I was wrong. Have I experienced a drop in income and fewer views? Yes and sadly, it appears that this trend is continuing. Alas, it seems like I have peaked before I even got started!

Should you be concerned about the mounting number of posts proclaiming the death of Medium? The answer is yes of course!

“Once is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” — Ian Fleming

Steven Kotler, best-selling author of the Art of The Impossible spent his early days as a journalist working for publications like the New York Times. In order to verify the truth of a story, he would seek out the opinion of 3 experts (later modified to 5). If the 3 experts confirmed the facts of a situation, then he concluded that there was truth in the story and wrote his piece.

So is there any evidence that the platform is changing from 3 or more big names on the platform?

@Dennis-DeSilva wrote an article in which he talks about 3 top writers with 30k, 50k, and 100k followers who all left Medium.

Other top writers like Matt Lillywhite and Shannon Ashley indicated they were leaving but are still here. Although, Shannon is doing her best to alert writers to the potential dragons that are lurking around the corner. In a recent post, she invites you to take a look at your feed and notice who and what is being served up to you and how the platform is changing significantly.

On the face of it, there does seem to be some distinct wisps of smoke that signal danger, but are there any other red flags?

Medium Is A Glorified MLM Scheme

Author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki is perhaps the most famous person who has supported MLM or multilevel marketing schemes as a way to build wealth and get rich. MLMs are well known for benefiting those at the top but being of little benefit to those at the bottom.

Many years ago, I was “recruited” into an MLM selling herbal products. It was an impressive well-run organization. Those at the top in the “Diamond club” had a shedload of money. They had mansions, luxury cars, and an incredible millionaire lifestyle. All of which I could achieve if I just followed the system and recruited more people who could be part of my team.

The idea was simple. Show people what could be achieved, get them to sign up and pay for the business training, then receive a commission based on the sign-up fee and on everything they sold and everyone they recruited. Does this sound familiar?

The more people you signed up with, the more you made.

There was intense pressure to bring in new recruits. They ran weekly brainwashing/sales events on how to recruit new people and sell expensive but good-quality herbal supplements. Once you were in it was almost impossible to leave. I was a disaster. But those at the top did really well.

Medium operates in the same way. Join for a fee, then recruit others and get a portion of their fee. Since the referral incentive was introduced, have you ever read a post that doesn’t have the sign-up option at the bottom?

Let’s face it when you have raised $163 million dollars in venture capital you have to be creative about bringing home the bacon.

An extract from “whatisthebusinessmodel.com” explains the problem very clearly.

“Since Medium is a private company, it is not obliged to share revenue or profitability numbers. But we can still try to make a rough estimate. According to Axios, Medium had 725k subscribers as March 2021. If we were to assume that 50% of the subscribers are subscribed to 5 dollar monthly plan and 50% of them are subscribed to 50 dollar annual plan, the estimated revenue comes to around $40 million.

Considering Medium has raised $163 million, it seems like the platform is yet to turn in a profit.”

In today’s climate, this is something we really need to be aware of.

The Great Recession

I’m not sure why the newspapers keep fudging this topic. When you have rampant inflation across the globe which can only keep increasing due to worldwide shortages of chips, raw materials like steel, and a reduction in the food supply due to extreme weather caused by global warming, it’s pretty bloody obvious we are f****ed big time.

And there’s no happy ending in sight.

Take countries like Italy, for example. Agriculture production has been hit by the worst drought in 70 years, prompting the government to declare an emergency. They are still in a drought situation, crops of wheat and rice have been damaged, their largest river the Po is drying up, and they don’t have enough water to run the hydropower plants. Factories that are heavily reliant on energy like tiles or bakeries have closed either permanently or temporarily because they can’t afford or get the energy needed to run their business and tourism has been badly hit due to the lack of snow.

Net result: spiraling household costs and no income security. The same thing is happening all around the world.

When faced with financial uncertainty, most people will cut back on luxury items and all non-essential items. Medium is a non-essential item unless you happen to be a writer making your living on it.

From a reader’s point of view, there is a ton of information provided on other platforms that are free, for example, YouTube. Also, many of the top writers have their own personal blogs or they have diversified to other free platforms like Quora, LinkedIn, Substack, etc. Tim Denning is one of those writers, he utilizes LinkedIn to his advantage and has a massive following there. Whilst Nicholas Cole is the king of Quora.

$5 a month may not seem like a huge chunk of change to many people, but the fact remains as the global recession kicks in and prices continue to rise exponentially this $5 may be needed elsewhere.

Net result: there’s going to be less money to go around and fewer people reading what you write.

So is Medium dying?

It is definitely changing. What it is changing into, we don’t really know. Can medium survive the grim times ahead? Who knows. What’s important is that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket and you have a Plan B. Prepare for the worst-case scenario but hope for the best and that’s really all you can do.

Live Strong, Love, Prosper & Get A Side Hustle!

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