It’s Time To Stop Whining About The Medium Partner Program

It is by far the most accessible platform for content creators.

This one’s for the whiners, the unhappy ones, the criticisers, the protesters, the snowflakes in the rainbow unicorn skies… the ones who can’t comprehend reality — they’re not fond of work… You can ignore them, disagree with them, educate them or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is get rid of them because they always come back… they eternally reproduce, and while some may see them as the rebel heroes, we see uninformed because the ones who are ignorant enough to think that they can change the rules with a hissy-fit, are the ones who never will.

Clap if you know what iconic commercial I just paraphrased. 😉

If there is one thing that keeps incessantly polluting my feed regardless of my diligent effort to wipe the topic out of existence, is the whineicles. Yes! I coined a new term!

Whineicle is a genre of writing that exclusively makes use of uninformed and incredibly subjective negative opinions on aspects of life that otherwise don’t deserve the author’s disappointment.

The language I’ll be using is not really considered offensive in Ireland, so do keep that in mind before reading on and potentially getting offended. If you decide to stop here, thank you for your time, hope you learned a new word. If you do decide to keep on reading, I promise, you’ll be inspired. Namaste.🙏

The endless list of complaints that make no sense

Authors, new writers, dabblers in the fine and not so fine art of wordsmithing, in what world do you imagine that whining and complaining about the Medium Partner Program’s (MPP) rules makes any sense and sheds the right spotlight on your work? It doesn’t! It does the exact opposite. In a single article, you just turned yourself into “that person”. And let me tell you, that person is not great. That person is a gobshite.

Anyone complaining about the rules of the MPP, in just three or so minutes of writing, has proven the following:

• They’re extremely entitled. Much worse than the businessman expecting a complimentary champagne on a budget flight, or a free stay at the hotel because they have a few thousand Instagram followers. Infinitely worse than the 5-year-old kid expecting the latest iPhone for Christmas. They just publicly claimed, “the world is unfair because it’s not catering to me”. Who the feck do you think you are?!? The world doesn’t care about anybody. This planet spins, whether you like it or not. Don’t like the rules? Join Elon Musk on his mission to Mars. Earth really could do with a few less eejits.
• They’re the wrong kind of lazy. I like lazy. The creative lazy. The innovative lazy. In fact, in programming, many good ones are the lazy ones because they come up with solutions they don’t have to ever touch again. But no, MPP whiners, are not this kind of lazy. It’s the kind of lazy that feels getting 100 followers is actual work. Really?!? Have you checked out YouTube’s partner program rules lately? Compared to that, Medium’s is symbolic at best. You can hassle 100 people to follow you in under a week if you really want to. Not that any of them will read your stuff afterwards, but hey, at least you got good at begging.
• They’re completely detached from reality. Apparently, Medium and consequently Stripe should cover all countries as part of the MPP. Why? Only God knows. No, wait! He doesn’t care enough to know. Really, I tell you that as a Christian listening to The Gaithers. The completely bonkers expectation that a US-based company should support freelancers or self-employed individuals from any corner of the world is so ridiculous, it makes me wonder whether some of ye lot have ever spent a minute outside in the real world. What the actual feck is wrong with you?!? Have you not heard of geography, politics, economy, laws, or anything apart from TikTok and Facebook? No, nobody gets to complain about a service being available in one country and not in another. You don’t get to do that.
• They’re ungrateful. People really don’t get the amount of work that goes into keeping a platform like Medium running. Contrary to general belief, Medium is a small company. It’s incredible that it can offer the level of service it already does. In 2016, it was guesstimated to have around 170 employees. That’s tiny! Medium is not Google or TikTok or Meta or Microsoft. Medium is a drop in the ocean of tech companies out there. Before jumping up and down like goatshit on a chopping board, do some research. You might just learn something!

Investment vs. returns

OK, now that I’ve told everyone off, let’s get a bit more serious — not that I wasn’t before — but I think it’s worth getting down to actual numbers. Anything that humans do requires an investment, and yes, yes, yes, yes, that includes your own time. Not considering time as investment is ludicrous. If that were the case, everyone paid on an hourly basis should just work for free. No matter how much we all dislike this saying “time is money” and time is indeed money because in an investment vs. returns scenario such as the MPP, any number of minutes you spend writing comes at a dollar cost.

That cost, however, is infinitely lower than on YouTube. Let’s look at what you need to have a moderately successful side-hustle on Medium and compare it to YouTube.

On Medium, all you need is:

• A cheap computer. You can genuinely use a Raspberry Pi with a second-hand 17” monitor, a wired keyboard and mouse, all for less than $100.
• Free software. All you need is a web browser, and just to be on the safe side, a note-taking application, which is also free. So are the images if you use DuckDuckGo.

• An internet connection. The absolute cheapest one you can get. Like, even a DSL 1Mbps connection will do.
• A bit of time. Being a Medium veteran of 8 years, I can tell you, writing a good article takes on average 2.5h. Add to that editing and publishing, and you’re looking at 3.5h.

On YouTube, you need:

• A fairly expensive computer. $700+ machine, with a 24” screen at very least, and not a cheap one, so make that another $400.
• Cameras and accessories. Yes, more than one, or at least you’ll need more than one lens, costing you upwards of $1000.
• Premium software. Video editing software doesn’t come cheap. Nor does audio editing software. You’ll find yourself spending yearly a few hundred bucks on this too.
• A good internet connection. Trust me, anything below 100Mbps will be a pain in the ass because that usually means a 10% upload bandwidth, which is just 10Mbps. Videos at 1080p or 4K aren’t small.
• A lot of time. I have a very dear friend Nathalie who started a Gluten-Free baking channel less than two years ago, and she confirmed what I already knew, and so does Stephen, another good friend of mine who runs an outdoors, running and tech channel. Putting together a decent video takes 8–12h easily. You’ll find that many other YouTubers spend even more time, sometimes even days or weeks, pulling together everything to make just one video happen.

It’s clear as sun that the investment into Medium is nearly non-existent compared to YouTube. If you already have a computer, internet, and a bit of time, you fire up a Medium account, and you’re good to go. In contrast, YouTube essentially becomes a prohibitive investment for most.

But that’s only half the story. As with every investment, there are also returns. Let’s look at those individually. If this wasn’t already obvious, everything will make sense in about 60 seconds.

Returns (profits) on Medium:

• Assuming you have 100 followers, out of which 30% are organic readers, you have the potential of making over $20 in your first month of the MPP!
• Subsequent months with an organic growth of followers can easily land you into the 3 and 4 digit club within the year. Talking from personal experience, incidentally, mirrored by other writers on Medium.

• Covering all your initial and ongoing investment can take anywhere between 6 and 36 months, after which you’re effectively profitable.
• There is a profitability ceiling though on Medium, which is much lower than on YouTube. To put it simply, Medium cannot make you a 7-figure earner. Six figures / year is probably the highest you can ever reach, and that’s a rarity. Five figures yearly is much more common.

Returns (profits) on YouTube:

• For a 100,000 subscriber channel you’ll likely see about $30–40.000 income a year. Getting there takes some time, though, so initially you’ll be seeing anywhere between a few bucks and maybe $100.
• Growth, however, while painful and requiring significant effort, can become astronomical. Rene Richie started out in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and he’s now over 325,000 subscribers. Mrwhosetheboss started out in 2011, and he’s now rocking over 10 million subscribers. iJustine, the queen of YouTube, started in 2007 and has 7 million subscribers. Yes, YouTube can make millionaires.
• Covering your initial and ongoing investment is similar to Medium, judging by a number of YouTubers with 100,000+ subscribers.
• The probability of making 7 figures on YouTube is much higher, and while still a small percentage, compared to no percentage, it’s considerably more probable, that given enough time, quality videos and an interesting niche, you’ll become one of the YouTube stars.

It’s OK not to have a side-hustle

Whoever decided that in 2022 everyone needs a side-hustle needs to go take a cold shower, get dressed and take a hike for a change. The only reason I have a side-hustle is that every indoor activity I like happens to be monetisable. Is that a good thing or a bad one? I don’t know. Writing is a creative outlet. I’m an opinionated person. I like coding, I like writing, I like Lego and I like music, so in whatever way I express myself in, eventually becomes something I can squeeze a few bucks out of. Let me remind you, these are all passion projects of mine. I don’t treat them as second jobs, but I do take them seriously because I am pragmatic enough to do that. Having said that, …

It’s perfectly fine having just a 9–5 job and sticking to that as one’s only source of income. That is still the social norm, and it’s still an honourable way of putting food on the table. If you’re actively looking for a side-hustle, you’re already doomed.

No side-hustle is worth doing if you’re not enjoying it. I would argue that nothing is worth doing unless you’re enjoying it, but my pragmatic self kicks into gear and reality is what it is — food and shelter are imperative to one’s success. But don’t get onboard the side-hustle train just because many others do. Everyone has their own story. Mine is certainly unique, the only universal aspect to it is the relentless effort I put into things to succeed.

It’s perfectly fine not to have a side-hustle. It’s perfectly fine to just go for a walk, sit on the beach, play with your kids or even yourself FFS! 😆 It’s OK, that’s your story. Do what you feel like doing. I genuinely feel like writing this article. This is my story. You go write your own story, and it absolutely does not have to involve a side-hustle.

Disappointed, whining content-creators are the last thing the world needs right now.

Change the fecking’ world then, will ya?

Here’s the chilling reality. Life is fecking short. I’m 36, and I already feel like I could have done so much more with my life if I got me head out of me ass at 19 instead of 25. That’s seven years I have wasted moaning about the world being unfair to me, when in fact the world didn’t give a flying feck about me. It wasn’t supposed to, either. It took me a while to get that. Furthermore, it took me far too much time to realise I was the sole source of my whining. But when I did stop, I changed the world. Admittedly, it’s my world that I changed, but I did. I stopped whining, started doing, working hard and creating.

I used to live in a communist country where we had no access to CocaCola or margarine. I didn’t go on Twitter when in ’89 the bullets were flying through the air during the Romanian revolution going “Where is my cocoa milk? #thisSucks #communists #tooManyBullets”. I left that country. I used to have no career, and I made myself one, and by the looks of it, I might have a second one budding right now.

You don’t like that Medium or Stripe is not available in your country? You don’t like the 100 follower rule? Fine, build your own competitor. I’m not even joking or talking out of my ass, either. You know how many famous YouTubers hate YouTube? Tons. What did they do? Built Nebula! They trust the platform so little, they created their own platform, and it’s pretty damn good too! Buddy up with all your disgruntled comrades and build a competitor.

Stop whining. Do something! Nobody needs to read another whineicle…

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, Lego fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!