Medium Changes Under the Hood
Something’s fishy and the water is murky
We don’t get to look under the hood at how Medium works. How it decides what is chosen for further distribution, also known as curated is some combination of algorithm and hand picking I am led to believe. However, we can figure out part of it by looking by sniffing the stats we do have.
There is a certain frustration with the stats as witnessed by those creating Chrome plugins to reveal more information than what comes out of the box. I highly recommend Medium Distribution Info which shows what categories are used for your curated work. See the black buttons on the right.
This small addition let me know I was doing better than I thought in politics.
Also using Medium Enhanced Stats can show publishing points on the chart as well as a lot of other data. Hovering over the black dots let me know which articles had burst out of the gate.
I have also been charting the length of my articles looking for some correlation with distribution. The results below show that my writing is getting longer and another calculation (not shown) revealed distribution favors stories over 3 minutes read time.
The puzzle hit when my steady increase in income dropped like a rock in July, just at the time Medium announced you have to make $10 or more for fund distribution. It’s enough to make you go hmm.
There has also been a paucity of distribution through August though I am seeing it pick up again. Even so, I find it that I have more than twice as many reads (1210) this month as July (505), yet income is down by more than half. Specifically, reads are up 236% so September income should be $40.73.
If funds are distributed based on “engagement” and a percentage of the income pool, I would expect the dollars to go up unless the pool of writers increases, Other writers are suddenly pulling in readership, or subscriptions are in decline. At the risk of creating a false dilemma, the last one is the most likely.
So where did the money go?
A. The size of the pool was decreased through fewer subscriptions. A possibility as people return to normal life despite the dangers of the Delta Variant.
B. A few writers pulled in more readership creating a higher read difference between celebrity writers and working-class writers. But why now?
C. Subscriptions are in decline and after the recent changes in rules. Those that do not have the following or the revenue left and took their subscription money with them.
D. Medium is just tanking in general. New tech and current events need a constant refresh but the evergreen subjects may be full — Kind of a long shot.
E. Medium is pulling more money from the pot to pay off investors. Very likely but difficult to reveal.
F. Some combination of the above.
G. Something else entirely.
If you have the answer I will Venmo you my month’s take and clap 50x.
