Medium Gave Out $575,000 More To Writers Last Week
I guess I should just patent a weekly Medium news roundup or something.
Yes? No? Whatever.
Last week Medium sent out yet another stimulus check to their top writers. In total, they divvied out a whopping $575,000. Let me break it down really quick.
- They sent $500 to the top 1,000 writers.
- They sent $100 to the next 500 best writers.
- They sent $50 to the next 500 best writers.
So, if you were in the top 2,000 writers on Medium, you made some money.
That’s pretty dope.
They did this last month as well, which came as a shock to all of us. I originally thought that they’d keep sending bonuses to writers for the foreseeable future, and this one’s right on schedule.
So, what do I think about this? What do I think about the future of Medium? What effects will this have in the greater blogging ecosystem?
Let’s have a chat about it.
The Future Of Medium Looks Pretty Solid, To Be Honest
We can always count on Medium to make really stupid mistakes that, quite honestly, a platform that knows blogging so well shouldn’t be making.
However, they’ve put a couple 10’s up on the board recently.
The New Medium Homepage
I don’t know what you’re all seeing right now, but I have a totally new homepage.
When I scroll down the homepage, it’s an infinite red carpet of articles. That’s it. I can toggle between “Following” and “Recommended For You” to switch between getting the latest articles from writers that I follow, and articles that Medium thinks I want to read.
This reminds me a lot of the Medium from 2017.
The homepage in 2017 on Medium used to look like this. In fact, it’s quite striking how similar they are.
That’s the old Medium homepage (above).
It used to only give you stories from writers you followed, in real time, as they published their latest pieces.
All I know is back then the reach on Medium was pretty freaking awesome and if they’re going back to some semblance of that design, then we’re in for good times ahead.
The Indie Writers Are Getting The Attention Again
Last month when Medium gave out their initial bonus I was thinking this could be one of two things..
- A one-off apology for the recent internal turmoil at Medium, as well as the longstanding de-emphasis of indie creators over the last few years.
- A genuine way forward where indie writers will get rewarded monthly for their work.
I had a shadow of a doubt that last month’s payment was just one big apology from Medium. A bribe, as it were.
After getting last week’s payment I see where Medium’s head’s at. It’s with the indie creators. We’re going to get rewarded now. It’s our time once again. Fuck yeah.
Medium Believes They’ll Grow With The Indie Writers
It’s great to see Medium finally realize one simple thing..
They’re going to thrive as a business the more they get people to want to use their platform.
The way forward for their business isn’t to create a bunch of publications that publish “higher quality” shit and hope that people will pay for that high quality.
No.
The way forward is to cut the massive editorial budget, let indie writers indie, and allow memberships to grow organically (which will happen).
“This is the way.”
Medium revamping their business model (again) just shows that they’ve realized what so many of us knew all along..
Indie writers be powerful. We write shit people want to read. Maybe, instead handicapping us, cutting our reach, and pushing us away from their platform, they should use us to build a bigger empire, because that’s what we did for them all along.
Medium’s change is an admission that we were right.
Writers Might Flock To Medium
I don’t think people understand how earth-shattering these bonuses are. Medium’s basically telling the blogging world, AHEM
“What’s fucking up? We pay our 2,000 best writers cold hard cash every month just to write about whatever they want. They don’t need paid newsletters or nothing. They just come here and start writing. What’s up?”
Medium has turned checkers into chess. Because they’re such a big platform that makes so much fucking money every month, they can spur on growth just by giving away a slice of their income to the people who create their value proposition.
Other blogging platforms simply cannot compete with that long-term. Or maybe they can, but they just don’t want to do it for long.
Newsbreak comes to mind. They gave out $1,000 per month to writers on 3-month contracts for a while. The problem was they didn’t accept everybody. Medium accepts fucking everybody. They also only did it for three months. I don’t think Medium’s going to stop this anytime soon.
I saw someone on Twitter say they stopped publishing to stand “in solidarity” with all the fired staff at Medium. Then, in the same tweet, they said that they wanted to come back to publish on Medium “so bad” because of the generous bonuses.
Damn, they were able to virtue-signal about Medium’s apparent foul play and express their desire to use Medium so they can benefit financially at the same time.
The mental gymnastics of that single tweet rivaled the skill of Simone Biles.
I love Medium Twitter.
But you get my point. Even writers who are “disgusted” by Medium’s recent strong-arming (apparently) are so enticed to come back and use Medium.
Maybe Medium will see more writers using their platform in the future. I have no idea. One thing I never do is underestimate the laziness of bloggers, even when they have a billion incentives to write dangling right in front of their faces.
In conclusion, I see the business model shift and bonuses as an admission that indie writers are, in fact, their best hope at growth. This is the new age of the internet. People want to read Cindy’s blog from Ohio, not a $500 commissioned blog post dripping with pretentiousness.
Medium’s finally back on the right track.
Get my free 5-day Medium writing course right here. It’ll teach you how to write five posts per week and become a top writer on Medium. :)
