Medium Has Divided Its Writers Into the “Haves” and “Have Nots” and The “Have Nots” Are Hurting

The Medium Creator Fellowship is creating a divide in earnings for Medium writers and those not in the program are earning even less than ever before.

When I was approached by Newsbreak to write for them, I took some time to consider it because it seemed too good to be true. But I joined with the expectation it would be a three-month stint and then it would be over. But then they changed and extended the contract and did so every month until before I knew it, I’d been writing for them for about 10 months.

Then all of a sudden, a few days before the end of July, they sent out emails to most of us, saying we would only be earning page views from then on out and over the past month they have consistently taken the CPM down further and further until I’ll be lucky to earn $300 this month from an average of $3500 to $3800 over the previous six months.

At the same time, I was excited because it meant I could come back to Medium almost full time. I wasn’t ready to completely give up on News break because $300 to $350 was about what I earned a month on Medium so it would double my previous earnings. And with the Medium bonuses I’d been getting, while it still wouldn’t be enough to pay the bills, the motivation it provided to write more and put more effort into marketing and promotion, I hoped would further increase my earnings.

Then I saw something about the Medium Fellowship Program, for writers who earned at least $100 a month who would be given a guaranteed amount per month. The minimum this would be would be $200. I went to my email to see if anything was there and sure enough, I had received the invite. Only problem was due to a family situation I hadn’t been checking email as regularly as I usually did and had completely forgotten to check my spam folder which is where the invite had gone. Actually, this wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that I had missed the deadline by three days. I asked for an exception, explaining the problem, but was told they wouldn’t make one. The program would be for three months so I had no shot at anything until after that and they said there was no guarantee of any additional funding opportunities after those three months. For those not in the program, they stopped all bonuses. So, at best, maybe I could apply after the three months, if the program was still available but it would be a very lean three months.

Over August things began getting worse. Newsbreak kept dropping the amount they’d pay for page views, changed their model again so that what even last month they said would not be accepted was now what they wanted, and they were clearly not going to continue paying anything more than pennies for articles for the majority of us. People were dropping out and though I kept writing the same articles that last month earned me hundreds of dollars apiece in page views, now were earning a couple of dollars. I slowed down my writing, deciding to put my focus on Medium, choosing to be optimistic about what happens after three months.

I started writing more, marketing and promoting more, reading, commenting and clapping for others more and generally trying to be a good Medium citizen. But then I started noticing that my stats weren’t moving. They’d frozen. I wrote more, promoted more, commented on other writers articles more. My stats started to drop.

Things not only have not improved but in three weeks, my articles have gone from 10k to 50k views with 1k to 10k reads, to 0 to 50 views with reads in the single digits if there are any at all. For the first month in years, actually since my third month writing for the platform, I will not make $100. Of course, in addition to the lost income, and a lot of depression, this means that if the fellowship program exists after three months, I’ll no longer be eligible for it.

Looking more closely into what is going on with Medium, they have essentially divided their writers into the “haves” and “have nots.” They created a fellowship program that they invited 7 to 8 percent of their writers into, as that is how many make at least $100 a month and offered them guaranteed earnings of at least $200 a month. Some people posted screenshots of their offers and I have seen several as high as $1000 a month with others rumored to have been offered minimum earnings of $1500 a month.

What is going on with the rest of us? I have been in contact with a group of others who are in a similar boat to me. Two also had invites that went to spam folders and didn’t apply in time, with one missing it by a week and the other by less than 24 hours. Both of them also asked to be allowed in and both were told there would be no exceptions.

The other five all earned $100 some months but it didn’t quite average out to $100 a month overall though one averaged $96 a month and another $93 a month over the last year neither was invited. Discussing what we were seeing regarding our articles we found the same concerning trends.

The first thing is that fewer people seem to be placing links on the FB groups. I don’t know if this is the case with all the groups but it seems to be the case with at least four that I’ve been following. Second, reads and engagement with our articles is down, way down, down lower than any of us have seen since first beginning the program. Third, although we have all upped our engagement with other people’s articles, we are finding that far fewer people are acknowledging comments and other types of engagement. Fourth we have found that that there is almost no engagement occurring any longer with our articles — Looking through my 50 top performing articles and the articles written this month I found that for all of them for today at 4:00 pm there were zero views and zero reads for any of them, meaning that there were also zero claps, shares and comments. Zero across the board for 60 articles.

I calculated what percentage decrease my earnings will be for August if things continue to go the same way, with no indication they won’t, compared to my average earnings for the previous 12 months just for reading time not including the bonuses I received over the past few months. It came to a loss of over 77 percent of my earnings — In a single month. Between the eight of us who are experiencing similar problems, our average loss for August compared to the past 12 months for reading time only came to over a whopping 86 percent of earnings lost.

While I can’t know for sure what the exact problem is, over the course of the month, I have been looking at everything, watching statistics, and talking to other writers. What seems to have happened is in creating this golden group of Medium “Haves,” they have largely sacrificed the rest of the 92 to 93 percent of us — Probably more as I don’t know how many had invites that went to spam folders and didn’t see them in time.

I know that it wasn’t done deliberately on Medium’s part. But by separating out this group and handing them guaranteed payments each month no matter what their performance is, they have created a system where these writers no longer need to promote their work, or read or engage with anyone else’s.

I don’t know if these writers have their own group to try to increase their earnings further by supporting each other but there are a bunch of writers I know must have been included into the fellowship program who I no longer see participating in any of the groups I belong to. And for the rest of us who would have been eligible to get into the program if it is still offered in three months, due to the huge drop in earnings caused by no longer being supported by the most active writers, I imagine few of us will be eligible.

Since, earnings come only from paying members of Medium, obviously that takes out earnings from the most active readers which is where I think the majority of a writer’s earnings comes from. Those not in the program would be writers who aren’t as active and therefore don’t read as much. They are also not the ones most involved in the community so I feel that there has been a loss in this aspect as well.

My writing mood and motivation have all but disappeared. I went from about $3500 a month on Newsbreak to $300 if I’m lucky which only seems to still be decreasing such that I’ve earned less than $30 in the last week. I’ve lost the majority of earnings on Medium, lost the bonus which takes my earnings down from almost $900 a month the last few months to maybe as much as $80 for all of August. Although I would again be eligible for unemployment under the PUA program for self-employed individuals it ends at the end of August.

And the gap between Medium’s “haves” and “have nots” is only growing. And I can’t help but ask about the pool of money for the “haves” earnings and the huge amount of prize money given to primarily four writers for the writing contest.

Since when I first started writing for Medium, we were told that the only money available for writer earnings comes from exclusively from paying members. First it was based on “claps” and now it’s reading times.

Since I’ve been with the program for about 3 years that has meant between 5 and 8 percent of active writers earned at least $100 a month for their writing. Starting a few months ago, these writers were given bonuses of $100 to $500 a month. Now all of a sudden, the “$100 club” which is up to 7 + percent of active writers is receiving an additional $200 to $1500 a month, with all other bonuses dropped.

Then there was the writer’s contest which gave four writers a ton of extra money. Four writers won $10,000 apiece and the one voted best out of those same four received an additional $50,000. There were also 100 honorable mentions receiving $100 each. So, $100,000 was awarded to writers, with $90,000 given to four writers, and 100 writers dividing up the remaining $10,000.

I have to wonder, given all of the complaints with the earnings system through the years, and how little the vast majority of active writers earned each month, where did all this extra money suddenly come from and why is it being divvied up among so few writers? Just thinking about other ways to divide up just the $100,000 prize money, for example, it seems like it would have been motivating if there was a grand prize winner of $10,000, with second place earning $5000 and third earning $3000, and fourth and fifth place earning $1000 each. You could then award 160 honorable mentions who would receive $500 each. That would have increased the number of winners who received meaningful prizes amounts from 104 to 165.

I don’t know where the prize money came from but if it’s a one time thing it could also have been divided in half with other prize amounts and half used at a different time for another contest to further increase the number of writers who received prize money. And there would have been more than one limited theme divided into four subcategories to be able to complete for. Then there is the additional pool of bonus money and guaranteed earnings that has suddenly become available.

As I’ve said, I have no idea where all this additional money came from and whether it was impossible to generate money other than the limited pool of membership fees until a few months ago. Maybe there was a wealthy benefactor or group of benefactors who wanted to donate a large pot of money on a one-time basis. Maybe they dictated what the money had to be used for and split. With no inside knowledge, there could be any number of places the money came from and explanations as to why Medium chose so few writers to receive any of it.

I know I’ve rambled on but it’s largely because I see my writing career quickly coming to an end and a time, perhaps in the next few days when I have to make some serious decisions about ways to earn money. Maybe I’m just depressed because all my earning possibilities suddenly crashed and burned within a couple of days.

My biggest problem is that I feel like I’ve lost my best friend. I admit my writing and involvement on Medium decreased while I was getting paid by NewsBreak due to the necessity of paying bills. But now that I’ve tried to come back, I feel like not only is there no longer any earnings potential for me nor any chance of being able to join the fellowship program even if it is offered in three months, but that I’m also invisible.

Medium seemed to be one of the few places that was on the writer’s side. While we all had some complaints from time to time, it was a warm and fuzzy place where we could find a supporting writing community, write whatever we wanted, and earn money while doing so. I have so loved being a writer here.

Now, however, it feels like they are doing what NewsBreak and any number of other platforms have done that I’ve written for, primarily, encouraging only a select few to stay while sacrificing everyone else. I’m sure this seems like an overly harsh assessment and it could very well be due to my current mood. But being faced with having to walk away from it, just makes my heart hurt.

I’m not sure how to salvage this or if it can be salvaged. Before, while I wanted to see more earnings, I could at least see a correlation between he amount of work I put in writing, marketing and promoting and my earnings. With the bonuses I felt appreciated.

It could be that NewBreak poached so many writers from Medium that they are trying to do something to woe them back. If so, given that the vast majority have lost their base pay and I imagine, want to return to writing full time on Medium, the three months will be the limit of the fellowship program. If this is true, then after three months I might be able to build my following of active Medium writers back up. But I just don’t know if I have the energy to wait three months and see. My writing mojo is simply gone and I am so tired of fighting to find a way to earn a living from it.

Hopefully, Medium will clarify what is happening or other writers who have more information than I do will. It’s hard to continue working somewhere when you have no idea what is happening or what is coming in the future.

I also hope there might be more earnings opportunities for those of us who for one reason or another weren’t included in the Fellowship program so we no longer feel like the poor relations who no one ever invites for the holidays.

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