Medium Is What You Make It
It’s time for an attitude adjustment
I rarely write about Medium on Medium. That seems like something of a fourth wall break. I prefer to stick to writing about my niche and providing the kind of content that I hope my audience will enjoy. But I think we need to pause and take a step back.
It’s no secret that in recent weeks and months, there have been some changes to Medium’s algorithm, and new CEO Tony Stubblebine has laid out a bit of his vision for the platform.
Not everyone has been happy, of course. Any time something changes, someone is bound to be upset. You can’t, after all, please everyone — no matter what you do.
Some have even threatened to leave Medium altogether due to some of the changes. If I may, I’d like to push back on that a little bit.
Change is inevitable
If there’s one constant with online platforms as a whole it’s that change is inevitable. This is true if we’re talking about YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Medium, or anything else.
Over time, as platforms grow and algorithms are updated, change is the name of the game. Sometimes that change is for the better, and sometimes we don’t see any sort of personal benefit.
Medium is no exception to this rule. In my short time that I’ve been actively writing here, I’ve noticed more than a few changes — some that I’ve liked and some that I haven’t.
(As a side note, to whoever brought the editor back to the mobile app so I can fix my typos from my phone: THANK YOU.)
What makes or breaks the experience when (not if) change happens is how we respond to it. We can throw a pity party or we can take a step back and try to figure out why we are seeing what we’re seeing.
The sky isn’t falling
Look, as someone who is still relatively new to writing in earnest on Medium especially, I understand the desire to see stats go up and up. I’m what some might call a stats watcher. From day to day, I like to watch my views and hope that each day is at least on par with the day before it. But that’s not always healthy.
I find it fun to watch my Medium Partner Program earnings and try to guess what my earnings will be the next time it updates. I’ll sorta make a bet in my own mind. “Ok. It’s X today, so my guess is that it will be…. Y tomorrow.” And then it’s fun for me to see how close or how wrong my guess was. As long as it’s just for fun, then it’s fine. But the moment I start stressing about it, it becomes unhealthy.
I feel like that’s exactly what some here on Medium have been doing: taking stats watching to an unhealthy extreme.
What I’m not going to do is sit here and say the sky is falling in Medium-land because I truly don’t think it is. I know that some of us have seen slight dips in views and/or have concerns about the future of the platform. (I have my own.) But either way, Medium remains a great place to write and connect with other writers.
No, dear reader, the sky isn’t falling. It might be changing, but it isn’t falling.
Views and earnings will fluctuate. That’s to be expected. July was pretty weak for me personally, but then August surprised me in a good way, and September blew me away. Will that trend hold or will future months see lower views and earnings? I don’t know. But that’s pretty typical — whether we’re talking about Medium stats or my own blog.
You can become very discouraged very quickly if your existence hinges on comparing one day to the next or even one month to the next. Fluctuation is normal.
Refocusing our perspective
No matter what your niche happens to be, there is only one way to succeed with it: create quality content that people will actually want to read / hear / watch. That’s it. There’s no shortcut.
While algorithm changes and platform updates here and elsewhere may have larger or smaller effects on our reach, the concept remains the same: We need to focus on creating quality content.
Gary Vaynerchuk, a famous entrepreneur with some good business sense, says that many people struggle with content creation because the content they’re creating is inherently selfish. It’s designed to make them money or boost their metrics instead of bringing real value.
That’s something I heard a long time ago that’s really stuck with me. Man, I’ve known that feeling. Honestly, it was only when I stopped creating content that was selfishly motivated that I started truly building an audience and getting traction. And I think that’s true here on Medium too.
Have fun with it
I’ve been writing online and offline for a long time. It is, after all, one of my favorite things to do. It’s relaxing and fun for me. In all my time writing, though, I’ve never been part of a site quite like Medium.
This place is unique in a lot of good ways. On one hand, I love that I can write about nearly anything — as long as I’m providing some measure of value to my readers — and on the other, I love that there are many other users here with which I can interact.
Writing on Medium can be as social or solitary as you like. And as an extroverted (sometimes) introvert, I love that.
If I can encourage you with one thing in particular, it’s this: Remember that Medium isn’t meant to be stressful. No, you don’t have to like every little thing about it or every change. I don’t either. But that doesn’t mean you should give up on it.
At the end of the day, maybe we all need to take a step back and remember to have fun with our time here. I do agree with Tony that we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket (and I think that’s just plain good business sense), so investing some time in your own blog(s) and other platforms wouldn’t be a bad idea also. That’s something I’ve said for a long time. Rui Alves says the same:
If anything, I hope that the changes to Medium will help us to refocus and remember to be writers first — not money-hungry, keyboard-glued robots who start flipping out at the first sign of a dip in views.
Let’s be smart and make sure we’re producing great content while not putting all of our eggs in one basket. There are, after all, other writing platforms out there to explore in addition to Medium.
Perspective changes everything. I prefer to be optimistic. Who’s with me?
