Medium Revealed the Top 5 Stories of 2020 So I Put Them In the Wayback
What I found is both encouraging and kind of depressing
Can I be blunt? I have struggled my ass off on this platform. Mom used to tell me stubborn is my middle name and that’s probably the reason I’m still here.
First hurdle, I don’t write personal expose. Not my thing. In the past, I’ve been stalked and doxed as too many women have, and I’m not interested in sharing anything personal unless it’s by phone or email.
Some people say you have to get deeply personal. They’re wrong. Seth Godin doesn’t write about those things either and no one seems to mind.
Second. I am a woman in a world that prefers the male voice. In case you didn’t know, the top writers here are mostly men. Y’all know men aren’t just better writers, right? Again, no offense to men. It’s just how the world is.
Medium isn’t great odds to begin with…
— The number of writers at Medium has grown 106% in 2020 — 65K writers published their first story in the partner program in 2020 — Less than 10% of writers make over $100/month here
You have to be almost bloody insane to think you can make a living here. Yet we keep trying, because it’s one of the few places that actually pays based on reads instead of the pennies per/k clicks other sites pay.
If you’ve ever had a piece go wild and pay $500 or $1000, you want to do it again more than anything because the buzz reverberates in your soul.
Honestly? Some of us would do better at one of those content mills where they pay a measly $20 per post. If you posted once a day, you’d make $600 every month. But there’s no odds of one of them hitting the jackpot. Ever.
If you’re one of those beasts that can’t “not” write, that dreams of hitting the top earners, the though of hitting that jackpot feeds the monster.
No rules, no recipe…
Lots of people write about how to succeed on Medium. I don’t. Recipes are for cookies, not cash. Just because a tip works for one person doesn’t mean it will work for you. Your voice is your voice, their voice is theirs. But they’ll keep on writing them, because it’s like bringing candy to the playground. You get to decide when to quit reading them and figure out what your lane is.
Forget rules, too. It all keeps changing. Most of the changes are good, but no one gets everything right. Curation is hidden now and it’s called distribution now. Short form content is a thing, clickbait is out, claps are back, you can design your profile and access the subscriber list of your pubs.
And? The new “relational mode” killed views for a lot of us.
A lot of people are cynical or angry or both
I get it. Trust me, I do. When you’re watching your views plummet week after week, it’s easy to get angry or frustrated. I read a post that said everyone is leaving Medium like rats off a sinking ship.
I promise you, they’re not. But it can feel that way.
It’s no different than what happened to the internet as a whole. It grew. When I built my first website, there were less than 10,000 websites on the internet. It was real easy to get on page one of the search engines. Today that takes a lot of learning, experimenting and a whole different kind of savvy.
Same thing here.
Medium shared the top 5 stories of 2020…
A little irony if you’re reading all those “how to succeed on Medium” posts. Medium has a new-ish little pub. It’s called Creator’s Hub. It’s where they spotlight writers, editors, pubs and gives tips on writing and such.
The “official” Medium tips pub only has 4K followers. I guess most people prefer their advice not from the horse’s mouth?
This month, Creators Hub shared the top 5 stories of 2020. I was curious. Who wrote them, what pubs are they in? What can I learn? The cynic in me wondered if they’re all from official Medium publications. Turns out — no!
Side note — some people are real bitter about Medium pubs
I’m not one of them. I spent one month (one!) as an editor of a publication and oh, man — there is a lot of BAD writing here. I cannot even imagine the amount of bad writing across the entire platform. The amount I saw in one publication was staggering.
A lot of folk could really use help learning to tell a story. Because having a good story to tell and telling a story well are not remotely the same.
So I get it. Editorial discretion is necessary. In-house publications are how they do that. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than no system at all. I promise you that.
In the FB groups, people often complain about how “hard” it is to get into Medium’s publications. Those posts make me sigh. People? That’s the point. You need to up your game. That’s what editorial discretion is about. It’s not so different than a juried art show, you know?
So I took the top 5 stories and plugged them into the wayback machine. Hoo-boy, did I learn stuff…
Let’s look. I’ll do a little summary of each first. Then I’ll tell you why they made me equally hopeful and depressed.
Note: The screencaps from the Wayback machine (archive.org) show the writer’s profile on the day they published the popular piece, or as close as there was an entry. This is so you can see a “then and now” view. :)
1. Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now by Tomas Pueyo
— Readtime: 27 min — Date Published: March 10 — Publication Name: none — Publication followers: n/a — Writer audience size: 49K
I know what you’re thinking. Of course it did well — he has 49K followers! Right? But no. When he wrote the article, he had 4.6K followers. See?
Also? It was not published in a publication, so there was no publication boost. If you go to the post, he edited to mention that the post got 40 million views the first week. So how did a post by a writer with under 5K readers and no publication become the #1 story of the year?
Timing, topic, read time — and probably a dash of luck. Likely one of those cases where several things come together really well. The pandemic was just ramping up when the article was posted.
2. Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting* by Julio Vincent Gambuto
— Readtime: 9 min — Date Published: April 10 — Publication Name: Forge (a Medium pub) — Publication followers: 108K — Writer audience size: 23K
Much like the #1 piece, this was also about the pandemic. It was published in Forge, which is a Medium publication. I’m going to assume that Forge didn’t have 100K readers last April, but it still had the clout that comes with being published in a Medium owned publication.
While Julio has 23K readers now — he did not when this was published. He had 2.2K followers back then.
Which goes to show you don’t need to be one of the big players to get accepted into a Medium pub. You do have to have some writing chops.
3. A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged by Thomas Smith
— Readtime: 8 min — Date Published: Aug 31 — Publication Name: Elemental (a Medium pub) — Publication followers: 214K — Writer audience size: 5.8K
Again —third place goes to yet another Covid post. By August we were sick to death of Covid posts, but this one brought something fresh. A supercomputer? A new theory? This one was also featured in a Medium publication, which likely helped significantly with distribution. But distribution only goes so far. The writing has to retain the reader, too. Clearly, this one did.
Thomas’s audience was not giant when he submitted this to Medium, so we can’t just write it off to having a big following. He didn’t. His following at the time of the post was only 2.3K followers.
4. Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance by Tomas Pueyo
— Readtime: 29 min — Date Published: March 19 — Publication Name: none — Publication followers: n/a — Writer audience size: 49K
Interesting that the writer of the #1 story of the year also wrote the #4 story of the year. Again, this was about Coronavirus, and it was not published in any publication. And again — another long read.
Now here’s the interesting part. When he wrote the #1 story, on March 10, he had 4.6K followers. Ten days later, he had 23K followers. In the 9 months that followed those 2 stories, his following doubled to the 49K he has today.
If I had to give a takeaway, I’d say this — write really well on something people want to read about. Because — 4.6K followers in March, 49K in December.
5. 103 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice by Corinne Shutack
— Readtime: 24 min — Date Published: Aug 13 — Publication Name: Equality Includes You — Publication followers: 5.6K — Writer audience size: 2.4K
Finally, a woman! I wouldn’t have been surprised if the top 5 were all men because that’s how it usually rolls. Medium has a gender bias problem
Again, the topic is timely. It’s about racism and racial justice, which was a hot button this year as a whole. The timing was impeccable. Not sure if that was planned or coincidence, but Aug 13 was the day new footage was released of George Floyd’s fatal encounter with police.
Like previous posts — topic and timing came together really well. The size of the writer’s audience was irrelevant. When Corinne published the piece, she had 2.3K readers and she published to a tiny publication that didn’t bring a giant audience either. Despite that — it’s the #5 story of the year.
Both encouraging and depressing…
I have no idea if these stories paid well. That depends whether views were mostly internal or external. I have a story with 40K views that paid 82 cents because the views were mostly external. Top stories are gauged by views, not payouts. So all we know is that they got a lot of views.
3 things I find encouraging;
— The #1 story got 40 million reads in a week. If you think people aren’t reading here, think again. That’s a lot of people in a week. We can assume some people that visited Medium that week didn’t read that story. Heck, I didn’t even know about it until I saw it in the list. Which means there’s really a ton of opportunity for exposure here. More than I’d realized.
— None of the writers had giant audiences when they published the stories that made it to the top 5 of the year. Most had audiences between 2–5K.
— Only 2 of the top 5 stories of the year were published in Medium publications. So when people say you have to be in Medium pubs if you want to get exposure, they’re wrong. I find that really encouraging.
2 things I find kind of depressing;
— Maybe you noticed what happened to the mens’ follower count when they wrote a popular post? Like when Tomas went from 4.6K to 23K in a week? That didn’t happen for Corrine. I only noticed because I’ve been watching (and writing about) stuff like that for a long time. People clap regardless of gender, but follow men more readily than women. Women have to work much harder to build a following. This surprises few women. We’re used to working harder for less recognition. It’s still kind of depressing.
— Only one of the top 5 posts is by a woman. Not new, either. 85% of the top writers at Medium are men. Men aren’t just better writers. Medium has a gender bias problem. Except it’s not really Medium. It’s us. Always has been. Always will be. What happens “out there” happens “in here,” too. Like when Ruth Bader Ginsburg mused what the world might think if all the justices were women. Oh, the shock and fury. But it still stings.
Final Takeaway
If you think people aren’t reading or Medium is dying — you’re wrong. If you think you need a bigger audience to hit a homerun — you don’t.
If anything, the takeaway (for me) is remembering that writers are the minority here, readers are the majority — and maybe thinking about the intersection of what they want to read and what I am capable of doing justice to as a writer. That’s a lot of food for thought. At least for me.
Gotta go. The struggle bus is pulling out of the station now. lol. Thanks for reading! :)