Medium Week 2: The Views Apocalypse Continues

Is curation just a vanity metric now? And other observations from my second week on Medium.

It’s my first full week and the second week in total I’ve been on Medium and so much has happened. This post is coming really late — like a week late — because I live in Florida and Hurricane Dorian was taking up all the time and attention coupled with a mother recovering from heart surgery, let’s just say it’s been a bit insane.

With that said, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of what happened my second week on Medium.

The Views Apocalypse Continues. Sort Of.

If you’re in any Medium Facebook groups or listen to the chatter on Medium through various articles and comments and you’ll see a lot of grumpiness regarding views and August paychecks.

The consensus seems to be that views and engagement are down and with that paycheck too and that it may not be simply a summer lull but more a permanent algorithmic update.

In my own Medium life I’ve definitely seen a decline in views, but for single stories. What I mean is my total views are up but the views for each individual article (since week one) is down.

The main cause is that curated stories don’t perform at all. And by perform, I mean there is little difference between a curated story and a non-curated story these days.

Case in point:

The curated article: 53 views | 30 reads | 14 fans

The non-curated article: 36 views | 27 reads | 13 fans

In summary, curated stories perform like non-curated stories were performing and non-curated stories fall off a cliff if you don’t have a network or a publication to publish them in.

This is important because it reinforces my point on how important it is to build a loyal following of people who Medium can promote your work to when your article isn’t distributed.

Getting published in publications matter as well, though the size of the publication matters. Getting in publications is the new getting curated. I’m not going to into that here, but @Michael_Spencer wrote a good article about the change that’s worth checking out:

So What Is Curation Good For?

I joke and say that curation these days is merely a vanity metric like Views and Claps.

And I’m only half-joking.

However, the one thing curation is still good for is giving (some) articles a longer shelf-life. If you’re curated in one of the less popular categories your story is likely to hang around at the top of the category page for a while allowing it to continue to rack up views, reads, and claps.

Here’s an example: Views 174 | Reads 75 | Fans 10

Initially, the post, between being curated in 3 categories and then being picked up by the Startup, only had 47 views and two fans, one of which was from the Startup.

Over time however it hit the numbers it has now, and that’s because it was curated in Self-Driving cars, a smaller Medium category. Because it’s a category that isn’t updated often with new content, my story sat near the top of the section for days racking up views and fans.

That’s the benefit of being curated: longevity. This doesn’t work as well for the more popular categories. They churn content pretty quickly, and unless your post gains traction, it’s going to be gone from the top of the category page and out of view of anyone browsing the section.

Just a few things to keep in mind when choosing topics to write about.

My Week By The Numbers

And for all my hard work I earned this week — drum roll, please — $14.09

I’ve got no complaints with that. I’m still feeling my way around the Medium ecosystem and figuring out what works best here as far as making money with MPP goes.

Most of the articles I wrote this week were articles that I deleted from week one because they were imported and were not eligible for curation. I then added them back.

Other Important Numbers

New Followers: 74 for a total of 420 Average Followers Per Day: 10.5 Fans: 40 Average Fans Per Day: 5.7

Articles Written This Week

Here are the nine articles I wrote this week. While I plan on primarily writing in the same few niches, I will branch out to other topics as a way to expand my portfolio into some of the areas I heavily ghostwrote for, but don’t have any bylined clips.

Week 2 Goals: How’d I Do?

So how did I progress on my week two goals?

1. Write/Edit at least seven articles — Completed. I completed two over at nine.
2. Follow 125 people a day (max you can follow each day on Medium) — Completed
3. Read, comment and clap on 20 to 30 articles a day — Eh…I didn’t schedule this into my day as I should so it was very sporadic.
4. Engage more with Medium Facebook groups I’m currently in — Completed
5. Find new Medium Facebook groups to join — Completed
6. Start a Medium Facebook group of my own (will update this article with the info once done) — Nope. But that was because I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about Medium FB groups. I’m not sure I think they are worth the effort, so it didn’t make sense to start one until I’m clear how I feel about them.

Wrapping It Up

I would write week three goals here, but this is already a week late and week three been in the bag.

So instead I’d like to hear about your Medium journey. How are things going for you? How is September shaping up? Are the Views WrappApocalypse and Curation Curse affecting you? If so what do you plan to do to combat the changes?

Sound off in the comments below and as always keep writing!