Medium Week 4: Here’s Why Your Curation Rate Keeps Falling

It’s the Curation Curse and it’s coming for you if it hasn’t already.

The Curation Curse.

Along with the Views Apocalypse, the Curation Curse has sent many a Medium writer into their metaphorical cups trying to figure out why Medium’s new algorithm despises them so.

If you’re new here you might not realize how drastically views have fallen over recent weeks let alone months or how many are experiencing a curation dry spell, particularly in some of the larger categories (tags).

The best way to think about any changes on Medium is through the lens of their subscription service. Medium’s sole goal right now is to grow its subscription base and do that they need what they view has high-quality content that people will pay a monthly fee to read.

This focus on growing the subscriber base is why the front page of Medium is populated with articles from their in-house publications. It’s why curation exists to begin with and it’s why curation rates are falling for all but the top writers/influencers on Medium.

A look at the category pages of any of the top tags and what you’ll find is that most of the articles curated were published in one of Medium’s own publications or one of Medium’s publications or one of their partner publications, with not much room for indie-publishers or those published in smaller publications.

At one point last week three of the top four stories curated under Tech were from PC Mag and the Politics tag top four stories consisted of an article from the New York Times, Matt Buttigieg, Politico and one of Medium’s own publications.

While technically curators may not have a limit to the number of articles they can curate in any given category, they clearly are prioritizing articles written in Medium publications and partner publications, with a smattering of big-name authors also getting a boost.

This new reality doesn’t mean you’ll never be curated, it just means your chances of curation in one of the larger categories likely increase if you can get in one the larger publications.

If your strategy already involves getting published in medium publications and partner publications, then great. If no, it is definitely something to think about moving forward, particularly if you’ve seen your curation rates take a nosedive and your writing or article hasn’t changed much in the process.

Now on to my week.

And for all my hard work I earned this week — drum roll, please — $31.75

I knew my income would go down this week because I wasn’t able to write as much. I was hoping to earn between $20 and $30 this week and I hit that goal, so I’m quite pleased.

This $32 (yes I’m rounding) added to the $42 from last week and the $17 I made for my two weeks in August means in my not-quite 30 days I’ve earned $91 dollars so far.

That’s great!

And barring anything crazy from this week’s payment I should hit the coveted $100 for my first 30 days on Medium.

No complaints from me at all.

Some Articles I Wrote This Week

Wrapping It Up

I would write week five goals here, but this is already a week late and week five 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!

My first 30 Days Recap

Here is each recap of each week of my first four weeks on Medium. They include the articles I wrote, my earnings and the lessons I learned along the way.