My Reads and Views Have Fallen but My Engagement Has Soared

Something’s not adding up

I’m gaining more dedicated readers on Medium now, but my stats don’t reflect this.

My views and reads have deep dived, yet I’ve gotten more claps and comments than ever before.

How does that make sense?

Let’s start at the beginning of the story.

Did everyone get a drop in reads and income?

This past month, many writers were concerned that their reads had dropped.

Susie Pinon wrote that she has been more prolific this month, yet her earnings have gone down, not up. She mentions that another writer, Abena Talks, has had the same experience of publishing more but earning less.

That’s disheartening to hear. I don’t have high ambitions when it comes to earnings, but I do hope to earn a fair amount relative to how much work I put in.

In April, I published only 3 articles and earned $14.19. In May, I published 6 articles and earned $13.32 so far.

It’s still May 30 as I write this post, so it’s not the end of the month yet. But doubling my output certainly didn’t increase my earnings. Yes, my sample size is small (3 vs 6 stories), but I’m sadly not alone in getting a dip in my stats.

Maybe readers are out to enjoy the summer sun, and are spending less time on Medium. Even I’ve started swimming again — after not visiting a pool for more than 10 years. But that’s another story.

Many writers blame the algorithm for the decrease in reads, and I’m tempted to do so too. But as Mike Lewis points out in his article, views and reads go up and down all the time, so it’s not something to stress over.

He recommends looking at earnings over several months, rather than just days or weeks. From his analysis, he concludes that it’s probably not the algorithm, and more likely because there are fewer readers this month.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of people want to go outside and enjoy the sun, and Mike suggests some other possibilities, including some amusing ones.

But there’s still something strange going on.

Some experiments on Medium’s reads and earnings

Gerald Sturgill did some experiments with fellow writers. He found that a read may not count until you scroll down to the very bottom, past the story recommendations. A read may not count if the person reads faster than the expected read time, either.

Could this be why several of my articles in May have more fans than reads? (A fan is someone who clapped for your story.) My latest post, “Medium, How Do I Love or Loathe Thee? Let Me Count the Ways,” has 25 fans and 16 reads!

Sally Prag did experiments with her other account, Meg. She found that scrolling down to the end of the article, even without going down past the recommended articles, counts as a read.

She noted that the clapping hands follow you as you go down the article now, so people can choose to clap before finishing the whole piece.

Does that mean 9 out of my 25 fans for my article above, clapped early and left before they finished reading it? That would be over ⅓ of my fans, though, which is oddly high.

Just to be clear, even if there are no glitches, I’m still grateful to everyone who clapped for me. I’m only noting these numbers so that we can analyze the problem.

What is encouraging is that from Sally’s experiments, she confirmed that even if a reader doesn’t finish your article, you will still be paid for their reading time. The number of “reads” on the story stat page, is separate from the total “member reading time.”

That’s good news for those of us who write longer articles, since we’ll still get paid for unfinished reads. We don’t have to feel pressured to write shorter stories just to get more reads.

Then how did my reads and views plummet while my engagement rose?

Here are my stats from April and May.

In April, I had 10,786 views, 3,349 reads, and 432 fans. In May, I had 2,188 views, 716 reads, and 575 fans.

So my views have dropped by 80% and my reads by 79%. Yet, my number of fans has risen by 33%.

These charts include the stats from our comments too, not just for our stories. But my commenting habits haven’t changed since April. So I’ll focus on the percent changes rather than on the exact number of views and reads.

My increased fans but lowered reads, could be because Medium hasn’t registered all of my reads.

But there could be another reason.

The Semi-Viral Poem

A poem I published in early March went semi-viral, and this boom in views and reads didn’t stop till the end of April.

Now it has 18.2 K views and 5.1 K reads.

98% were external views, though.

Thus, I had an explosion of views and reads in April that did not extend to May. But the vast majority of readers from April were external, i.e. non-members who can’t clap for my stories even if they wanted to.

For my internal, paid-member readers, I’ve gotten more claps and comments in May than I ever did since joining Medium.

I’ve also gotten to know more people, and we regularly comment on each other’s work whenever we can. This is not a read-for-read, but a genuine interest in one another’s stories.

So, losing the big boom of external readers who can’t clap, and gaining a lot of internal readers who can clap, explains why I could have a dramatic drop in my views and reads, yet have a notable rise in my number of fans.

At the end of the day, so many factors can influence our stats. What would help most, is to focus on writing great stories, improving our skills, and connecting with other readers and writers.

Have you noticed changes in your stats lately too? If so, why do you think this is?

N.B. I don’t have anything against folks who do read-for-read, as long as they are happy with the arrangement. But I personally prefer not to read a story I don’t enjoy, whether it’s because I’m not interested in the topic or I can’t click with the author’s writing style.

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