Summary

The author expresses gratitude towards Medium for the recent changes and new design that have allowed them to focus less on the platform and more on living their life.

Abstract

The author starts by acknowledging the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments due to the massive new changes on Medium but expresses their own excitement about the changes. They share their journey on Medium, from earning $10 a day initially to struggling to make$ 1 or $2 a day after changes were implemented. Despite the challenges, the author remained bull-headed and managed to increase their views and read ratios by daily writing and consistent participation in social media groups. They even managed to secure a place in the vaunted 7% month in and month out, although it required a lot of hours and only earned them an average of$ 0.15 per hour. The author is relieved that Medium has removed the curation dance and is now focused on rewarding relational objectives, as this has led to a significant decrease in their stats, allowing them to live their life and focus on other things such as reading, meeting friends, and watching films. The author also appreciates the fact that they can no longer access the list of people following them on Medium, as this eliminates a distraction.

Opinions

The author is grateful for the recent changes and new design on Medium, as it has allowed them to focus less on the platform and more on living their life.
The author acknowledges the challenges they faced on Medium, such as earning less money after changes were implemented and having to put in a lot of hours to secure a place in the vaunted 7%.
The author appreciates the fact that Medium has removed the curation dance and is now focused on rewarding relational objectives, as this has led to a significant decrease in their stats.
The author is relieved that they can no longer access the list of people following them on Medium, as this eliminates a distraction.
The author values their time and prefers to focus on other things such as reading, meeting friends, and watching films, rather than spending too much time on Medium.
The author is satisfied with their current earnings on Medium and does not expect to make any real traction on the platform.
The author is grateful for the opportunities that Medium has provided them and appreciates the platform's focus on rewarding relational objectives.

Oh, THANK you, Medium!

Your changes and new design have given me my life back!

Photo Credit — Glenn Strong / Flickr / That’s not actually me, but close

There’s been a tremendous gnashing of teeth and rending of garments what with the massive new changes coming home to roost on all our hard-writing heads, but I for one am thrilled.

Thrilled, I tell you!

Where to start? I guess the big one is watching my daily stats diminish alarmingly again. There was this minute back when I first found this haven when I was — sitting down? — earning ten bucks a day from my writing here. Can you believe it? Then some new changes were implemented and, boom, I could barely manage a buck or two a day.

But I’m bull-headed (I overheard my mother telling that to some relative once). I knew this was a test and I would prevail.

I’ve never gotten back up to the tenner a day or anything, but I turned things around a bit. I’d hit days of 450, 627, even once 820 views. High read ratios and even some days where 200 people clapped on my stories. Thanks to daily writing and consistent participation in all the best online social media groups I began to develop an audience. Regular readers, readers who went out of their way to find my work. Heady stuff.

To The Reader

Our Pact

medium.com

I even managed to secure my place in the vaunted 7% month in and month out. I don’t even want to tell you how many hours that took, but I figure I’m averaging roughly .15 cents per hour at this point. Impressed?

But now that you geniuses have removed the curation dance — always a total pain with such a dismal payoff — and are focused on rewarding “relational” objectives my stats have gone into the toilet.

To many, this is bad news

Not to me! I’m finally free. After a mere two years, I finally see the light. No matter what I do, no matter how consistently I do it, no matter how well I attract readers, no matter how brilliantly I write, it’s never going to get me any real traction here.

Oh sure, I can adjust again and to some extent I probably will — but no self-improvement crap and no writing tips — but it won’t matter. Because as soon as I start to gain ground, you guys are going to do it again. You’ll tweak this and change that and any progress I’ll have made will vanish.

So this means that when I start my day with the now-usual eight views, I can then glance at what’s in my drafts folder (nope, nothing that grabs me again today), take a quick spin around the social media free for all and then shut that sucker down and go out and live my life. I can finally finish my second reading of “Infinite Jest”. I can go out into the city and meet up with friends, socially distanced of course. I can watch complicated foreign films with ambiguous endings with my partner. I can go back to tossing eight to fifteen resumes into the void. I can take naps.

And another thing…

I’m not sure how this ties into your new relational focus, but kudos on making it so I can’t access the list of people following me here. Another distraction eliminated.

By dint of making sure I put the time into those cultivating those potential readers, I’ve built the subscription base for my free weekly newsletter up to 72 readers. That only took a year, btw. And at least twenty of them actually open the email when it arrives and a solid eight to fifteen of them click open one of the stories. This is a totally gratuitous opening to plug that bad boy:

But no more. Since I only get to see followers when they initially opt to click that little green button, I can shrug that off, too.

I got to hand it to you guys, you really smoked my troublesome addiction to your site. I don’t know how to thank you. But I’ve begun reading a second novel — “Love in the Time of Cholera” — and started work in a book of essays, published here of course. So I’ll be going now.

Cheers!