One Year on Medium.coma
Review of Coach Tony’s time in office
Inspired by this hilarious piece by Ann James, I’ve decided to do my own review of Coach Tony’s one year in office.
It started with such hope as we heard the Coach was listening! Marvellous! Until he stopped, got tired, overwhelmed, or didn’t like the questions. 😄
When he engaged, the feedback was fabulous, but the implementation of many wonderful suggestions has yet to be seen. Perhaps the second half of this year will be more exciting.
Coach said that showing impressions on our stats was a good idea, but there’s no sign of it yet. On Newsbreak I can see that my impressions are crap and most stories are only shown to 6 people. This is reassuring because it shows me that the problem is not my terrible stories, but simply that there’s a total lack of distribution to readers!
I’m left wondering if this is the problem on Medium. Information about impressions would provide valuable insight, but I admit, everyone would be moaning about their lack of impressions!
When I heard that Coach Tony was listening, I made another brilliant suggestion: Being able to sort articles by earnings would be helpful. Then we could identify slow burners that do better than we realise because they keep earning over the long-term. Unfortunately, Tony didn’t seem very keen on the idea. Pity.
However, we have seen the ‘stretch your photo’ function removed and then reinstated. Phew. Take a rest team. That must have been exhausting! 🙂
My favourite function — the entity bar — was also removed. So now, rather than coming onto the platform and seeing our mates, we come onto the platform and meet a lot of strangers. That’s OK. I don’t mind strangers — but it’s nice to see your mates as well… without having to subscribe to them. I have a life, a job, and prefer to keep my inbox free for important editorial emails.
Tony trialled a payment system for external views. He called it the ‘SEO Incentive Program’, and offered it to selected individuals. Someone earned a tenner before it was scrapped. Woohoo!
As for Ann’s comments on Tony’s name, she made me laugh — Tony What? Tony Stubbline? No, erm Stubble-whatever the heck his name is. I too, have trouble tagging the Big Man because I cannot remember how to spell his name. Ann suggests Medium might replace him with someone called ‘Smith’ — I could cope with that. LOL.
On the subject of money — my earnings for June were my lowest for a year! Congratulations to me! I’ve mastered the art of actually killing my readership rather than growing it. Having realised this, I quickly knocked out a few more copyright stories, which have occasionally done well in the past, even if they get little traction these days.
Perhaps it’s time to write a piece insulting Greta Thunberg to get the reads up a bit. Poor Greta.
So, my thoughts on Tony’s first year in office are perhaps best summed up in one word: anticipation! Apart from a bit of redesign and erratic earnings, I’ve yet to see many changes. But I’ve heard a rumour that there’s a lot coming, so perhaps the first year was just setting the groundwork for the exciting year ahead.
© Susie Kearley 2023. All Rights Reserved.
More from me…