avatarFrances A. Chiu, Ph.D. | writing coach | editor

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Seeking (a) Medium after my cat died

Various and sundry thoughts on my progress, earnings, and the Medium community

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Since most everyone seems to be writing about their experiences on Medium, especially after the serious decline in earnings last week, I thought I would chime in here too. Better late than never, as they say!

The Cat made me do it!

First, let me begin by saying, “the cat made me do it!” I started writing stories in earnest less than a week after my 15-year-old shaded silver Persian Duchess Georgiana aka Georgie was unexpectedly euthanized. Prior to May 2023, I was perfectly content just writing responses to other people’s stories, simply because I had very little time. Or at least, I didn’t think I had time to write.

But as you can imagine, I was extremely dumbstruck and sad when Georgie died, hardly expecting her to pass so soon. That’s when I decided to honor her by writing a book about grieving over cat loss.

So I began writing about all of my cats and how I went through the grieving process. This series went through August. (It’s a good thing I only had 5 cats during my lifetime!)

Pub Hopping

Meanwhile, as I poked around Medium in the latter part of June, I learned that publications were the best way of getting noticed, so I decided to submit my eulogy for Georgie to Catness. This was followed by a few shorter parodies of 80s pop songs but anchored around cats. I made a grand total of $2.00 for 10 stories, most of which were self-published! Laughable, right?

Apart from the cat stories, I was still publishing largely on my own until the third week of July: that’s when I discovered Unpopular Opinions, The Storyteller’s Vault, In for a Penny, Modern Women, Promptly Written, and A Taste for Life. I wrote about 10 articles each in June and July. In the latter month, I made around $8.14. Yay, a bit more than a fourfold increase! (LOL)

It wasn’t until August that I picked up my pace, writing 18 articles as I became acutely aware that I wasn’t going to get much attention for my work unless I published more frequently and interacted with others too. I found more pubs, especially Nancy Oglesby’s and Randy Pulley’s The Challenged (I know I’m probably missing a few other editors’ names) and Adrian CDTPPW’s Read or Die. That’s when I picked up a much greater number of followers–and my payment for the month finally, finally cracked the triple-digit point — I mean triple digits excluding the numbers after the decimal point!

By the end of August, I was named a top writer at Promptly Written for my article, “How it feels to be Asian Me.”

The month of September is when I began to find a distinct increase in payments — although still peanuts compared to some of you out there! I was now writing fairly regularly for The Challenged and Read or Die. At the same time, I began joining reading groups where we’d read each other’s pieces, highlight, clap, and respond. This required a lot more work on my part, reading far more than I ever did before on Medium while trying to write more at the same time: not an easy task when I was already doing a lot of reading and commenting for my job as a book editor!

Having said that, reading other people’s work was much more rewarding than I ever imagined as I learned about so many other aspects of life. Travel, love, sexuality, music, family relationships…I positively enjoyed engaging in the groups set up by Jason Edmunds, Jocelyn Joy Thomas, and Toni The Talker.

Then on September 25th, I got boosted for my story, “Lessons I learned from my osteoarthritis.” Two, days later, I got yet another boost, this time for a story written a few weeks earlier, “Back to my future?” (Interestingly, I was somewhat anticipating a boost for this piece when I submitted it!) Hurray — finally some recognition from Medium itself!

The Incredible Shrinking Payment

But at the very same time, I noticed how my earnings were beginning to drop drastically. Take for instance, my two stories, “Taffy, The Queen Bess Torbie,” and “Mourning my Queen Taffy.” The first was a piece that I decided to use in Trisha Faye’s Clapping for the Underdog club in August. The second was used in the same club a month later. Notice the significant difference between the two:

Taffy had 14 clappers, 8 highlighters, 1 follower, and 10 responders.

Photo screenshot by author.

Mourning had 25 clappers, 1 follower, 16 highlighters, and 25 responders:

Photo screenshot by author.

I recall feeling a bit miffed when not seeing any payment for “Mourning” the first few days. Wait a minute, I thought, I got payment a lot earlier for “Taffy!” Why was it that this piece had well over 600 claps, and still no payment? Or could it be that the ratio of reads was better in the earlier instance?

As some of you know, this is when I started to wonder if the heads at Medium noticed many of us joining groups and clapping for one another. Is this why they took the punchbowl away?

Having said that, I wonder too if the powers-that-be have noticed that this means of payment tends to favor those who already have a large following. Or those who write very brief, trite, or hackneyed stories — because that tends to attract more readers who are eager to clap and move on.

In the midst of writing this, however, I have just read Adrian CDTPPW’s news from Medium about the problem with hacking bots — rather than any diabolical planning on the part of the powers-that-be at Medium. (See the link at the bottom of the page.) I do wonder if they will restore our earnings.

Clap Happy!

Finally, the topic of clapping. Some may wonder, why my clapping sometimes seems erratic, especially on responses. Since the number of claps no longer matters on stories as much as they did (assuming that was even the case), I tend to reciprocate what is given to me unless for some reason, the multiple claps cannot appear or get stuck: the latter does indeed happen! Let’s face it, clapping is only part of the package for payment; highlighting and commenting are at least as important. Truth be told, I’d rather get meaningful comments than an enormous bunch of claps.

That’s why I generally don’t tend to give more than 10 claps for responses to my stories, since they don’t count for either the story or the commenter. Sometimes my phone even gets stuck when I’m trying to give multiple claps, like when I’m lying down. (I make a special effort to sit up and give 50 claps if I’m reading someone’s actual story rather than response.)

I also try to respond to as many comments as I possibly can–although sometimes it’s easy to overlook them when I don’t get a notification. I’m sure you’ve all noticed how on your own stories how comments can get buried amid a heap of other comments. I always feel sorry and embarrassed when that happens.

Not surprisingly, I’ve had to become selective about who I read. I always make an effort to read as much of my “regulars” on The Challenged, Read or Die, and a few other pubs within a week’s time or two. I will look back at my stories to see responses and then comment on their stories.

Depending on how much work I have that day, I may spend the time going through a number of Writer X’s articles before moving onto Writer Y’s. Or I might read one or two apiece from each writer before proceeding to the next. It all depends on how I feel after getting through a load of editing that day. Or if I have time and energy by 3 am.

Doing that means I’ve cut back on writers who don’t respond to their readers at all in the comments: this refers chiefly to the writers whose pieces I used to comment on before I started writing stories, i.e., before May this year.

You see, having gone through our little groups where we read, clap, and comment on each other’s articles, I think it’s only fair to return the favor. In fact, this power of exchange makes Medium a special place. It feels democratic and equitable. That’s why I truly do wonder about those Medium writers who only stick to their own writing, barely paying attention to others. Political writers are especially guilty of this! I find this selfish and narcissistic to the highest degree.

At the end of the day, having spent four full months on Medium, I’d say the best part of it is the community — although it helps when you are recognized and paid in a meaningful fashion too. The system we had in August, even if not absolutely perfect, was a great one that encouraged us not only to write better (the more you read, the more you improve) but to support others — so much better than dog eat dog.

Apologies if I’ve missed anyone or included someone who doesn’t want to be tagged, but I’ve tried to tag anyone who’s discussed payments in late September. So don’t worry about seeing yourself tagged in future posts!

Adrian CDTPPW, Adrienne Beaumont, Alan (AJ) Autistic Widower, Amanda Melheim, Andrea Hewitt, Ashllyn T., Dawn Ulmer, Emma Vincent, HAPPINESS + WEALTH ⭐Helen Gilmore, Henery X, Imothoughts, Jan Sebastian 🖐👩‍🦰, Jimwebster, Jocelyn Joy Thomas, Johnny Poitras, Julia A. Keirns, Karen Schwartz, Katherine Myrestad, Lynn L. Alexander, Nancy Oglesby, Nathan Chen, OCTAVIA EVER AFTER, Pamela Oglesby, Paula Shablo, pockett dessert, Rampath 💙, Randy Pulley, Randy Runtsch, Shanti C K, Sophia Tell- Stories 🤓📢🤓, Sweet Honeylu, Tesie Mills, Toni The Talker, Tori Hall Sudduth, Trisha Faye

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