The REAL Reasons Your Views Are Dying
let's dig more profound because it's not what you think
If you open any Medium-related group on Facebook, you will find tons of writers bashing the platform complaining about their dying views. The entitlement that goes with such posts is beyond my understanding.
As creators, we need to understand two things that will make our lives much more manageable.
The first one is to know that the platform owes you nothing.
It's a regular business trying to become profitable by using your creativity. In return, you get paid for resourcefulness as per the revenue model. They have all rights to change the algorithm or shut the platform if they like.
Wasting time and energy fighting a massive corp isn't going to get you anything. Instead, you can find an alternative or start your private blog or newsletter where you control the dynamics of the platform.
The second point to keep in mind is never to question your creativity. As creators, we all battle imposter syndrome and consider ourselves when we don't get the desired results. This kind of thinking doesn't work long term. It pulls you down even further and may stop you from continuing your journey as a creator.
Trust me, and this feeling has never helped me become a better creator and only worsened the situation.
Now, let's come back to the reason why your views are dying and why it has nothing to do with you, more or less.
Saturation of Self-Help Porn
When I became a paid Medium member last year, I spent 2–3 hours every day reading articles from my favorite writers on various topics.
I'd get a dopamine hit every time I read about growing myself or building a side hustle. It felt great. It felt doable, but the more I read, the more I learned about how everyone was paraphrasing each other.
Moreover, as a novice, I couldn't understand it at that time, but in retrospect, most of those articles lacked empathy. They served the same advice we read on Instagram. The action steps were missing, and the real problem was unsolved.
Self-help articles took over the realm of the platform, and everyone started planning to build their billion-dollar empire. The whole pseudo-self-help kept repeating itself, and people who saw this pattern stopped reading them. I have written more about it here if you want to check.
With everyone talking about toxic positivity and understanding how most of this advice won't work if they don't, people ignore these.
After talking to my Medium friends and analyzing my stats, I observed how my personal, novel and experimental articles had more views than the cliché self-help stuff I used to write.
The self-help industry may have been thriving outside Medium, but here you need something more than that.
Where Are The Readers?
If you're not Tim Denning or Ayodeji Awosika, you cannot write anything and expect thousands of views. You have to find people who enjoy your writing and your unique ideas.
With 50 million people calling themselves creators, it's become harder to retain your readership and create novel pieces of content. But, unfortunately, many of your readers have already chosen the path of creation and only consumption.
Many of your readers have already chosen the path of creation and only consumption.
The people who took your advice seriously became creators, and the platform is also adapting to that renaissance.
Now, when they're busy creating and building an audience of their own, who do you think will read your content?
There are more writers who read and comment on my stories than readers. Maybe they got tired of reading the same old shit we've been sharing for months and even years.
But what can we do about it?
Full-Time Creator Shenanigans
This is not a personal attack on full-time writers but something I have observed lately. The feel-good posts about people embracing their side hustle full-time and leaving their 9–5 have taken the internet by storm.
It is glorified across platforms. These posts perform better the first time, but then people get tired of hearing about your sad job and how you're having the time of your life. People will join you in your celebration for once, but if you keep repeating yourself, nobody is going to care.
The lack of empathy (more about this in the next point) when you write about how everyone can have that lifestyle leaves a bad taste.
And the pressure to keep up the same lifestyle makes the new full-time writers produce 2X more content than they can which ultimately hampers the quality.
I have observed my favorite writer and creators do the same. This is the same reason I stopped watching Ali Abdal, even though he's one of my favorite creators.
Lack of Empathy
Okay, serious question.
When was the last time you put yourself in your readers' shoes?
If somebody had written the same article like yours, would you find it valuable or flaky?
Would you still ask people to do what you preach in your articles?
We forget how powerful our words are. They can change someone's life for the better and the worse. But, unfortunately, some of our readers take them by heart; hence it becomes our responsibility only to write what we know and sprinkle some empathy over it.
If you sideline the earning part from your work and focus on making it the most helpful and thorough piece of creation, you're a chance of making a difference, which will automatically increase your revenue.
Going through my previous work, I learned how I was writing as if the world was black and white. My writing had no empathy, and I tried too hard to make my point forgetting how it might not work with everyone.
Learning about empathy from books and leaders has given my words a new voice, and my content has improved significantly.
“True empathy requires that you step outside your own emotions to view things entirely from the perspective of the other person.” — Anonymous
Lastly
Social media is an ever-evolving game. One day you're a star, and the next day nobody remembers you.
What you can do is create something that you're proud of and believe will be relevant for years to come. Write with empathy and a long-term strategy. Readers will come and go, but your content will remain, and it will present you even after you're dead.
And don't forget to enjoy the process!
