The Thing About Top Writers Leaving Medium?

Nuance is a good thing.

Lately, I’ve been running into what I would call some very black-and-white stories about other writers leaving Medium. Typically, they’re talking about “top writers,” or so-called “big names” here, and what troubles me about the stories and many related comments is the lack of nuance.

Or empathy.

The choice to leave Medium — or even to stay — is especially complicated for people who have put in any significant amount of time on the platform. There are people who, like me, spent years treating Medium like a full-time job. Some of us also spent years warning others not to fall into the perpetual Medium community hype that the sky was falling. Newer members likely can’t know this, but my long-time stance that writers should avoid being so damn negative about Medium drew plenty of ire from fellow writers who decided that I was “too pro-Medium” or “too big for my britches” two to three years ago.

I personally went through very odd and sometimes traumatic experiences with Medium writers who threatened to end my career here on the platform. I was accused of plagiarism. I was gossipped and lied about. People who never even knew me decided I was the big bad and they made it their mission for weeks or even months to openly mock me, laugh about my body weight, call me a terrible mother, or even cyberstalk me — all because I dared to disagree with them about the future of Medium.

Because I chose to remain optimistic.

I openly believed in the platform Ev Williams was building.

Of course, it was relatively easy for me to be positive for years on a platform that was working well for me. Some of you were here when I first began publishing on Medium in April 2018. You saw how determined I was to make it work as a single mom.

I owe so much to the platform, really.

Or at least, I feel that I do because for more than three years, my trajectory here was strong. It’s not that there weren’t good months and bad months or fluctuations. But there was an overall consistency that allowed me to work through the blips and changes.

I was able to adapt to the platform through three years of changes and felt that my efforts were reasonably rewarded. More importantly, growth felt possible. For a while, it was scalable. If needed, I could work harder than I was already to keep up with my goals.

My experience was unique, though. I understood this. No, I was never like Tim or Ayo and company making $25K in one month on Medium, and I deeply resented comments that I was “the female Tim Denning of Medium.” I never felt our work had too many parallels.

Even so, writing on Medium like it was my full-time job (with overtime) got me to the point of earning $100K before taxes for two years in a row. For a single mom without a real support system, it was a really big deal.

Two years, folks. It didn’t set me up for life, but it was still a big deal.

I grew up in poverty — on welfare and in Section 8 housing. I learned early on how hard it is for folks to get off of the system and I vowed in high school that I wouldn’t end up like my mother who got stuck. So, my financial success on Medium was truly life-changing even though I knew it was likely temporary. I knew things could change.

The years where I did well allowed me to pay off debt, pay huge dental bills, and give my daughter a better life than I ever thought possible for me. Even more importantly, I learned that there was a market for writers like me. That many readers want to hear my voice.

After all, when I first joined the Medium Partner Program, a part of me expected it to be one more failure in my life.

It went better than that.

While I was terribly desperate to succeed here, I knew my chances of success were quite slim. I was never under the impression that I was one of the best writers around. To be honest, I was always painfully aware of my limitations. I lacked confidence. And still do. I get through it by holding onto the simple, naive phrase from Jane Austen’s Emma: “Stranger things have happened.”

And do you know what?

Strange things did happen!

Truly, I was pleasantly surprised to have so many stories eventually go viral and to discover that although my work was never going to be everybody’s cup of tea, I was indeed putting in the work and building an actual audience. My successful years on Medium were real. I didn’t phone shit in, either.

I don’t want to minimize the actual hours and energy I put into working full-time on Medium, but it was a singular, rare endeavor in my life where I legitimately felt that this was right. This was my path.

And it was my path. I don’t regret any bit of my time here.

It would be disingenuous, however, to pretend that my experiences and the platform haven’t changed. Or that it means nothing for other writers too.

This is not a “bash Medium” post. This is not a bash anyone post. I want you to know that I believe in picking our battles, and sometimes, it’s just the right thing to do to speak up. For whatever reason, when I choose to speak up, it makes people uncomfortable.

Hello.

True, it’s easy to label many top writer concerns over the past year as mere “complaints,” perhaps even elite ones, but that’s not the full and accurate picture.

There are practically endless ways to interpret Medium’s changes in 2021 and it’s natural to interpret them according to your own experiences — not to mention your perceptions of those supposedly above you. That’s just natural human stuff.

For folks who are newer to the community or for those who still have big goals (and optimism) about their success on Medium, I would gently caution you from writing off every recent top writer complaint as out-of-touch or missing the big picture.

Please don’t assume it won’t affect you.

Another thing I’d suggest is that you see me as a cautionary tale, because as much as I’ve loved Medium, the platform has not consistently shown that it values its indie writers who choose to invest their time or energy in the platform. On the contrary, Medium has a history of seeking out new blood, ditching their top performers, and virtually ignoring most of the platform’s quality writers. That means there have been lots of writers here who’ve been shafted in one way or another.

Lots of writers who naturally got their hopes up that Medium severely shot down. It happens every time Medium pivots. It happens every time they change the game. Do you remember when “Member Features” were a big deal in 2018?

That’s how I first made my mark on the platform. Medium selected this raw, utterly imperfect piece I wrote about the realization that my childhood was abusive. And that simple thing changed my life.

A year later, Medium featured another piece of mine about my short-lived sexless marriage and my experience with evangelical purity culture. In those days, a member feature was the gift of traction. More followers and more engagement came from optimized homepage exposure.

Back then, Member Features gave writers hope. Something to aim for. Until… Medium kept evolving the process and it eventually didn’t even matter when folks got a Member Feature. It still happens to me. Those pieces just sort of… go nowhere since Medium ruined distribution.

Folks used to get so excited when they had a piece featured and then they’d find out it wasn’t even going up on the home page. They’d look at their traffic and realize Medium wasn’t even showing it to many readers.

Ultimately, the disappointment faded when writers realized they could do well and go viral without a member feature. That became the new hope and it was frankly exciting to see so many of my fellow writers go viral too. Toward the end of 2019 and most of 2020, Medium felt like an indie writer’s playground. It felt like home.

Was it perfect? Of course not. Medium was never perfect, obviously. But there were enough indie writers making a good living on Medium that we had reason to believe the platform wanted to reward quality writing. We had hope because we saw other writers growing. Many writers told me that they were finally reaching their financial goals, and that they were so happy to find an audience for their work.

Before that “relational shift” came and made it harder than ever for readers to even see our work.

These days? I get the sense that the “happy” writers on Medium are those who are just happy to fight over scraps and yell at the rest of us for not being perfect like them. You know what I mean. Somehow, I’m not a “real writer” for wanting to make a real living here. Like I used to do here. Like I worked hard to be able to do. Like I used to be able to help others do too…

Lately the mentality on Medium feels very unhealthy — increasingly so — as people from all over the platform pop in to tell me what I’m doing wrong. As in, I’ve got new and a few old users telling me how to be more productive. How to write more “content” (ew) in less time. It’s devolved into some pretty ableist shit, honestly.

I mean, maybe I could be a financially successful writer on Medium (again) if I quit putting my health first (again) and tried harder to not be ADHD or autistic. Or chronically ill. Later this month, I have an assessment and screening coming up for… dyslexia of all things. Yeah, apparently, there’s this thing called “stealth dyslexia” which might even explain why I’m such a slow writer.

Even if it doesn’t happen to be the case with me, I’m still so tired of the constant, even indirect prodding from others to write faster! Try harder! As if everything I’m doing these days isn’t hard work.

The big reason I was successful on Medium was that I tried so damn hard and put my success here above my health. And honestly, I still get people griping at me because I used to have months where I made great money here. Like Jessica Wildfire, I never earned the $25K+a month like some of the productivity gurus on this platform. The ones who have somehow been able to name drop me when it benefits them to sell their books or classes, but then belittle me and my work, refer to me as an “adult baby” and complain that I am “emotionally immature” because I called out some of their crap. All the while, they’ll tweet about how much they respect women, parents, or those with disabilities along with a bunch of other bullshit that doesn’t line up with their bootstrap messaging. They'll condemn the self-love of Mister Rogers and make fat jokes, then tell their readers what makes them so smart and successful minus any bit of privilege or luck.

In case you missed it, I’m still the big jerk who owes them all an apology for calling some out on the hypocrisy.

“Nice girls” don’t do that, or so I hear.

Even so, even though I am not a guru or influential person like that, I once earned enough on Medium to support myself and my daughter, attend to old debts and begin to build a new life. Even to help others out, which is a very important thing for many of us who know deep poverty. Now that the money isn’t happening, I don’t regret my time on Medium at all. But I do think it’s a strange thing when others want me to pretend that Medium is currently doing good stuff for most of its writers.

Oh, friends.

No.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a Medium staff writer discuss the referral links and say something about how for writers who really work hard and put their time into building a Medium audience… it will really pay off.

Wait... what?

Let’s not be so naive. I have more than 1,500 pieces on Medium. I’ve had several “featured” stories and many more viral pieces. Many of my stories would pop up in the first few slots of a Google search. I pretty much killed myself to publish practically every day for years and quickly reach 40,000 followers.

None of that, and none of my evergreen viral pieces have been enough to pay the bills now that I’m really sick and barred from unemployment benefits as a self-employed writer. Ahem. While it feels like Medium is making us all start over… I’m not even convinced that growth here is all that sustainable or scalable anymore.

I suppose a lot of folks here feel that they’ll fare better than me.

Well… I get that, I do.

Let’s just hope you never actually need to count on Medium to truly support writers who’ve “paid their dues” here. Historically, that’s just not what happens. When they do make a positive move for writers, it doesn’t last. Like those bonuses. We can’t have writers expecting a bonus, right? Can’t have writers who earn a good living anymore or Medium might need to treat us like employees.

Ugh. I hate to say it. But the whole thing that brought me to Medium was my desire to escape a content mill. I've come full circle, apparently.

I’d love to be wrong or even chalk up my negative experiences on the platform over the past year as a “purely me” problem. Except that isn’t true.

It’s not just me, and regardless of what folks like to say about Medium having been some cool kids club, that’s not so accurate either. While I consider Jessica my superior, I believe there are certain similarities between us as neurodivergent moms and family trauma survivors. We’re both sort of lone wolves here too. Some people think we're elite, but we're not exactly welcome among many groups here either.

And I think we appreciate what Medium used to mean for writers — especially for women.

I mean, look at me.

Seriously, where else could a morbidly obese single mom with autism, inattentive ADHD, and a disfiguring disease like lipedema go to make a decent living doing what she loves but still staying home with her kid? I don't have a degree. I didn’t even have a car or driver’s license when I got started here in 2018. I was cooped up in the south as a lonely, newish mom. I had no voice.

And I was still traumatized after an abusive romance plus my brief stint in a crisis center.

Medium was the sort of platform where someone like me could find their footing. It's very sad to see it go downhill.

I understand there are those who see my name and roll their eyes because they don’t care about fat bodies, feminism, exvangelicalism, or culture critics. And lots of folks are turned off by the fact that my lipedema battle has taken over my writing life. I’m still not the only top writer who’s seen growing, recurrent problems on Medium — not by a longshot.

Regardless of some folks thinking I’m a bad writer or simply overrated, the reality is that I (like so many other writers here) did the work to build up an audience and sustained it for years on this platform. Of course when Medium decreased or limited views on my work, my readership decreased. It’s happened across the board for far too many writers. Not even just the “big fish.”

Some writers currently think that’s a good thing and I get it. The writing industry is pretty cutthroat (hello, bad art friend).

It can definitely be cruel on both (or all) sides.

Rather than being concerned that Medium has choked so many of the writers who’ve poured their heart and souls into the platform and proved there’s an audience for their work… it’s easier to say we’re just big overgrown babies.

Or, that we’re talking out of turn.

“Medium was never supposed to support you” is just another way of saying that you don’t believe writers deserve a living wage. You might want to consume all of the content you possibly can and be inspired for $5 a month, but you don’t want to know how the sausage is made or if the folks you’re reading can pay their rent.

You might not care. I suspect we’ve all been guilty of that attitude with artists at one point or another.

If we don’t care about writers and advocates making a living wage… who are we to say they should put up or shut up?

When we’re happy or content knowing that fewer people are succeeding financially on Medium in the midst of a global pandemic or their own chronic illnesses — because folks, I’m not the only writer here with such “issues” — that’s just another symptom of a broken system.

The late Paul Wellstone said it best:

“We all do better when we all do better.”

That’s my two cents about top writers leaving. I'm still here, yes. But it's getting harder and harder to make it work.

Sadly, it's not just me.

I’m nearly done crowdfunding for lipedema surgery. Please share the link to help raise awareness of the disease they call fat.

If you love my work and want to support my efforts to break cycles of stigma and shame through awkward honesty, visit me on Ko-fi. From there, you can follow and support my future projects, and subscribe to my newsletter