Why Are You Failing On Medium?

It’s probably not your fault

If you’re anything like me (and I suspect most people who join this platform as subscribers are), you jumped onboard entertaining a fantasy to actually earn a significant amount of money with your writing. And therein lies the basic problem of why so few people earn more than coffee money writing on Medium. This website is jammed with wannabe authors — and short on members who come here just to read because the content is so compelling.

The math is really simple. If the toll is $5 per month — and almost everybody who signs up is going to seek income from their subscription — there just won’t be nearly enough money to go around for everybody to cash in. That paltry monthly subscription is what pays Medium writers.

Let’s say all of that $5 goes back to the writers (which obviously it doesn’t). Pick any 20 writers’ names out of a hat and chances are their combined Medium income will be $100 minus the cost of running the operation. Which means your average writer is earning south of $5 per month.

Naturally, as in the United States, the income and wealth curve is hugely skewed toward a feudal society in which a few people make a fortune — and the rest almost nothing — with a smallish middle class earning daily Starbucks money.

Right now, you’re reading a story written by a guy who actually has experienced what it’s like to be in the slave, middle, and top 1% classes of Medium. And I can tell y’all that whether I was earning $50 per month or over $100 per day, the quantity and quality of my output were the same. How could that be? Don’t we read all about writing listicles, networking, and keywords that will vault us into the upper echelons? Is it all bunk?

I draw from my experience in the record business to illustrate. Think of your story as a record that has just been released by the company to radio stations and stores. Maybe you’ll make a few sales from your social media contacts. And maybe a DJ or two will actually listen to your music, like it, and play it on the air with nobody telling him or her to.

But I assure you: hit records that have ascended to the top of the charts with no promotion from the company are extremely few and far between. And my experience on Medium tells me it’s like that here.

For months, I wrote away daily — publishing 3 or 4 articles on different subjects faithfully. And for half a year, I hovered just a bit north of the $100 per month payout. Nothing I wrote was ever chosen for distribution after having published over 500 stories.

Then one day, I discovered that 20 of my last 30 articles had been chosen for distribution. Exactly how would that happen? The only reasonable conclusion I can draw is that a human decided he or she liked what I was writing and placed the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on my work. Or back to the record business metaphor — the company decided to promote my record.

And whamo! Within two weeks, I was banking over $100 daily on Medium. The two stories that were earning most of that money were no better than any of the other 500 that weren’t. In fact, one was pretty much the worst of the bunch. No matter. It was getting airplay via the company’s promotion.

Two weeks after I began making real money here, the company pulled the plug. Almost all the “stickered” stories got unstickered — and my earnings reflected the loss of promotion. It wasn’t long before I was back earning $4 on a good day.

So here’s a question everybody should be asking themselves: Can my story really go viral without being chosen by the company for promotion? Being a cynical guy — and given my experience — not likely. I’m sure it could — and does happen on occasion. But I wouldn’t tell my debtors to wait because your writing ship is about to come in. It’s mostly a fantasy the company perpetuates to keep us all ante-ing up the fiver. Medium makes its living indulging the members’ dream of earning a living writing. So they’ll want you to think there’s a significant chance that you can exert some control over your outcome.

If this sounds as if I have a case of sour grapes, that’s because I do. But that doesn’t mean I’m not exposing an uncomfortable truth here. Again, up until a few months ago, my writing output was consistent if nothing else. How could I earn $2500 one month and $100 a few months later with the same effort? Promotion my friends. Not keywords. Not listicles. Not bull shit courses taught by writers who supposedly make a living writing on Medium. (If they did, why would they bother hustling wannabes when they could be banking with their stories?)

I’m not saying “Don’t write on Medium. It’s all a hustle.” I’m saying that garnering the favor of the Medium gods is really how to succeed here. They decide who’s gonna get your $5 member fee more than anything or anybody else. That’s simply the cold, hard truth as I see it.