Why I am tempted to leave the Medium Partner Program (MPP)

Despite all the trauma that I have personally had in my Life, I consider myself very fortunate, even privileged to have a steady job and income and great living conditions and even greater opportunities, if I put my mind to utilizing both my inner and outer resources.

I consider myself to be both humble and egalitarian. From an early age I wanted consciously to be inclusive of all, maybe because I am a twin and I grew up by a river, born in the 60s, away from television and DVDs and the instant gratification of social media and online wonders.

Here are some hard cold facts about Medium, borne out by my research.

• If you look at how many followers of “Medium Staff’ that there are, you will find the number to be at least 640,000 and this means 640,000 people registered with Medium. Of course some of these will be inactive and some will not be writers, but a lot will be active writers.
• Not all those registered with Medium are paying members.
• I pay $5 USA (which is $7 AUD) per month so that I can read locked Stories on Medium, because every week I find new Publications, Writers and Medium collections that I am interested in, and I love to read.
• I am in the MPP because I also love to write, and as I documented before, I thought why not see how I go with the MPP. Luckily for me, I don’t rely on Medium for a constant or fixed amount of income.
• My clapping for Stories is not swayed by thoughts about how the MPP is calculated.
• Medium has stated there are 25 curators worldwide. That is a minuscule amount: these 25 individuals cannot possibly read thousands of Stories each every day! Do the math, there are likely thousands of published Stories each day, and how many Stories can each person read in a normal working day?
• There must be thousands of Stories each day that are not read (but there is a reporting mechanism, of course, in case you want to report a Story that breaches the terms and conditions of using Medium).
• If I didn’t promote my Medium Stories on 5 or 6 Facebook groups for supporting Medium writers, quite likely there would be next to zero Claps of most of my Stories.
• Since 2012 I have been blogging on WordPress and with 8 blogs now, around 6 which I call semi-active, the feedback I have got for all of them, has been next to negligible. See the next point.
• I have researched what helps to get views / reads / appreciation or feedback, and Claps in the case of Medium Stories, and the answer is two pronged:

MARKET or PROMOTE your content

WRITE WHAT PEOPLE WANT TO READ

The marketing part is not difficult if you market to friends and families and on social media and research other marketing methods, and the latter is a balancing act, because yes someone may be interested in what you have to read, but there may be a lot more people interested in what someone else has to say.

Sure you can research how to get a Story curated or how to boost your Reads and Claps of your Medium Story, but it’s better for your own mental health probably, to do so with REALISM and with positivity in mind and lateral thinking about all options (like why not publish a Kindle book of your Medium Stories in addition to writing on Medium, to get more “bang for your buck” if bucks are what you want).

I have a confession to make. It stresses me out to keep coming across Medium writers on Social Media complaining about a lack of being curated and about it not being fair that others are curated at their expense.

Yes I’ve come across Stories under Topics, and I have thought that I have written on the same topic or issue, and my Story has been better or just as good as some I have read, that have been curated.

But you know what?

I am not jealous or envious of others. Good for you if your Story is curated, I say. If the Medium curators, on the day, read and curate your Story, well done — caveat preempt-or — unless there really is blatant favoritism of your Stories over others who are curatable.

Heck, also, guess what?

Every body is human. Medium curators are human, in fact that is why human beings are used for curation. Medium claims that human beings can do a better job reviewing Stories that they come across and selecting a balance of writers and content for curation.

The ultimate test of whether I care about the money that curation brings, will be whether I stay with the MPP or not. Let’s say I remain a paying member in order to read, but don’t opt to be paid for the Claps and interaction on my Stories.

Will that influence my relationship with Medium? Will I write / publish fewer Stories a week or over time? Perhaps I will leave Medium altogether. After all, would it be worth writing on Medium if I don’t earn the dollars? Of course, it will be.

I am writing to share what I write and the challenge is getting content out to readers.

If I had loyal Followers on Medium who interact with all or most of my Stories, that would be half the battle won, but right now, I feel that I am not even halfway to half-way.

Up until now, I have aimed to “earn” $1.25 USD per week, or $5 a month, to cover my monthly Medium membership fees; and this goal is achievable and I have been achieving it.

If I pulled out of the MPP and stop dreaming about being one of the “Upper Kingdom” or the high flyers (easy to do because I have never started) earning $300 a week plus or thousands of dollars a month, because they have loyal followers and write on topical issues several times a day or at least once a day, and are curated often, then I would be free to “stop looking over my shoulder” at my Stats and MPP partnership dashboard.

It would be a new culture, the culture of Writing from Celine, rather than the culture of writing for money. I get it that people think they should be reimbursed for hard work and quality work, but think about reciprocity in different ways, and that more that is done is not reimbursed monetarily than is paid for monetarily.

One of my goals on Medium is never to complain about not being curated. I will spend my time and energy on something that builds, rather than on thinking about poor me not being curated.

That is not to say “I don’t want to be curated.”

But that’s just me. Rant over.

Thanks for reading!

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About the Author

Celine Lai was born in Malaya (not Malaysia) and is the oldest inter-country adopted person in Australia. She loves reading and writing, and runs WordPress blogs and writes technical documents. She blogs mainly on Fascinating Animals.

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