What’s Up? M | Debates & Deciphers
You Beta Testers You!
A short guide for the steps to obtain the Chrome extension for Medium Distribution Info (Beta)
Context: We think understanding your own stats of distribution on this platform should help you enormously in finding patterns or ways in which you can enhance or improve your own chances in finding distribution again.
There may be lessons to be learned along the way as well (through seeing that data or how it changes over time). It’s a small step in having an improved experience with this platform since more tools are unilaterally lacking on here for writers to ‘analyze’ their stats.
Since “Distribution” is this platform’s way in putting your story out there in front of a lot more potential readers and followers, it should follow that if you do get it (it’s not obvious how and it’s one of those black box things on this platform), you’d want to be able to dissect the data over it (views, % reads, length, internal views, earnings, etc.) to see if you might want to continue or not continue writing about that topic in exactly the way or with some adjustments from the way you did in that story of yours. It’s further visibility for a kind of fine-tuning for your writing, if you will, to see what is happening to your stories in a more measurable way.
Purpose here: To give you a quick step-by-step screenshot guide on how to download and provide feedback to co-editor Martin van Soest on his Chrome extension for Medium Earnings Info Beta.
Any feedback means anything related to downloading, using, what you’d like to see, etc. It’s a way for Martin to check out any bugs and to improve its usefulness for you — the writer, on here. He’s volunteering his free time, so do consider tipping him, here.
OK, let’s get into the mix, you beta testers you!
So, there are technically 3 Chrome extensions to date.
This is the screenshot of the upper right corner when you hit the ‘puzzle piece’ icon when you’re inside the Chrome browser to see what extensions you’ve already downloaded (I’ve downloaded all 3 already, so this is what mine looks like):
One is called: Medium Distribution Info (this is the regular current one);
Another is called: Medium Distribution Info Beta (this is the one we’re talking about here, notice the word “Beta” after it);
The last one is called: Medium Earnings Info (also good and under Martin’s constant tweaking — reach out to him to find out more; You can contact him directly also on Discord).
So the following are the 7 main steps to downloading and providing feedback to Martin on the 2nd extension — Medium Distribution Info Beta — shown above.
Step 1:
Join our Beta Testers Discord channel (it’s better than Twitter, in my opinion):
If you’re new to Discord, it’s just like any other communication platform, like Twitter, for example. So, Discord will ask you to set up an account and all that good stuff. That’s all Discord platform stuff (we don’t see any of that). We only see you join with whatever username you decide to give yourself (and feel free to use pen names).
And I promise we don’t bite. This is just a much more modern way to communicate than even Twitter, in my view. There’s also no need to be ‘on’ when everyone else is. It’s totally open according to your schedule and convenience (i.e. time zone). Just sign on whenever and see who’s on, and of course leave messages, they’ll get read in time like we normally do in emails.
Note: I personally came across an error message when I clicked on that link invite (possibly because I’m already on the Discord channel). So in case if you also come to a glitch, please let us know here in comments.
Step 2:
I’m going to show you the end in this step so you get to see the lay of the land.
So, once signed in from that link to the Discord server (which will also say, “What’s up? M” at the upper left and have the publication’s yellow profile pix that you may have become familiar with by now which is the happy half-green and frowning half-red face in contrapposto), then hit that publication avatar icon:
This will bring you to see all the public channels that are visible including #general, #medium, #support, #extension-progress, #beta-test-distribution-info, etc.):
Then, scroll under the specific Discord channel #beta-test-distribution-info, where you can share, chat, and ask questions specific to the beta chrome extension there (this is a close-up of the top of the previous screenshot):
This is where you will provide your public comments of bugs, issues, questions specific to this Beta extension.
We have other channels (many of which were mentioned earlier and are indicated by their hashtags in front) for talking about #medium, for example. Join whatever you have access to — it’s public within the invitees.
Step 3:
Send Martin your Chrome email address so that you can be added to a list of ‘trusted’ beta testers (coming from Medium and following this publication is a minimum bar to weed out pure random folks).
How to communicate directly to Martin if you want to privately is hit the main Discord icon on the upper left (the purple guy) and it will bring you to your main homepage in Discord:
And you’ll notice near the top left column the column header “DIRECT MESSAGES” which I starred in blue font and then you should see “muffinimal” as a user that you could click on.
Once you click on his icon, just like in Twitter, you can message him directly by going to the bottom where you see the plus sign and “Message [at]muffinimal”.
Have fun with this. You can check out the stuff to the right with the emoticons and ‘gifs’!
Step 4:
Get Chrome or open it as your browser.
Step 5:
Sign into Chrome (usually your gmail address) or open your Gmail (so that Chrome registers you as ‘signed in’).
Step 6:
Go to the following URL page (which will take you to the Chrome Web Store page specific to this BETA extension):
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aaaedhgklmifoogknfbmmkfagfkbofdc
And download (upper right button), but make sure it says “Beta” in the extension file title:
Once you hit that “Add to Chrome” button, you might see something like a window pop-up asking you to “Add extension” or “Cancel”. You continue on by reconfirming the download by hitting the “Add extension”:
After that, if you’ve added it correctly, it will give you another pop-up of something like this:
Then, it will disappear, and then that upper blue button will change to “Remove from Chrome”:
Step 7:
Sign in (if not already) or go over to your Medium main home page (on Chrome, obviously) and go to the very top right where you saw that puzzle piece icon shown at the beginning and select Medium Distribution Info Beta:
When you hit that, a pop-up window will appear like this (like it’s thinking below where some green dots are flashing):
It will eventually populate a chart like below. But you scroll down to the “Dive deeper” and “Download stats as csv”:
And see what you get.
Does it seem to capture correctly (any glitches observed?)
Does it contain useful data for you? What other data or issues would you like to raise?
When you hit “Dive Deeper”, it actually automatically opens a new tab, thinking like below:
And it will eventually populate with data you can sort and analyze.
Does it have any issues for you?
Anything you want to share, ask, question, debate, etc., go back to Step 2 and share on Discord.
(You can also share on the comments section here, and I’ll make sure it gets addressed).
Thanks for reading!
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