Your Medium Reads Might Be Down, But Your Reading Time Isn’t (Sort of)

Here’s why

Every Mediumite I talk to these days is shouting from the digital rooftops.

What are they screaming about?

1. A huge decrease in general views
2. A 90% cut in read time per article

One of the bigger Mediumites even told me their views are down a quarter of a million in the last 30 days since Medium’s most recent changes.

Holy scheisse, Batman.

J.J. is sad too

I’ve also noticed both of these things on my own articles, but the results were slightly screwed for a couple reasons.

A) I took all of October off to work on another project (a silly satire book — woooo)

B) I had 2 articles go viral (115,000 and 15,000) through social media (with low internal views — sigh)

But. And there is a but.

My general views for almost all of my new articles are way below what they used to get, when comparing to July — September.

When I’d normally publish a piece that I know is interesting, I could expect anywhere from 300–1000 views over the course of a week or two.

This past month? Those same style of articles are getting 50–150.

If they’re going to change the algorithm to give us peanuts — couldn’t they at least make it into peanutbutter? (Humankind’s most amazing creation FYI)

But boohooing won’t get me anywhere in life, and I can always buy some of that sweet, sweet deliciously smooth peanutbutter at the store.

So here’s some good news.

Why are views way down on Medium?

I haven’t found a valid reason for the views being down so much (yet).

I am certain it’s related to Medium’s recent announced algorithm changes to make the platform more “relational.”

But they haven’t explained exactly what that means, so we have to assume, and make asses out of u and me.

My best guess for that:

1. They are trying to skew the earnings curve away from the 0.001% making 60% of the money.
2. If that’s true — then that means views need to move away as well
3. Since they control the feeds/emails/notifications — their algorithm changed who gets shown what. If I’m right, then it might actually be a great thing for ‘smaller’ writers — they would get more views.
4. We’ll know if this assumption is along the right lines in a week when Medium releases their November earnings

Member reading time

As for the other part of this equation — the super low reading time — I had a look at it.

The reading times are wayyyy down from before. I don’t believe that can be disputes.

I also don’t think it matters.

Why?

Because it’s just a calculation change.

Here’s an old article of mine as an example.

2 minutes and 24 seconds is a really good read time — since the new changes.

That’s from a 16 minute guide that has been read thousands of times. And I remember it’s reading time used to be much closer to 7 minutes. Not 2.

Here’s an article I just published yesterday in a new publication (to me).

It has only 27 views (sheds tear). 16 came from Medium’s distribution (internal links) and 11 came from external sources:

The read time? For a 4 minute estimated read, the calculation shows a whopping 11 whole seconds of average read time!

No, I won’t be giving out Ferrari’s to my audience anytime soon. Don’t bother checking under your chairs.

But let’s take a quick look at the details.

1. Let’s ignore today’s stats, because the earnings aren’t calculated for it yet.
2. We also don’t have to worry about any Medium ‘commissions’ because it hasn’t been 30 days yet.

For the 1st day, it had 8 internal and 7 external — 15 views in total.

Member reading time is stated as 5 minutes in total for that day.

5 minutes = 300 seconds. 10 seconds X 15 views = 150 seconds.

That doesn’t add up.

Even if we extend it to all the views and read time — we get 33 minutes member read time.

33 minutes = 1,980 seconds. 10 seconds X 27 views = 270 seconds.

The average read time doesn’t even add up to the purely member read time.

Remember, the internal and external view sources DON’T EQUAL member and non-member views.

Long story short, the math above shows even in the extreme — if every view was a member view — the average reading time is drastically undervalued.

33 minutes of member reading time at most would be 1 minute and 13 seconds of average read time. Assuming some of those views aren’t members, the value would be even higher.

The average reading time is broken.

So what’s the nice part? I’m pretty sure the money per view is still the same — the calculations are just different.

Back to that same article.

Day 1 has 5 minutes of member reading time and $0.13 of earnings.

That equals $0.026 per minute of reading time.

And this still matches up with my old extensive calculations.

The range I calculated almost 1 year ago was around $0.015 to $0.032 for member reads. So it looks like we’re still in go go zone.

You may now sigh in relief. Sort of.

Takeaway

I can’t easily prove the number of reads are down, but I strongly suspect they are based on my own results and what I’ve heard from other Mediumites.

This will naturally reduce your earnings for every article, if you’re in the boat where you’re affected negatively. (Cheers to you if you’re getting more than before!)

At least the member reading time per read still equals out to the same.

As usual with Medium, we just have to ride the wave and keep on writing. Medium will change their algorithms again, they seem to do it every 6 months or less.

So just wait, keep improving, and enjoy the surfing.

(PS. I was going to include some amazing artwork but my digital pen doesn’t seem to like me today — my apologies!)

J.J. Pryor

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