2 things I love + 4 things I hate about the new Medium Partner Program
It seems people either love or hate the new Medium Partner Program.
Me? I’m really on the fence.
On the one hand, there are aspects of the new MPP that I think are really positive and will help grow the site over the long term.
On the other, some of the changes have been absolutely crushing for high-volume, long-term writers like myself.
Allow me to walk you through these points one by one and then I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments.
Let’s go!
2 things I love about the new Medium Partner Program
OK, let’s start with the good.
If, like many people, you’ve found me here via my YouTube channel, you know that nobody has been a bigger advocate for Medium than me.
As I’ve stated many times, I think this simple, clean platform is perfect for writers who are just starting out.
And for people in the early stages of building an online side business, it doesn’t really get better than this.
Nothing motivates you to hop out bed in the morning like seeing how much money you made, and Medium allows you to start doing this almost immediately.
This is rare.
For example, toward the end of last month, I finally reached the first tier of YouTube monetization.
This required me to accumulate 500 subscribers and 3,000 watch hours. I was well over the subs number already (I currently have close to 1,300), but getting to 3,000 watch hours was a grind.
And I still haven’t seen a dime of ad revenue because I’m still short of the required 4,000 watch hours (I expect to pass that number in mid-September).
Just to get to these numbers, it took me 40 videos and 10 months.
And believe me, it’s a lot more onerous and time-consuming creating videos than articles.
That’s why I think Medium is (or was?) the perfect foundation platform for building your content off of.
I made a video about why, which you can check out below if you’re interested.
The beauty of starting with Medium is that writing you do here can serve as the basis for things like YouTube videos — and you’re getting paid by Medium to develop that content even if you aren’t getting paid on those other platforms yet.
That’s one of the reasons I made this pitch that Medium was actually superior to freelancing.
So look, the point is, I was in love with this platform.
And there still are things I love about it.
Yes, even some aspects of the new Partner Program.
The first thing I love: Opening up to more countries
If you aren’t moving forward, you’re moving backward, and Medium needs to keep growing.
The new Partner Program opened up to a slew of new countries at the beginning of August, with more on the way after some legal/financial things get worked out.
This is awesome — I love that there will be more diverse and unique voices here, and it is already bringing in new subscribers.
This is also a positive because, if you saw Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine’s Medium Day presentation, you’ll know subscriber numbers had stagnated over the past year.
The second thing I love: You must pay to participate in the MPP
One of the stated goals of the MPP changes was to reduce the amount of AI-generated and junk content on Medium.
And while I think the changes will help with that, it’s not for the same reason that’s being pitched by the site.
Tony argues that by relying more on human curators and pumping money toward boosted content, it will disincentivize “clickbait” (an overused, misunderstood term) and spam.
If you ask me, Tony’s team accomplished that goal with a much simpler move.
The new requirement that you have to be a Medium subscriber in order to participate in the partner program solves the problem without the need for a subjective, opaque new earning system.
If there’s no financial incentive to pump out a ton of junk content, what’s the point of pumping it out?
I’ve always felt that you should have to be a paying subscriber to participate in the MPP.
Medium is a community.
If you’re not contributing to the community, you shouldn’t be drawing money from it.
By not being a paying member, you send the message that your writing is valuable and other people’s isn’t.
It’s $5 a month … it’s really not that big of a deal.
4 things I hate about the new Medium Partner Program
OK, let’s move on to the 4 things I really don’t like about the new Medium Partner Program.
Believe me, it pains me to write this section. As I’ve already said, nobody has been a bigger booster of this place.
But I believe in being upfront and honest with my audience.
Over the past year, I’ve done nothing but publish fawning videos about how great Medium is. Here’s an example:
And I believed every word of those videos.
So it would be dishonest of me now not to be upfront about my belief that Medium is, in some ways, moving in the wrong direction.
The first thing I hate: The destruction of writers’ back catalogs
This is by far the biggest drawback of the new Medium Partner Program.
For people like me, who’ve written a ton of stories over a long period of time and who derived the bulk of their earnings from those still-popular stories, this has been absolutely crushing.
From what I can gather, there are two reasons for this.
First, it appears Medium has made read-time effectively worthless, whereas beforehand it was a massive earnings driver.
In fact, read time is apparently so unimportant to Medium that it isn’t even included on the stats page anymore.
This is really disappointing.
To me, there is no better measure of who is bringing the most to the platform than the time people spend reading their work.
Medium has shifted to a model that rewards “engagement” over actual read time, which I think will actually achieve the opposite of what the platform wants.
It incentivizes junky, short content designed just to get a rise out of people.
Second, by throwing earnings at engagement, Medium further penalizes older stories.
I don’t know what the statistical backstory is, but typically you’ll see a lot of comments early in a story’s lifespan before they quickly taper off.
As I said, many of my most popular stories are ones I wrote many months ago, but that no longer draw a lot of comments.
If you’re interested in a deeper dive into how the new MPP crushed my earnings overnight, you can check out the video below.
The second thing I hate: Earnings based on human subjectivity
When I started out on Medium a year ago, I remember someone describing the site as “The YouTube of Writing.”
For the most part, it lives up to that description. Like YouTube, it relied on an effective algorithm to do most of the heavy lifting around delivering appropriate content to the site’s consumers.
Now I’m a very analytical person by nature, so the new earnings model is a total nightmare for my brain.
Engagement points, 30-second read time checkpoints, follower and boost multipliers, doling out power to hand-picked editors and publications.
Whatever I do in life, I try to stick to the K.I.S.S. Method: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
The new earnings model feels like a bunch of subjective, human-driven metrics duct-taped together to build the site in the image of those who currently run it.
It’s their prerogative, of course, but I always prefer to reduce complexity wherever possible.
The third thing I hate: The Boost
I knew things were headed downhill the moment the concept of The Boost was introduced several months ago.
Now the Boost pre-dates the MPP changes, but from what I can gather, it’s now not only a human-derived view pumper but also a huge earnings accelerator.
One of the coolest things about Medium is that it was a place where truly independent writers could earn fair pay for their work.
Suddenly, to benefit from this new system, it’s back to jumping through editors’ hoops and currying favor with those who have the power to bless your work as “boost-worthy”.
It creates a sort of social hierarchy within Medium that favors those who are tight with hand-selected story nominators and Boost choosers, and everyone else.
When I worked in newspapers, one of the best things to happen was the arrival of web stats.
Suddenly it revealed what big brain senior editors thought everyone was reading and what they were actually reading.
The idea of elitism has been totally perverted by the political right, which is why I hesitate to invoke it here, but I just don’t like when people think they’re smarter than their audience.
The fourth thing I hate: No referral system
Now, if I could still bring in readers and be able to grow that income independent of all the opaque, subjective earnings decisions going on, I’d be more inclined to keep pushing.
One of the main reasons I kept my YouTube channel and Substack newsletters going despite knowing it’d probably be a year before I saw a dime from my work there is that it pushed a lot of new readers to Medium.
If those readers signed up for an account, I’d receive half of the subscriber fees for as long as they remained a paying member of the site.
The formula is simple and fair: I bring people to your platform because they like my writing in particular, and we split the revenue.
This was a huge advantage for Medium over, say, Substack.
Whereas on Substack, you keep most of what you make from paid members, you also have to build that audience over a long period of time for little or no pay.
On Medium, however, you got to keep a huge chunk of referred member earnings but you ALSO benefitted from views and earnings from the massive built-in audience here (and the algorithm feeding your work to it).
Medium’s impressive domain authority also pushes your work out to search engines.
Now, with earnings slashed and the referral program gone, Substack suddenly looks a lot better than it used to.
What’s next?
I’ve walked you through the reasons I love and hate the new partner program, and judging by the number of points in each section, you can probably guess which way I’m leaning overall.
While I really love that Medium is going after spam and AI content and I’m happy to see the program expanding to new countries, unfortunately the negatives far outweigh the positives for me.
Medium’s decision to torch read-time earnings effectively rug-pulled its best-producing long-time writers, and as someone who isn’t interested in cozying up with hand-selected publication editors, I can’t make up the difference by chasing esoteric Boosts.
So what’s left for me to do?
Well, I’ve adjusted my approach a bit, which I’ll get into a bit later this week (get my email notifications so you don’t miss it!).
But at the end of the day, Medium owns the platform and has to live with the outcomes.
I can’t well say I’m tired of people complaining about algorithms and then do it myself without taking full responsibility for my own outcomes regardless.
So I’m committed to pushing through and publishing until the end of September.
At that point, I’ll have achieved full YouTube monetization and will consider where my time is best spent.
This post is re-printed from my Medium publication Publish Every Day.
We’ll know you’re all in on YouTube when you’re skateboarding with a GoPro camera 🛹 and flying a drone in restricted airspace.
Any recommendations for screenwriting books?