3 desperate ways I’m trying to survive the new Medium Partner Program
There’s simply no getting around it: the new changes to the Medium Partner Program have been especially tough on long-time, longer-form writers like myself.
Many of those who generated the bulk of their earnings from read-time on older stories are reporting 70%+ drops in earnings overnight, and I’m one of them.
But I’m not willing to give up on Medium … yet.
I’ve loved this platform for a long time — so much so that I made a YouTube channel pretty much dedicated to it.
So I’m willing to try a few new things before I cut bait completely.
Let me tell you about the 3 adjustments I’m making in an effort to survive the New Medium Partner Program, and then I’d love to hear from you in the comments about strategies you’re trying and whether or not they’re working!
I’m writing more
I found it interesting that Medium suggested that changes to the partner program were aimed at creating more in-depth, story-driven, high-quality writing.
That’s because, from what I can gather in the early going anyway, Medium is massively incentivizing short posts designed specifically to generate engagement.
The main reason behind that shift is — as I alluded to at the top of this post — the fact that the platform has completely torched read time as the main driver of earnings.
By pumping the importance of engagement metrics like comments and new follows, it sort of disincentivizes longer-form storytelling and technical writing that the platform is actually known for.
Although I’ve taken my foot off the gas lately as I deal with back-to-school tasks and kids’ sports tryouts, I wrote a ton at the beginning of August.
What I’ve found is that the revenue per mille (RPM) is comparable to what it used to be early on, but it quickly drops off a cliff even for stories that are still being read quite a bit.
Ergo, it now makes more sense to publish more and shorter, because most of your earnings will come right at the start of a story’s lifespan.
If you can publish a lot, you’ll probably earn a lot.
I’ve always said that one of the biggest myths about Medium is that it’s passive income.
Now it’s more active than ever.
I’m writing shorter
The older a story gets, the less engagement it tends to generate, and that’s reflected in the new earnings system.
Again, why bother writing 1,000 words on a topic — this was the average length of my posts in the past — if you can be way more concise, save way more time, and yet get paid the same amount?
I adapted early in this process by, for example, taking a 1,400-word article in my drafts and slicing it up into 3 separate articles to be published as a series.
If read-time is virtually valueless, there’s no sense in wasting too much time fleshing out a topic.
I’m speeding up development on other platforms
I honestly hate to say this because, the way things were going prior to the MPP changes, I had put Medium at the sacred center of my content creation world.
As I wrote here and explained in the video below, my hard work was starting to pay off. In fact, after just 8 months, I was approaching what was arguably a full-time income JUST from Medium.
Now it’s early days yet and, to be honest, I haven’t done enough exploring yet.
But I just can’t see a path back to those kinds of earnings unless Medium, at least to some extent, re-establishes read time as a driving metric for earnings.
Most of my views and read time come from older pieces, but those pieces are now paying me pennies instead of dollars.
Ergo, I’m having to recalibrate a little bit — as I’m sure a lot of writers here probably are.
For me, that means going pedal down on some other platforms.
In the next 10–15 days, I’ll reach the threshold for full YouTube monetization — that is, the level that includes ad revenue sharing.
The moment I hit that mark, I plan to flood my channel with content.
YouTube requires more work, but it is more passive and I believe the income will wind up being more stable.
If you stop engaging on Medium, your account tends to fall off a cliff.
On YouTube, about the same number of people watch my videos every day no matter what I do.
The algorithm quietly does its job and puts my work in front of people who want to see it, which translates to more consistent engagement over longer periods of time.
YouTube is also easier to predict.
Once you do it for a while, you get a feel for what works and what doesn’t and that becomes repeatable.
That was true for Medium, too.
There’s really no way to guarantee viral work, but you can definitely adjust the odds in your favor.
By putting two levels of humans in between your story and the algo — that is, “expert” nominators and the Boost Gods — Medium has effectively made it impossible to figure out what will actually get you paid in a significant way.
They also effectively force you to go through certain publications to earn Boosts (something I hate to do), putting yet another layer of gatekeepers between you and your potential audience.
This is unfortunate, imho.
Humans are far more biased and unpredictable than machines, and their subjective opinions are likely keeping potential readers and writers apart more than they’re bringing them together.
So while I do still love Medium and want it to work, I’m more motivated than ever to speed up my work developing on other platforms.
Writing-wise, I’ll also be upping the consistency on my Substack, where some of my most enthusiastic and engaged followers have already found me.
And if I can’t get my Medium earnings turned around, I’ll also consider turning all my writing efforts toward blogs I actually own.
This article is reprinted from my Medium publication Publish Every Day.
Once again, thank you for the update on your Medium activity.