Part 5 — Medium's a great platform for writers, right?

In Part 1 of this series we learned about the impact and importance of followers on earnings, and we evaluated various techniques to gain them. In Part 2, we investigated the impact of publishing our stories on Medium publications versus self publishing. In Part 3, we used the data to discover the optimal read time for our stories. And in Part 4, we investigated which story topics earn the most.

In this final story of this series, Part 5, we will investigate which variables (claps, followers, read time and so on) impact earnings the most. And, we'll make some curious discoveries along the way. And finally, we'll admit when we've been beaten.

For this story our data set is, unfortunately, much smaller — the meager earnings data from my personal Medium stats.

Medium is Great, But…

There is a lot to be said for Medium as a writing platform. Setup is simple and quick, the editor is powerful and easy to use, and the reporting stats are thorough and easy to understand. The other writers are engaged and produce some fantastic content.

But, oddly, it seems as though everyone on Medium is also a writer. In my investigations for this series, I looked at a lot of profiles of other paying Medium members. I noticed that virtually all of them are also active writers. A bit of Googling shows that others have observed this same curiosity.

This has profound implications, because it means that writing for Medium is a zero sum game, at least if you are interested in writing for profit. As writers, we are all contributing $5 per month to a pool, and then splitting it up using Medium's algorithm. And of course, Medium gets an undisclosed, yet surely significant, slice of that pie.

In other words, if I win, you lose.

Why are my earnings stats so weird?

One of the inspirations for this series was my inability to understand what is going on with my earnings, shown below. I've investigated the revenue model Medium publishes, yet I can't seem to map it into my own results in any way that makes sense.

I've stared at a lot of data in my time and I can generally spot a pattern or two if I look long enough. Yet, how I earned $0.72 per view with one story and $0.01 with another, is beyond my cognitive ability. Nothing in the claps and followers and so on would suggest any sort of obvious pattern. My data doesn't seem to reflect the model that Medium publishes.

Let's try building an empirical model

Fine then, data science to the rescue. I used 'R' on the data set above and tried to build lots of different kinds of models — regression models, models reflecting Medium's description of their model, non-linear models I dreamed up. Yet nothing came close to fitting the data, mostly because of that one earnings outlier, highlighted in green above, which just isn't anything like any of the others.

Here's where I admit defeat. Perhaps I'll try again when I have more data at hand.

What exactly does this mean? It means there are hidden variables that are impacting the earnings results, to which we are not privy.

For example, given that Medium rolls up earnings stats every day, perhaps on April 4 everyone else took a day off and I got a bigger slice of the pie. Or maybe it was something else. Regardless, without more data and more information about how their algorithm actually works, it's all just conjecture.

So the bottom line for this story is, unfortunately, "Nothing to see here". I've been beaten.

Wrapping Up

Medium, as a platform, has a lot to offer. But the zero sum game aspect combined with the mystique surrounding the earnings model, is disheartening. I like predictability.

If a genie granted me one wish for Medium, it would be to make the earnings model simple and based on member reads alone. Something like:

On April 4, we paid $0.72 per member read, and you got 2 reads.

Simple and equitable. All of this business about followers, claps, comments and so on, along with the obvious hidden variables, is just an unwelcome "complexification". It rewards writers with audiences that are more emotive and penalizes writers serving the stoic, non-emotive tech types disinclined to clapping, liking, commenting, and other displays of emotion. If people are reading your stories, you've succeeded, claps or otherwise.

While Medium has its issues, there are of course, plenty of other options. You can start a blog on Wordpress and start earning with advertisements, affiliate links and so on. The downside here is you are now shilling for other company's products. That can work well if, say, you love dogs and want to write exclusively about dogs and drop in links to dog-oriented products.

On the other hand, if you want to let your freak flag fly and write about whatever is on your mind, then, in spite of its challenges, Medium is a pretty good place for that.

So for now, I'll continue to let my freak flag fly.