Medium... Dead Man Walking?
It's never been about the money!
Do you publish on Medium? Has your income fallen through a trapdoor? Yeah, me too. I am starting to think that Medium are on the ropes and are struggling to deliver what their investors want. Each month seems to bring another change to the partner program which makes them seem rather desperate.
In this newsletter, I want to show you what I’ve encountered and hopefully come up with a solution that no one will pay any attention to.
Last August, my articles generated almost $1700, I doubt I’ll break $100 this month. The drop wouldn’t be too bad if there were some consistency in the partner program and if the payments made sense.
As I pointed out in this note last week, an article with 3599 reads earned $144, and an article with 5338 reads earned $9.98… make it make sense!
The Crazy Bit
Last month, I published 21 articles on Medium and earned the grand total of $106. I probably spent around 20 hours doing that, so I generated a massive $ 0.50/hour.
I also spent 2 hours writing a short guide, which I listed as Free on Gumroad. That generated $217… yes, a free report on Gumroad earned almost double what my Medium account earned in 1/10th of the time
So I think we can all agree that the Medium partner program is not a reason to post on Medium.
But let’s not be so hasty, let’s look at the source of the traffic for that free report, almost $50 came from medium with conversion rates of :
Articles: 39% conversion & $39.25
Medium Profile: 60% conversion and $10
If I were to expand things out further and look at all Gumroad products since I switched back to Gumroad a few months ago, we would see a bigger picture that isn’t looking so good.
While Medium converts, it lags behind Gumroad and Substack (yay! go you) for conversions and volume. And trust me, when I say, I rarely promote my Gumroad guides here! (Ohh, go on then. Here are my free guides and books)
So, Does Medium Drive Traffic?
I’ve always been of the impression that Medium drove traffic, lots of sales in the past came directly from Medium. When I launched The Article Funnel Blueprint last year, the vast majority of the sales for the first 3 months came from Medium.
Back then, I considered it to be an incredibly high-quality source of traffic. People found your article, spent 2 or 3 minutes reading it, and then clicked through. I get the feeling that the quality of traffic has degraded over recent months.
Maybe people got so tired of AI slop that they stopped looking for quality articles.
Before I came to write this, I was convinced that Medium was an excellent source of Traffic and a poor source of Income, which was going to be the gist of this newsletter.
But now I am genuinely confused, so it’s time for a walk and to mull over what I really feel. (bet AI can’t do that!)
Post Walk Thoughts
Right I’m back, had a walk a coffee and a bacon and egg muffin from the local cafe.
Here is what I am now thinking about Medium.
Track everything for the next 6 weeks or so, every link to have a unique Url and Utm code so I can track the article and the links that were clicked (I’ll use Switchy for this)
After 6 weeks look at if Medium is worth continuing with, I’ll ensure that my new Substack Book is published during this period so I can compare how Medium performs with a low cost offer vs free.
Looking at my last book, Medium performed OK but once again I didn’t do too much promotion here on Substack:
It maybe that paid offers via Medium actually still perform well if tied into the content. The conversion rate isn’t much different to free products.
Tasks:
Track all links
Launch paid low cost off and and track conversions.
What Medium Could Do Next
I am sure that Medium would not even consider this but if they were to add some low impact advertising into the articles and share revenue with the authors, I for one would welcome it and also possibly advertise.
I think I might just create some images that look like old school adwords ads and add them to some of my articles and check out how they work.
So thats it for this newsletter, I am not sure you aren’t more confused now that before you started reading it, but at least it demonstrates why you should track everything then test your assumptions and data before making a decision.
Just a reminder, paid subscribers now get access to 2 communities a substack growth community and my systematic writer community, alsong with access to ALL my courses and books.