Many of us like musing about how Medium works. Sort of like political fortune telling or armchair quarterbacking. We watchers can’t resist telling the doers what they should do.
I have divided Medium writers into quartiles.
I am in the bottom quartile. I am a bottom writer. I get about 100 to 200 claps per my better articles. After five years on Medium, I have maybe three people reading my stuff on a consistent basis, and maybe another 30 that come around from time to time. Until I change my main topic about an alternative democracy that people have to build for themselves, I should expect to stay as a bottom writer. And that is that!
Many of the writers I follow have 300 to 800 claps per article. They seem to have a reasonably loyal readership. Good stuff, but this second-lowest quartile is not making minimum wage for their work.
Then there are the writers consistently getting 1000+ claps. Maybe these writers are making minimum wage. Yet, I bet their mothers wish they would go back to a real job, instead of belonging to the second-highest Medium quartile. Not exactly a happy climb-the-ladder-of- success story.
The first three quartiles are not true statistical quartiles. The first quartile, I estimate, constitutes 60% of Medium writers. The second 30%. The third 9%.
This leaves 1% of Medium writers making a lower middle class living. Some of these writers are good and deserve their mediocre financial recognition. And some are, in my humble opinion, writing fluff, which says more about their audience than about them.
No, I won’t be changing my main topic to get more popular on Medium. Abandoning alternative-democracy-related articles to move into the second-lowest quartile is not an acceptable tradeoff for me. It is better to be a bottom writer with a world-saving mission than be a more popular writer to earn a few hundred dollars a month.
Despite my bottom writer status and unlikelihood for improvement, Medium still seems to be the best outlet for me and the TDG.
To conclude, I am appreciative that Medium allows my ideas to get “out there.” Believe it or not, Medium has been a psychological release for me — if nothing else. In pre-internet days, my ideas would still be mostly in my head. And that would hurt my head.
Published on Medium 2024
Toastmasters is for Self-Improvement
