Compared to my previous four years with Medium MPP program, 2025 was a rollercoaster.
The drama started after Donald Trump was elected president for the second time.
On November 5, 2024, I thought, “Now well-meaning Americans will want to hear about building a new democracy.”
So I started writing articles directly talking about Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG), the democracy that is destined to replace western democracy, especially the American version. I published every day something about the TDG.
The result: I immediately lost 75% of my Medium traction. Views went down; reads went down; claps went down; comments went down. Average revenue went from $1.25 per article to $0.25. This was a strong signal that Medium readers did not want any alternative democracy. Clearly.
In my mind, I had an idea of building a TDG wiki. These articles could be turned into Wiki articles. So I continued with this strategy of short direct articles until late January. But Medium traction never picked up.
And in January my revenue went from $0.25 per article to $0.05. I can’t claim this was because of something I was doing: other writers were complaining about a big drop in Medium earnings. I believe there was a Medium glitch for reasons I can only speculate on.
In late January, I changed my strategy back to articles with indirect TDG teaching. I could see the traction improving. I was starting to have articles reaching the $1.00 range again.
Then on March 6, I published:
The Economic Elephant in the Room
This article earned me $150.15!
Not only that, it stayed active on the feed for much longer than usual. It was also my highest earner in April, May, June, and July. Only in August did “Elephant” go stale.
I did not get any indication that it was boosted, curated, featured, or recommended. However, the vast disparity between this article and all my other articles suggests that there was some human intervention to give it more exposure in the feeds. More exposure = more clicks!
Despite reaching 2.1k reads, Elephant only got 818 claps, which calculates to one-third clap per reader. And only 13 comments. This article’s engagement stats suggested its clicking readers did not like it! So, why did the algorithms keep putting it up on the feeds? This seems to be another sign that there was some human intervention overriding the algo.
While I am thankful this article got this traction and introduced the TDG to another 1000 Medium readers, there were other articles I would have preferred to have got this exposure. Why this article was selected is a mystery to me.
One thing that worked well for this article was the photo. It was an awesome photo, and it fit with the title. As an experiment, I ran the same photo in another article. This time, the elephant photo only found $0.31 in earnings. So it wasn’t the photo.
My second-best earner
In 2022, I took a swipe at two of Medium’s resident doomposters. Using a proportion calculation, I estimated that these two writers were earning at least $100 per article, warning us of the upcoming oligarchy — again and again and again. That is why they wrote every day.
Disparaging Umair & Jessica
This article earned me $67.19.
I got a thumbs up from Medium readers who believed these two writers were cashing in on our fears. I got thumbs down from fans of these two writers who thought I was cashing in on their popularity and wisdom. So much controversy! It’s not hard to understand why this article did so well, organically speaking. The Medium algos determined this article as something both sides wanted to read, so it got a lot of exposure.
My second-best earner in 2025
This article earned me $4.55. Given the success of Elephant, I really can’t call this article “viral” for 2025.
USA’s SA Troops
But take a closer look at this article. It is about how the USA has created its own version of the SA troopers of Nazi Germany. This article is about bashing the current system. There’s no talk about any new democracy.
But 90% of my Medium writing is about building the TDG. This bashing article trampled all my other building articles except Elephant, which had a big human intervention.
In my opinion, the writers on Medium are irrelevant. It is the readers who define what is hot and what is not. Their choices say something about our collective psyche. Even the political left prefer bashing over building. Building a new democracy is not on the radar anywhere on the political spectrum. Unfortunately.
What does this say about us?
Settling Down
I did a little statistical analysis. I took 12 articles before November 4, 2024 and 12 articles circa October 2025. In terms of traction (views and reads), the two time periods are similar. So I’m kind of back to where I was before the rollercoaster started.
But I am now earning about $0.40 per article, which is about 30% of my 2024 revenue.
I suspect Medium reduced revenues of all writers. And I’m OK with that. I’ve had trouble understanding how Medium could afford to pay this bottom writer four or five times his subscription fees. I would sooner see Medium continue than shut the doors because the light bill was not paid.
I don’t have great expectations for 2026. Most political writers on Medium believe that they can influence the Democratic Party to govern for the people rather than for the donor class. So these writers see no need to investigate new ways. It seems they need to go through another phase of Democratic Party rule to figure this out.
I shall plod on.
Published on Medium 2026
My Political Predictions for 2026
Canceling the Canadian Carbon Tax
