If you have reached this epilogue, I must commend you for staying with and finishing this book. It was a long read! I appreciate that!
You have probably surmised that I have tried various approaches to promote “Tiered Democratic Governance” to the Medium audience. I have tried “off politics” discussion to build rapport and readership. I have tried uncommon political analysis to show my out-of-the-box thinking. I have often taken the gentle approach to teaching the TDG. Yet I have also tried more blunt explanations. I have tried humor and satire. I have tried the post-something-every-day strategy. And I did put up three TDG novels. Many different ways were tried to promote the TDG, but nothing clicked.
As well, I made 5700 comments on other articles and responses to my articles. Most of these comments were TDG related. I’m confident that I have engaged at least 2000 political thinkers on Medium about the TDG. Two thousand is a pretty good focus group.
So where did the TDG move to with all this effort?
Followers
My readership did slowly increase during the 34 months I’ve been on Medium. I’m up to 1,000 followers, but the more popular Medium writers have 10,000+.
The turnover in Medium contributors is quite high. Many people try Medium for a short time and leave. I estimate 800 of my 1000 followers are no longer active on Medium. I believe my articles do not show up that much on the feeds of those other 200 followers. The Medium algorithms have to set priorities to keep readers engaged. Because I am not writing about popular topics, the algorithms are probably right to give my articles a lower exposure.
Viral Articles
In my Medium feed I often find articles that have become popular. These articles get several thousand reads.
Well, I have had no viral articles. My TDG Essay (#17) is my best performer with 1,300 reads. But I am often cross posting that article in my many comments. In other words, whatever popularity this article earned came from my efforts and not from the algorithms deciding this was a worthy article for Medium readers.
Increased Readership
My first 10 articles in the Spring of 2019 found an average of 41 reads per article. My last 10 articles, in Winter 2022, had an average of 22 reads. Not much progress there—after three years of promotion.
Medium Payment
Medium does pay its writers—if they sign on to its royalty program. I did not sign on to this program as I didn’t want to have my participation influenced by the hope of a small paycheck. But maybe not getting a royalty could be a reason for the Medium algorithms to ignore me. So, I signed on in September 2021. My best month was C$21.78. That comes to about $0.19 per hour of Medium effort.
Website Referrals
According to my website stats, I did get about 20 visitors from Medium to my website in my first year on Medium. But maybe five each from Years 2 and 3.
Book Sales
I sold about 20 TDG books while I was on Medium. But I really can’t pin any sales to Medium contributors.
TDG Cheerleaders
I would estimate that 50 Medium contributors got back to me about the TDG being a worthy idea. But not worthy enough for them to take it to the next step. Some of them commented that human nature was too low for something like the TDG to work. Hence there was no point in working toward this goal.
TDG Workers
This is my ultimate goal: people putting together a local TDG in their neighborhood. If I had engaged 2,000 people and 1% of them became TDG builders, I would call this result an immense victory! But so far, not one builder.
By All Metrics, Failure
Maybe a few of my 2,000 engagements might see things differently in a few years. Democracy is not likely to improve itself: maybe some of my engagements will remember me and the TDG. The TDG should not be hard to find in the Medium archives.
In the meantime, I did write 245 TDG articles for Medium! I have turned 133 of them into this compilation. With this document, I see a different kind of marketing tool that I can use. Maybe this is the reason for me being on Medium. We shall soon see.
Thanks again for reading.
Thanks to Medium
My experience on Medium is probably typical of 85% of its contributors. We are not getting an adequate return on our time investment: neither the Medium royalty nor the exposure comes close to the effort expended.
We can’t blame Medium. Writing is one of those creative professions where the supply of writers is greater than the demand for well-written works. While we can continue to hone our skills and build a following on Medium, most of us are never going to make a living writing.
When I inspect the content from the more successful writers on Medium, my main topic—my alternative democracy—is just something world citizens are not interested in. I had already proven this with other internet forums, and my Medium result is just continuation of that observation.
As a reader, I have enjoyed my time on Medium. There have been many entertaining and educational reads. Medium is a good place to kill time—in a productive way. I probably would have left Medium two years ago without the reading experience.
As a writer, I am thankful for Medium and those other internet forums for letting my ideas to become available for the public to inspect. While results have not been to my satisfaction—and the development of the TDG has been delayed—my ideas have still been released to the world. There still is a great deal of personal satisfaction with that release.
I hope Medium finds the business matrix to make a profit, engage readers, and provide useful dialogue and discussion. Even a future TDG will find benefit from such a forum as average citizens frame interesting angles, which should filter toward the decision-making institutions of the TDG.
Your TDG Future
I am looking for “early TDG builders.” The fact that you have come to this point is a good sign that you are thinking about this task. Only 10 hours a month. Work with your neighbors on writing your local TDG constitution. See where your TDG goes.
The world has everything to gain by your small contribution to this new democracy.
Addendum 2024
The TDG-Medium Papers is a compilation of 133 of my articles on Medium. It has been available for sale on Amazon. It was being marketed differently than my other four TDG books.
It has sold only one e-book, with that one sale coming from a Medium follower. That person also wrote a "four-star" review of this book.
Obviously, this marketing did not work. But it was an experiment with trying. The e-book is still available on Amazon, but I think TDG's Blog is a better way to read my TDG articles.
Published on Medium 2022
Give Your Readers a Different Kind of Article
The End of a Medium Experiment
