Medium Clearly Has Changed Its Algorithms

Medium definitely is not the place it used to be.

I don’t believe it offers the same opportunity it did to help writers break-out.

Some will still succeed here.

But they clearly regulate and cap how well articles can do within Medium.

My own stats have changed dramatically over the past few months.

I still get around the same views (I average between 650,000 and a million monthly views on Medium)— but far more of my traffic comes from outside sources due to my own platform, due to people who follow my work, and sometimes dumb luck.

But within Medium itself, it’s clear they are controlling and capping things much more.

Just because people clap for your stuff doesn’t mean it’s actually going into more newsfeeds.

There is far less trickle effect of traffic. It just seems to stop immediately after a day or 2, despite a large number of claps.

Medium keeps working harder and harder to control the platform — which I believe is good for them but ultimately bad for the writer.

Well, bad for the writer who truly wants to grow.

Medium offered me an amazing opportunity. I started on Medium in 2015 and it opened a huge door for me — allowing me to build a nearly 400,000 email list. I’m now working on my second major book and have gotten paid really well for both books.

But if I was starting now, I don’t think all of this would have happened for me. In fact, I know it wouldn’t.

Which begs the question — at this point, what is the true value of publishing on Medium?

They keep pushing harder and harder to get people to publish in their own program — where they have even more control. This platform has gone from democracy where the voice of the people mattered to a dictatorship, where the people at the top control it. The “top” stories now aren’t really the top stories — and haven’t been for a long time.

Medium’s own agenda gets louder and louder with each weekly email they send and change they make.

Do some articles randomly break out? Yes, I’ve seen it. I’ve done it for myself and other people. But it’s rarer and rarer and rarer. And the articles Medium focuses on now are the ones within their own program.

The writer has progressively less control over their own fate on this platform.

The “ground” has been leveled, which means that there is hardly any benefit to attempting to grow on this platform. There is almost no benefit, for example, in my having over 200K followers here because it seems as though Medium has changed something, such that those followers are limited in what they see. Moreover, the efficacy of “claps” is highly suspect to me now — as I will send a lot of traffic to medium, get a bunch of claps, and then a SUDDEN stop.

It has never been like this for years. This is all new in the past 3–6 months.

I’m still succeeding as a writer, but now it feels like I am in spite of Medium, not because of Medium. In fact, I’m now wondering if Medium is holding me back.

I recently talked to Seth Godin on the phone. He told me platforms come and go. Medium still offers a great deal — and it’s FREE to publish here so why not do it? It’s a beautiful platform — but for the writer seeking to break-out and go pro, I’m not sure Medium will help you do that anymore.

from Stories by Benjamin P. Hardy on Medium https://ift.tt/2OMKqJI