Medium Is Dead As A Doornail, Despite Having 1,000,000 Members

Tony Stubblebine recently came out and told everyone Medium has 1,000,000 paying members!

*Cue the confetti!*

That doesn’t change the fact that Medium is, unfortunately, dead as a doornail. I’ll get into why that is right now.

Off the top, did anybody see that Nick Wignall quit Medium recently?

This is a guy with 331,000 followers on Medium. He was getting boosted left and right under Tony’s regime and constantly showed up in the “Top Stories on Medium” list when I checked it once every few weeks in 2023.

Let me try to put this in the proper context..

This is like if the Pope decided to quit being catholic.

This is some truly seismic activity, and it’s crazy to see that Nick’s story about quitting Medium only has about 40 people who clapped for it in 3 days. This dude has 331,000 followers. It almost seems like Medium doesn’t want that story to be seen…

So, why did he leave?

I’ll quote him directly:

“Over the past 6–12 months, both partner program earnings and distribution have been dramatically worse for me with no improvement in sight.

It’s not worth it for me to publish here anymore.

I deleted all my old articles to force myself to completely shift my focus to new platforms — primarily YouTube where I’ve been publishing weekly for the past couple months.”

Wow.

Let me ask you a question.. if a guy who has as many followers as 1/3 the population of Montana doesn’t think it’s worth it to publish on Medium anymore, why would it be worth it for someone with 0-1,000 followers?

Short answer?

It’s not.

It’s just not.

Why am I writing this article? Well, because I don’t want you to waste your time. My audience is full of bloggers trying to find their way online.

Medium is definitely not it. It’s radioactive material. Don’t trust what’s being emanated from the leadership over there about how they’re “close to being profitable.”

The truth is, about 6-8 months ago, everybody’s Medium earnings got cut significantly.

A simple google search of “medium earnings declined” result in a list of articles from 6-8 months ago that all highlight this phenomenon.

I can attest to this from my own experience, too.

For some reason when September shifted to October, my Medium earnings got cut by 60% despite the fact that I actually got MORE views in October.

Medium might be closer to profitability because it seems they’re taking more earnings from their writers.

In the short term this is an incredible strategy. Diluting the earnings little by little might be comparable to putting a frog in heated water until it eventually boils. But what happens when people start catching on to what’s happening?

It took Nick Wignall a few months to realize what was happening. It took him another few months to lose hope in Medium entirely. And he didn’t just lose hope in Medium right now—he lost hope in Medium for the future.

He quit. He deleted his articles. He burned the ships.

I feel like all Tony and company have done is resort to cheap tactics to increase earnings in the short term no matter the long-term cost.

For one, Medium stopped giving people access to 3 free articles every month and put a hard paywall on every locked story. That’s fine. That’s their choice.

This no doubt led to a lot more paying members, but the problem is it’s a bandaid tactic covering up the real problem.

Which is, Medium seems to be rotten at the core. It’s just a matter of time before more and more people realize that.

When will the tipping point be reached where so many quality authors leave that they have nobody left to provide membership-worthy content?

For now Medium has a LOT of articles published in the last decade that likely drive a lot of traffic to Medium. What happens when newer non-Medium articles start ranking higher in search? What happens when more and more authors stop publishing on Medium? What happens when earnings continue to dry up for bloggers as Medium gets more and more desperate to “reach profitability?”

They will take more, and more, and more money from writers. They’ve done it before, and I think they will do it again.

Despite their new $50 “Friends of Medium” tier, which was supposed to increase Medium earnings for writers, revenue for many writers is actually decreasing.

How weird!

It’s almost like Medium’s sneaking out the back door with the bag while everybody’s waiting in the lobby for their withdrawals.

I was reading a book the other day that said something like “people will always do what they are incentivized to do.”

It seems writers are no longer truly incentivized to stay on Medium. The monetary benefit of writing there shrinks more and more with every passing day. People WILL leave, and people ARE leaving already.

You know how else I know Medium is rotten? Despite an increase in paying members, there has not been any notable increase in average writer earnings the last few months.

How weird!

It’s funny how Tony’s announcements are always about how many paying subscribers Medium has. I used to remember a time when Medium’s announcements were all about how much money writers were making every month with the partner program.

It’s almost like they don’t care about how much money writers are making or something.

Honestly, I’m a bit conflicted about dancing on Medium’s grave, here. On one hand it feels vindicating to see an incredible writer who backed Medium wholeheartedly the last few years leave because he came to the same conclusion I did.

But on the other hand it’s sad for me to see a platform I once loved on life support.

It might look like Medium has “never been better!” but in reality they’re resorting to cheap tactics to drive short-term revenue that WILL, most likely, eventually kill the platform.

And if none of that convinces you that Medium’s rotten, just hear me out with one last thing..

Nick Wignall has over 50,000 email subscribers to his newsletter. He has probably helped millions of people think differently about their mental health and impacted countless families in the process for the better. This is truly one of the greatest thinkers on the internet in the mental health space. People adore this guy. If there is a “Good Place,” he’s definitely going there based on the sheer impact he’s had on millions of people on planet earth.

And Medium doesn’t want him.

Medium is a platform that makes people like him run for the hills.

Wouldn’t a truly great blogging platform attract the greatest thinkers on planet earth to write there? Wouldn’t a healthy blogging platform create a space for a writer like that to thrive rather than die?

I could mention all the great writers and publications that have left Medium in the last 3 years, but I won’t. Nick is just another incredible writer in a long list of people who have left Medium because it wasn’t worth it anymore.

If I had it my way, Medium would still be one of the best blogging platforms on the internet. But it’s basically Logan Roy from the early episodes of Succession Season 4.

It looks like it’s at the top of its game, but it’s about to die of a heart attack while fishing a cell phone out of the toilet.

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