Why I Have Cancelled My Medium Membership and Concentrate on Substack
After six months I find that I am still invisible to Medium
With the drastic decline of Medium, which began in November 2024, I found that my visibility on Medium was almost non-existent. Six months ago, I decided to start publishing my newsletter on Substack and occasionally sharing the same articles on Medium.
As readers of my newsletter know, I mainly write about politics and social issues, which are extremely important to me. As our democracy is now in serious danger of being destroyed by a fascist wannabe dictator, I feel an urgency to inform people that we may soon lose our rights and freedoms.
My Medium statistics revealed that my posts were receiving very few views and even fewer reads. I was earning only a few cents per article. In early May, I cancelled my Medium Partnership Program membership, realizing it was a waste of time and money. But to my surprise, Medium charged me my membership fee in June, even though I had cancelled it. I decided to give Medium one last chance and remain on the platform to see if my stats improved.
During the first two weeks of June, I published four articles, which I had also posted on Substack. For the articles I posted on Medium, I had a total of 50 views, while on Substack, I had 1583 views. I earned 36 cents for my articles on Medium. My posts on my Substack newsletter are free, so I naturally did not earn any money; however, I did receive one paid subscription, for which I am thankful.
For the first two weeks of June, on Medium, I got 60 new email subscribers and 14 new followers. Interestingly enough, all of the new Subscribers and all but 2 new followers were from India. Apparently, people from India are not interested in American politics, and I can’t say I blame them.
There are a couple of people I subscribe to on Medium who write about politics and publish a couple of times a day. I have noticed that their articles were not widely distributed, and the ones I read appeared to have had no interaction. This would mean they also would not have made any money from their articles. I honestly don’t know why they continue to publish on Medium if no one reads or even sees their work.
From my observations, those articles that seem to get the most attention are technology articles, and those articles geared to new writers on Medium wishing to make money by writing online. I feel that either Medium readers are not interested in the possibility that America is becoming an authoritarian state, or Medium chooses not to allow people to see such articles. Regardless, I feel that continuing to publish on Medium is a waste of money and a waste of my time.
I feel a little sad that I may be abandoning the few people left on Medium, whom I have followed and supported in the past, but hopefully, I will see them here on Substack. I may not earn much money on Substack, but at least here I am not invisible.
Please check out my YouTube Channel, Stephen Sovie’s World
I wrote on Medium for a year, and at first it seemed full of promise, but declined fairly rapidly. I do miss the ability to like specific comments or sections of the articles, but it still was not worth it after awhile.
Being seen is important.
No money no problem, not being seen is painfully unacceptable.