I sense the boost program has changed from looking to promote *good stories* on all sorts of things, to looking to promote stories about the individual writers themselves. I wonder if your stories are so packed with science they lack your own personal experience? Might not. Just guessing though.
I've heard recently that it's writers' personal experiences that the boosters seem to want at the moment. Either way, there's plenty of me in my recent stories and they've not been boosted either, so I may not be adding anything useful. But I did have a short stint where a few good stories that contained enough about me were boosted. I was told by publication owners to add more about me to make them boostable. That advice was like gold.
I noted months ago, that the ones I sent to Illumination Curated weren't looked at by a nominator so I stopped submitting there, because it was pointless submitting my best work to a boost publication if nominators don't read what's submitted.
However, in hindsight, those stories may not have contained enough about me, so might not have made the grade anyway. But nominators won't know unless they read what is submitted. Nominators skipping what's in their own publications is a problem across all boost publications. But I get it - Illumination is huge. Nonetheless, it's frustrating for hard-working writers. And IC is supposed to carry the cream of the crop.
At least as a nominator you have access to the guidelines, and can nominate your own stories if you want to. That's something the rest of us can only dream of.
It would be great if we could earn big money again. Preferably without having to rely on being noticed by the privileged few who are involved in the boost program!
There's definitely something going on. June has been a very quiet month for me as well. Stories that I put my heart and soul in barely getting any views. I haven't been on medium for very long but from what I can gather this happens every now and then and then things recover again. So for now, I'm sticking with it and just hope July will be better again .
Yeah I’m starting to lose my mojo when it comes to medium. I’m still going to write on there but I’m also not so enthusiastic about it. There is nothing special about it anymore and income is literally all over the place.
Thank you Dr. Mehmet fro these updates. We also started a magazine on Substack for Dancing Elephants Press. I try to write as well for variety of platforms I mostly stopped Newsbreak because I was not getting views or distribution but will try again to write more there as well.
Thank you so much for writing this Dr. Yildiz, your detail and referencing are as amazing as your insight. @VeronicaLlorcaSmith stated just the other day “X is my ex, LinkedIn is LinkedOut, Medium is Medium, Substack is my home”
I may drop my FoM account as well, I can subscribe to you and @KristinaGod here for that. I am concerned that being an editor at IIP nullifies my shares anyway. Not much point paying for nothing.
Having said that ..
Medium is reader-centric, if you are building a following, they are all about finding readers. I will stay on Medium and utilize them as a tool in my business plan. You can’t go wrong with $5 a month for access to a million avid readers and the opportunity to show your work to them.
Medium has been broken for writers since at least October 2023. Coach Tony has all but admitted, too, that some accounts get throttled via an obfuscated algorithm that Medium doesn't share with its writers. I don't have the comment he posted about this handy, but it's out there. He calls throttled accounts a punishment of "engagement hacking," but that can mean almost anything.
The flood of AI articles doesn't help. Medium, like other writing platforms, has tried to address this, but so far it has largely failed.
The cynic in me wrote an article about this in November. Some of the arguments may now be dated, and perhaps by now even the headline, but I do believe that everything that has happened around writer payments amounts to a pay cut. Especially ending the referral program. That was a blatant removal of income from writers.
Thanks for all you do. I think one option is to just weather the storm. CEOs come and go. Hopefully Medium will remain, but it's always smart to diversify like you're doing now.
I sense the boost program has changed from looking to promote *good stories* on all sorts of things, to looking to promote stories about the individual writers themselves. I wonder if your stories are so packed with science they lack your own personal experience? Might not. Just guessing though.
I've heard recently that it's writers' personal experiences that the boosters seem to want at the moment. Either way, there's plenty of me in my recent stories and they've not been boosted either, so I may not be adding anything useful. But I did have a short stint where a few good stories that contained enough about me were boosted. I was told by publication owners to add more about me to make them boostable. That advice was like gold.
I noted months ago, that the ones I sent to Illumination Curated weren't looked at by a nominator so I stopped submitting there, because it was pointless submitting my best work to a boost publication if nominators don't read what's submitted.
However, in hindsight, those stories may not have contained enough about me, so might not have made the grade anyway. But nominators won't know unless they read what is submitted. Nominators skipping what's in their own publications is a problem across all boost publications. But I get it - Illumination is huge. Nonetheless, it's frustrating for hard-working writers. And IC is supposed to carry the cream of the crop.
At least as a nominator you have access to the guidelines, and can nominate your own stories if you want to. That's something the rest of us can only dream of.
It would be great if we could earn big money again. Preferably without having to rely on being noticed by the privileged few who are involved in the boost program!
There's definitely something going on. June has been a very quiet month for me as well. Stories that I put my heart and soul in barely getting any views. I haven't been on medium for very long but from what I can gather this happens every now and then and then things recover again. So for now, I'm sticking with it and just hope July will be better again .
Yeah I’m starting to lose my mojo when it comes to medium. I’m still going to write on there but I’m also not so enthusiastic about it. There is nothing special about it anymore and income is literally all over the place.
Thank you Dr. Mehmet fro these updates. We also started a magazine on Substack for Dancing Elephants Press. I try to write as well for variety of platforms I mostly stopped Newsbreak because I was not getting views or distribution but will try again to write more there as well.
Thank you so much for writing this Dr. Yildiz, your detail and referencing are as amazing as your insight. @VeronicaLlorcaSmith stated just the other day “X is my ex, LinkedIn is LinkedOut, Medium is Medium, Substack is my home”
I may drop my FoM account as well, I can subscribe to you and @KristinaGod here for that. I am concerned that being an editor at IIP nullifies my shares anyway. Not much point paying for nothing.
Having said that ..
Medium is reader-centric, if you are building a following, they are all about finding readers. I will stay on Medium and utilize them as a tool in my business plan. You can’t go wrong with $5 a month for access to a million avid readers and the opportunity to show your work to them.
Medium has been broken for writers since at least October 2023. Coach Tony has all but admitted, too, that some accounts get throttled via an obfuscated algorithm that Medium doesn't share with its writers. I don't have the comment he posted about this handy, but it's out there. He calls throttled accounts a punishment of "engagement hacking," but that can mean almost anything.
The flood of AI articles doesn't help. Medium, like other writing platforms, has tried to address this, but so far it has largely failed.
The cynic in me wrote an article about this in November. Some of the arguments may now be dated, and perhaps by now even the headline, but I do believe that everything that has happened around writer payments amounts to a pay cut. Especially ending the referral program. That was a blatant removal of income from writers.
https://medium.com/bouncin-and-behavin-blogs/is-medium-on-the-verge-of-shutting-down-c0816aa10725
Thanks for all you do. I think one option is to just weather the storm. CEOs come and go. Hopefully Medium will remain, but it's always smart to diversify like you're doing now.