Hi Everyone!
Before we get started, somewhat ironically, I’ve also put this article up on Medium. You can check it out here if you prefer reading on Medium’s platform.
Nope, you didn’t misread the title of this post! I managed to double my Medium reads and views whilst also someone halving the income generated from them.
I’m not 100% certain as to what caused this, but I wanted to explore some options in this post. I also wanted to be open and clear with the income my reads generate, as it’s often much less than people would expect. So, lets jump into how I doubled my Medium reads… but halved the income?
Common Belief
Okay, so the common belief is:
Double your reads = double your income
That certainly makes intuitive sense, at least to me. However, that wasn’t the case.
What what caused this? Is there a difference between new readers and following readers? Lets jump in and hopefully, I can shed some light on this situation.
The Doubling
So, at the end of 2023. My total stats for December were 553 views, 280 reads. This had been a very gradual increase over previous months as I had been slowly producing content.
I also started my longer plan to couple my personal blog, this site, and Medium together. An ethical “double-dipping” if you will as I know some people will never find my actual website and vice-versa.
Okay, so now we have the figures for December, lets take a look at January.
At the start of 2024. My total stats for January were 944 views, 438 reads. Which is just under a doubling of my December figures:
The Halving
My lower views for December 2023 earned me a total of… $0.78:
Not a lot I know, but I have plans to increase this in future. As January was going to be the month for me, or so I thought!
However, this is where the anomaly shows up! The January 2024 earnings after this doubling in reads was just $0.40!
I was super confused when I saw this figure come through. I thought maybe some of the views or reads weren’t counted or that some of the traffic was classed as illegitimate which it shouldn’t be.
I tried looking for reasons in a panic, but nothing was coming to me.
At this point, I genuinely did just contemplate leaving Medium for a while to pursue other avenues of tech writing. It was very frustrating to watch my hard work pay off in terms of reads, but not have that translate into any financial improvement.
Now don’t get me wrong, when I say “financial improvement”, I’m not expecting the $1 or so earned from Medium to make a difference to my life. Not yet at least. But to see the revenue generated not go up, and instead go down was very disheartening.
Mystery
I’ve still no clue why this happened. Perhaps it was the Ad revenue drop for the Medium platform in 2024, perhaps Medium has different pay-out rates for each month. If you have anymore information on this, please let me know.
Another likely reason for this is the time people spent reading my articles. Perhaps they didn’t spend as long reading so the cut I get is smaller?
Conclusion
Well, that’s all folks. I hope to have an answer to this one day, maybe February will be a more prosperous month. Lets see together!
Enjoy!🎉
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