I wanted to close the year with a big bang end of December 22 on Medium, but things didn’t turn out that way.
I began to write professionally on Medium in August 2021. As you can see from my audience stats and monthly growth, it’s only gone up and up ever since.
Things really started picking up in July 2022 when several of my stories went viral.
I went from 196 followers in August 2021 to over 4000 in April 22
The more I wrote, the better the quality, readability, and depth of my stories became. Hundreds of followers and fans thanked me daily for my efforts and advice on living a healthy life.
I also wrote a lot about my unusual and somewhat crazy life history and the lessons I’ve learned.
To make a long story short – people love my articles because I don’t hold back and tell the truth.
However, since December 22, things started to slow and go downhill. While my followers increased by the day, my views and reads saw a 50% decline.
Of course, the same applies to my earnings. And it’s not only me — hundreds of writing colleagues were complaining and seeing the same pattern.
Most of them, including me, were multiple “Top Writers” on Medium, making this trend incomprehensible.
Here’s what’s happened to me on Medium
From July 2022, my views, read, earnings and reader comments skyrocketed. My average monthly views were close to 80.000, and 20.000 plus reads.
From November 2022, when Medium announced widespread changes to the platform that would benefit all writers and boost our reads, the opposite happened for many other bloggers and me.
My views and reads were cut in half
To be clear: My stories, formatting, layout, photos, and embedded videos improved daily. My fans and mentors told me that. It was, therefore, not a question of my content quality. Something else was going on, and none of us understood what.
My only logical answer is that the new algorithm system is locking and not distributing many prolific writers’ stories. But, of course, I have no evidence — it’s only a guess.
However, as many other top writers are experiencing the same, it looks like a good guess!
Here is what another top writer thinks:
If Jessica Wildfire Feels Unappreciated by Medium, What Hope Do the Rest of Us Have?
My best stories used to receive between 10K to 20K reads. Now, I’m lucky to get 200!
I only post beneficial health and life improvement stories for which readers thank me.
I poured my heart and soul into Medium, and I know I was muted for no reason other than writing the truth.
My email subscribers were the only people who saw and read my stories.
I sent direct messages to several followers, and they all said the same:
“I am NOT seeing your stories in my feed, Rob.”
Therefore my wish and ask was:
“Will the real and old Medium please stand up and tells us what’s going on?
Rob Hourmont
Final Thoughts & The Result
I was highly grateful for Medium. It was a platform that helped me, and others improve their work and reach a substantial target audience.
But that is no more. I wrote an open letter on Twitter asking Medium.com and their CEO to explain why we are being muted or blocked, in which I tagged the Medium CEO. When I woke up the next day, I saw the CEO had blocked me on Twitter.
As you can imagine, my reads dropped to almost zero from then on. I then decided to leave Medium and will never write on that platform again – the same goes for multiple other top writers who have done the same.
The Medium management changed, and detrimental decisions and possible programming errors were made. It’s a shame for Medium. If they carry on this way, they will lose most of their great writers and many paying members with a likely slow death.
I’m very happy to be back on NewsBreak, which I find a far more user-friendly and open platform for both readers and writers.
Rob
