Why The Medium Partner Program is a Total Sham!
By: Daniel Imbellino
Tags: Monetizing On Medium, Medium, Medium Partner Program, Journalism, Medium Greed

Medium’s Partner Program touts the ability to earn from your writing endeavors by creating locked exclusive stories for the platform’s premium paying members (although regular users still get 3 exclusive stories a month). At first thought, it seems like it might possibly be a viable way for the creative minds of Medium to effectively earn from their journalistic efforts on the web. But after joining the program myself, and locking just a single post, it quickly became obvious the platform has picked winners and losers, and any efforts I put into this program would prove to be totally useless.

Medium Picks Winners and Losers:

For starters, earlier last year I received an email from Medium stating I had been accepted into the partner program and I was welcome to start writing. Given my long and grueling work schedule with managing media across the web, it wasn’t until recently that I got the chance to give it a shot. But, it didn’t take long for me to figure out the program literally sets you up for failure before you ever got started.

So, here’s the problem, while Medium may allow you to join the program and lock your posts to earn from the engagement of premium members, by default they don’t allow you to lock posts in publications; unless you’re a major media outlet, then the game changes entirely.

In fact, all major media outlets are instantly handed a free pass to monetize the content in their publications, while independent journalists are given one lame excuse after another.

Meanwhile, Medium not only plays favorites with big media in terms of monetization, they also give them the bulk of visibility on the platform, effectively throwing independent journalists content out with the trash.

Here’s a recent snapshot I took of Medium’s homepage:

Now, every time I enter Medium and view the home page, I’m met with pieces from major media outlets. Any other promoted stories are hand chosen by Medium. Notice the posts put front and center in the image above, one is from the Washington Post, the other from The Atlantic.

To put it simply, it doesn’t matter how many followers you have on Medium anymore, the platform now plays dictator with the content and ideas that traverse its platform. If you’re not one of the chosen few, then not only does all your content get yanked from your followers feeds, it doesn’t get indexed either. Medium has actually de-indexed both of my publications entirely. You cannot find a single article by searching for them, they will not show up (which I’ll show examples of in just a moment here).

Things get even stickier after reading their FAQ’s for their partner program in which they state, “A select group of Medium publications have been invited to participate in the Partner Program to start. This means that these publications will be able to lock posts and receive payment for engagement on those posts.”

Translated to English, “Unless you’re The Atlantic or The New Yorker, we’re going to throw your content in the trash, ensuring it never gets indexed, and blow snot all over your publications.”

So, Medium states the partner program is currently only available to a select group of publications (been told this for 2 years now), and on an invite-only basis. Given the fact the bulk of my content and audience on Medium are tied to my publications, this pretty much throws all my efforts of earning from locked posts right out with the trash. And again, I’m here to promote media, specifically by publications tied to that media, and not myself.

Medium’s Gamed Search Engine:

Regardless of the keywords you search for, the results are almost always the same, outdated and irrelevant content.

For example, after publishing an article titled “Is YouTube a Real Job? Debunking The Myths!” Wondering why it was getting so very little traffic, I decided to do a quick search, only to find that my content was nowhere to be found on the Medium platform.

Given my story was about YouTube, I decided to do a search for those keywords specifically, and what I found was the exact same stories with every search, and all of them were from months or years prior.

Take a look at the images below. The first article on the search results page was from back on April the 9th of last year. Scrolling down I found others from back in May, March, and even November of 2016, and all were towards the top of the list. While I get that showing users content that is the most relevant makes sense, there was almost nothing in the list that was current at all, and the most of the information they contained had lost relevance months or years ago.

Low and behold, doing that quick search for “YouTube” pulled up posts as far back as 2013, and yet my post from just days ago was nowhere to be found at all. It’s just more proof this platform picks winners and losers, deciding who will get visibility, and who will not.

Notice, one of the posts above is about a YouTube redesign from back in 2016, and here its now 2018. Obviously that article has no relevant information to share with users at all.

At this point, its really starting to look like there’s some pretty shady stuff going on with Medium. Its a shame too, because this has always been a platform I’ve loved, and its unfortunate the platform would stoop so low as to create an unfair playing ground for the creative minds who devote their time and energy here. Here they tell you you’re accepted into their partner program, yet they put stipulations in place that make any efforts to make it work impossible.

Given Medium is so good at building walls around its creators, maybe Trump should enlist their help to build his.

Conclusion:

I find it totally unacceptable that Medium would open the doors to monetization through locked posts, only to backtrack and tell writers that only those they choose (mainly big media outlets) will benefit from its use. Its also a kick in the face for writers who’ve already long established their publications on the platform, yet they’re told that despite being accepted into the program, their publications cannot participate. There’s no level playing field for creators here is the problem.

Its very contradictory to sit here and tell people they’re welcome to participate in this program, then Medium puts up brick walls everywhere. That being said, I have zero intentions on ever monetizing my content with Medium, and will be sure to sap up as much of their resources as possible while ensuring they get nothing in return. A greedy platform indeed!

However, this doesn’t mean that Medium is a worthless platform for creators, in fact far from it. I’ve honestly found Medium to be an invaluable resource for helping my media brands across the web to grow and it provides me with the means to better interact with those brands audiences. So far, I’ve set up publications for 2 of my media outlets on the web, and I’ve honestly started doing the bulk of my publishing here because Medium makes the process so simple.

The point here, Medium is great for web publishing, but not so great if you’re planning to actually earn anything here. One shouldn’t have high expectations with the Medium partner program at all given the circumstances. As for my locked post? I’ve since unlocked it, and my reasoning is simple; I don’t want my content being hidden from the view of my publications audiences, and I really didn’t like the fact that no one could share my posts elsewhere on the web.

As for Medium’s outdated search results, they really should rethink how they serve the content they return to users when a search is made. Serving the most engaged content doesn’t make sense if that content is years old and portrays information that’s no longer relevant for anything today.

Written and published by Daniel Imbellino — Co-Founder of Strategic Social Networking and pctechauthority.com. Many thanks for reading. Be sure to check out Strategic Social Networking Community on Google+ to connect with tens of thousands of IT professionals and learn effective strategies to grow your social presence online. You’re also welcome to follow Strategic’s brand page on G+ for the latest social media and IT industry news. You’re also welcome to connect with me on Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DanielImbellino

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