Do Medium Followers Really Matter? The Results
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Followers, Audience, Writers On Writing, Experiment, Writing

Five days ago, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I wanted to see what happens when you write an article, drop it in the open waters of Medium (meaning not in a publication), and not promote it on any Facebook groups — or anywhere else for that matter. I let it fend for itself; sink or swim.

In the months since Medium implemented the new MPP and algorithms, I had a theory I wanted to test. I thought this would be the best way to do it, and now, the results are in. Can you guess what happened?

The Audience Myth

The piece is a 1-minute read, with an average read-time of 33 seconds. Fourteen people clicked on it, but only nine scrolled to the bottom. Nine people, out of 1200 followers. That tells me that the percentage of us who actually pay attention to the emails we receive from Medium is very small, and those of us who actually really ‘follow’ the people we follow, is even smaller.

(screenshot from author’s stats)

(screenshot from author’s earnings)

We’re led to believe — mostly by our own naive assumption — that a larger following on Medium automatically means more eyes on our work; the potential of a bigger audience. Although this is true in theory, in practice, it’s a very different story.

The idea is that when you follow someone, you’re going to get an email or notification (unless you disable them) when they publish something new. But in the Medium world — and I know I can’t be the only one who feels this way — we get so many email notifications that it’s sometimes just easier to mass-delete them without even reading to see what it is.

If the vast majority of followers have adopted this habit, then the odds of having more eyes on your work has drastically diminished. I always believed a large following meant a big audience; in retrospect, I can see that it’s only an illusion. Smoke and mirrors.

We’re left with three options for getting reads;

You get featured on someone’s ‘Your Daily Read’ list, and they actually click and read. Curation; although we all know how unreliable, sporadic and random that can be. Self-promotion; the go-to and most “reliable” method, for most writers. Notice how I put “reliable” in quotation marks? That wasn’t a mistake…

How Effective Is Self-Promotion?

You work hard — sometimes for hours — pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into an article you’re extremely proud of. Now what?

You click on the little bird at the bottom of the screen and send it out into the big bad world of Twitter. You copy that link and proceed to drop it in every Facebook group’s daily share threads — if you’re into good karma, you click and read a few of the other pieces shared by writers, and you wait. And you wait, and you wait some more.

We all know from experience that we get more reads when we promote our work this way — but exactly how effective is it? From personal experience, I found that it depends on what you’re promoting. Here are some examples below to prove my point:

Here are four separate pieces of mine, all of which have been promoted on all of the Facebook groups.

(screenshots are taken from author’s stats)

Where Have All The Readers Gone is a story about Medium readership. Apparently, everyone loves stories about Medium, but this isn’t a big surprise.

Born Of A Virgin Mother was a story about myself — a vulnerable personal essay. it performed worse than my non-promoted experiment piece.

Spilling Tears is a poem. It has the same amount of reads as my experiment piece.

And the last piece, Somewhere In Ireland, is a piece of fiction — as you can see, it only received twelve reads, even though I probably promoted it as much as the Medium piece.

This tells me a few things;

People on Medium love reading stories about Medium — surprise, surprise!

— surprise, surprise! People aren’t big on personal essays unless the writer is someone like Shannon Ashley (no offence, I love Shannon!)

unless the writer is someone like Shannon Ashley (no offence, I love Shannon!) Unless you’re a known “Medium Poet” (and maybe even then?), your poetry will kind of slip through the cracks.

will kind of slip through the cracks. People may or may not have an unfounded belief that fiction doesn’t belong on Medium? I don’t know…it’s just a thought.

Is There A Verdict?

I think if I were to make an informed conclusion based on the facts above — black on white — I would have to say that if you’re on Medium just because you like to write and you want to share your words with others, regardless of the response, then poetry, fiction and personal essays are okay.

I would like to add that if you’re looking to make money with your work on Medium, you have to keep in mind what people seem to want to read: Medium articles, writing about writing, and trending topics. Oh, and I’ve also noticed that people like a good argument, so writing something that will get people riled up might also get you that cold hard cash!

As for me, despite the results of my experiment, I feel certain in my decision to keep writing what I want. I’ll write the Medium pieces, the writing about writing, but I’ll also keep pouring my heart and soul out into poetry, and allowing my creativity to shine in the form of fictional characters.