Sigh. I share your beliefs that something goes on behind the scenes to occasionally suppress distribution, especially with the subscriber email system. It's frustrating. I've only had one boosted story so I can't speak to any trends there. There is no doubt that Medium continually tweaks the payout metrics. I created a spreadsheet on which from time to time I analyze it and calculate MPP$/MPP Engagement. MPP Engagement is the sum of member reads, member clappers, member highlighters, member responders and member new follows. What I can't account for are the vagueries of the various bonuses/adjustments they apply for read %s. An example of what my sheet shows is that in December my MPP$/MPP Engagement was about 12.5 cents and as of the last time I updated the sheet, my February results for my not boosted stories was about 6.5 cents. On the other hand, when an old story gets just one read from a FOM, the payout much much higher. Yesterday, one such story earned over $2 from just one reader who also clapped, highlighted and responded.
All that being said, and as much as it bothers me that Medium seems to take much of its M.O. out of the MLM playbook, I've been here 3.5 years, seen it all, and I'm not going anywhere. I do not believe the intangible gains would be replicated anywhere else. Long ago I wrote a story, https://medium.com/illumination/is-medium-a-malignant-narcissist-1f3d55793bf6, in which I said:
"I do need money, but I do not expect to make money here as I see through the curtain — I came here to grow as a writer, which I have, and as a place to share my ideas as a stepping stone to a career change that may be primarily as a writer or may be primarily as thinker, and in the process I have also gained more spirituality in the last 30 days than I would have doing decades of 12-step program work, so, while on a macro level I am bothered by what I see through the curtain (30 editor limits and other obvious-to-the-aware [competition] dampening policies), I am personally thrilled with my Medium experience."
The intangibles include the friends I have made and the occasional comment that I get from strangers about how much something I wrote helped them, or made them think. Those comments are priceless to me.
Just the other day I was having a what's app convo with a dear friend I made on Medium over three years ago. I never would have met her otherwise as she lives in Europe. She gets very frustrated with her low earnings on poetry. I can't give you more context or share what she said to me in the 20 minutes of what's app voice recordings she sent me (she speaks, I reply in text), but I can share what I wrote back to her:
"Yes, the bait and switching that Medium engages in is annoying. Then every few months or so they suppress my views for a month. Very annoying. Energy. The whole relationship with Medium comes down to am I gaining or losing energy from the various sources and efforts and yes money is energy so is part of the equation."
That's my bottom line. I'm at a place with Medium where I'm net energy positive. I hope you are too.
