I joined a year ago and I have renewed for one more year. One of the first things I noticed is that at least half of “member since _____” descriptors who are less than a year old. People move in, try things out, find Medium lacking, and move on.

Another thing I noticed, as I started acquiring followers, was how few reads my articles got in relation to the followers. For example, I have 500 followers and my articles might get 20 reads. Half my followers have probably disappeared, but I’m pretty sure the Medium algorithms have not ranked me too high in the feeds. But again, I am not publishing every day AND I’m not cross-promoting on other social media.

A few months after I joined, a fellow contributor rewrote one my articles to show me how much better it could have been constructed. She did improve it considerably, and I suspect she was looking for a ghost-writer gig. But this same article (of my lower quality style) had gone through several other internet forums and generated consider discussion. And “my style” was deemed worthy enough to be curated in Medium. I just did not believe that better articles was going to help my cause here.

It’s best to use Medium as a hobby; maybe something more positive will happen. I sure enjoy reading here.

BTW, I did not sign on to their payment plan. I’m from Canada and when I got to the part about paying American taxes, I did not think the effort to fill out those forms was going to pay off in Medium royalties.