The Truth About Medium - Part Two - I Decided to Join

When I first joined Medium, I was not a paid-up member. I decided to give the platform a try, and the free membership allowed me to do that.

I thought it would be a good idea to see what kind of response I got. How much of an audience would there be? It would give me a chance to see what it was like and then use the option to join the paid programme later.

At first, I decided to write one or two longer-format stories each week. After all, everything I had read indicated that it was long-format, personal stories that do well on the platform.

As advertised, the platform was easy to use. 

The only criticism I would make is that there is not a grammar or spell check option, but other blogging sites don’t have that either. I just had to use other available options.

I wrote my first story, posted it and waited.

In fact, I didn’t have to wait long before I got a response.

On Medium, there is an option to clap for stories if you like them. There is also a comments option. My first story got some claps and even a comment — on the first day! 

I even got a couple of followers.

But as is often the case, all was not what it seemed.

A few days later, I had more claps and a few more comments and followers.

I decided to check my stats.

They didn’t make sense. I had views, claps and comments, but no recorded reads. 

Against reads, the stats gave a big, fat zero.

How could that be? People viewed, clapped and commented; surely they read the story?

According to Medium, a read is recorded when a member “reads” a story for a minimum of thirty seconds.

How do they know if that has happened?

I’m not a tech expert in these matters, but I assume that some kind of cookie records the time. Who knows? As I was about to find out, I don’t think anyone other than the tech bods at Medium really knows how things work on the platform.

Throughout my experience on the platform, I’ve sensed a degree of mystery about how it all works. 

All I know is that I had views, claps and comments, but no reads.

I later found out that this was not unusual on the platform.

There are members who don’t read but clap and leave comments, perhaps because they are hoping that you will read their writing.

It seems that not everyone who comments actually reads. Or maybe they are speed readers!

Then there are bots. Some comments are often bot-like. Comments like, “Great story. Please read mine.” Or a one-word reply. Short catch-all-type comments are a bot speciality.

The truth is, I got very few reads. It was like posting into a wilderness.

But, apparently, it was different for members. They had other options. And some people were making decent money on Medium.

I thought about it. Perhaps the only way of really finding out was to join the MPP — the Medium Payment Programme.

As the saying goes, you will never know if you don’t try it.

So I did.

More to come…