The Truth About Medium - Part four - A few stats

Medium tends not to release too many details of stats relating to the platform. The details provided here are based on finding numbers across the web. Many are probably out of date.

How many members does Medium have?

I read elsewhere that to find an up-to-date number of registered users on the platform, you should check the number of followers of the official Medium Staff account for news and updates.

As of writing, Medium has 108 million followers.

Does that mean 108 million active accounts? I would guess not. It probably includes inactive accounts, including those who were once members of the MPP.

The number of subscribers who pay to read content on Medium?

Figures that I found on the web:

• 2019: 400,000 paid subscribers

• 2021: 725,000 paid subscribers

• 2024: 1,000,000 paid subscribers

I asked GPT-4o for user stats.

Monthly Readers: Over 100 million.

Monthly Visitors: Approximately 45 million.

Monthly Payout to Writers: Over $2 million

I have read variations on that 100 million figure — up to 110 million. 

The numbers are important, because writers are paid from member reads. 

You have to be a member of the MPP to be paid.

The 100 million+ reads a month figure looks impressive, but writers do not get paid for non-member reads. And non-members only get three “free” articles/stories a month to read. It is also possible to provide a free read link with each story, but I’ve found that most writers don’t use this.

As a writer on Medium, it is the member reads that will pay you. 

Finding those readers is the difficult part.

The Truth About Medium - Part Three - Hopes and Dreams

So, I decided to try writing on Medium as a member of the MPP, just to see if things improved.

And they did — a little.

My first decision was to be accepted by a publication. There is a clear advantage to this, in that each publication has its own built-in audience — at least in theory.

When it comes to being accepted by a publication, there is a lot of choice. There are specialist and generalist publications in terms of what they will publish.

And with some, it is easier to be accepted than others. 

I tended to go for the publication(s) that had an “open door” policy. They generally accepted anyone who adhered to Medium’s rules. They would publish a story, unless it was really bad or poorly written.

All of my stories were accepted and published, and I began to get some views and reads.

The biggest surprise was that by the end of my first month, I qualified for a payment — $11.55. I had decided to only check at the end of the month, so I was happy with the result. 

I did not expect it at all.

Now, $11.55 is not a life-changing amount, but it was a start. One of the things that drew me to Medium was the possibility that over time you could build up a passive income. Old content qualified for payment for as long as you were a member. 

But, as time passed, reality set in.

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.

The Truth About Medium - Part One: What is Medium?

It is September 2025, and I have just completed one year of being a paid member on the writing platform, Medium.

Having completed that year, has Medium delivered what I thought it would?

Read on.

But first, what is Medium?

Medium presents itself as a unique online writing platform that has transformed the way individuals share their thoughts, stories, and expertise with a global audience. 

It was launched in 2012 with the aim to provide a space where writers could express themselves freely. A platform where readers could discover high-quality content across a wide range of topics. 

It was to be a community of writers, and readers.

The platform itself offers the writer simplicity and accessibility. The user interface is fairly straightforward to understand and minimalist in design. It is not complicated to use. It allows writers to focus on their writing without the distractions often found on other platforms. 

It also helps that you do not need to be a tech genius to write on the platform. No widgets to install, or updates to deal with.

Just get on with writing.

Five More Signs of an English Baby Boomer - Things Can Only Get Better

 

1)  A cost of living crisis would happen every few years. 

Money was tight, inflation was often high, and austerity was the norm for many. People were told, “You have never had it so good.” Depends on how you define ‘good’. If it’s a little better than bad, then I suppose it was good.

2)  You watched television showing a man landing on the moon. 

I do remember seeing someone walking on the moon. Years later, pop group The Police sang about walking on the moon. And conspiracy theorists told us that the moon landing was recorded in a studio on earth. 

Next they will be saying that the Clangers aren’t real.

I’m Bored With One Line Sentences - In Defence of the Humble Paragraph.

 

Welcome to the modern age.

The age of the short attention span.

Was the last sentence too long?

Maybe so, but it was shorter than this one.

By a couple of words.

I recently read an article that had over one hundred one-line sentences in it.

Most were short sentences, but it had the occasional long one, like the last sentence above and this one.

I got a brain freeze halfway through.

I couldn’t cope with it.

By line twenty, I had lost track of what the article was about.

Where was it going?

Did it have any meaning?

And what’s wrong with using a paragraph occasionally? I might start now. The humble paragraph has been used throughout history; why shouldn’t it be used? What did it ever do wrong to offend people?

Actually, I’m having some fun. I don’t mind the occasional one-line sentence in my writing.

It can make a point.

Or not.

Short and to the point.

Five Signs of an English Baby Boomer - Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

 

1) We would often have sugar sandwiches for tea, usually because we had run out of jam — or money to buy jam. White bread, margarine, and sugar. 

It kept the dentist in business.

2) You had an aunt who would cut your hair. 

My aunt Carol cut my hair. 

“What style? Who do you want to look like?” She would ask. ‘David Bowie or David Essex?’ was my reply. They seemed to do well attracting girls; perhaps it would work for me? It didn’t. Well, I don’t think it did.

My First Television. The Big Box in the Corner

The big box in the corner.

That’s what our first televsion was called.

It's the early 1960s, and I have a memory of a rather big box that stood in the corner of our rented home.

It had a very small screen.

In fact, the screen was so small that at times a pair of binoculars would have been useful. The room was small, but it seemed to be so far away.

But there was an answer to that - we just moved the sofa and chairs closer to the television.

It was mostly a box, but it had to be.

One day the television stopped working. When that happened, the main way of getting it to work again seemed to be to hit the top of the box. Dad tried that, but it did nothing to solve the issue. The picture remained blank.

He then called in the local repairman, who in due course arrived with his handyman bag of tools.

His first job was to take the back off the big box with a screwdriver. It only took a few minutes for him to decide that one of the valves needed to be replaced. While he was doing that, I had a quick look at what was in the back. Considering the actual screen was so small, I was surprised to see all the valves, transistors and a massive tube.

It surprised me that putting all that stuff together only produced such a small picture.

Looking into the back did show me one thing, though. I had been told by my granddad that all the people who appeared on television actually lived in the back of the television set. Of course, being very young and not knowing anything about how that was possible, I just accepted his expertise on the matter. It never occurred to me that while the box may have been big, it wasn’t that big. They must have been very small people.

The handyman, having changed the valve, then turned the television on. There then followed a wait of several minutes for the set to “warm up” and a picture to appear.

It was like magic.