Right now, I’m annoyed with Medium. See ‘Context’ at the end of this post. But in my older age, I’ve learned to harness annoyance and frustration and transform it into a positive.
Also: it’s a great way to lie to yourself to reframe a situation.
Original: No one is reading my stories on this plague of an algorithm-laden site despite having 1000-plus (mostly meaningless) followers.
Reframed: No one has discovered my amazing ability at combining humor with the personal essay. Once they discover me, I’ll swim in a pool of money like Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s uncle in the intro of DuckTales.
It may take a finger down the throat to induce word vomit first, but it’ll come. This positive I speak of, that I mustered out of a negative, is appreciation and gratitude for what I think of as The Lone Reader.
The Lone Reader is like The Lone Ranger if The Lone Ranger didn’t travel the American West of yesteryear, but traveled to the landing page of your personal blog on the Internet as an alternative. There’s also that whole battling outlaws thing. Well, The Lone Reader doesn’t battle outlaws. The Lone Reader reads. It’s what they do. Their mission.
Whether they wear a mask over their eyes while they read is personal preference. Do sunglasses count? How about transition lenses?
And it is this single, solitary reader we writers of the world wide web should celebrate more than we do. Not chasing after the masses in a potential viral post that brings in legions of new fans.
I’ve had the viral thing happen a few times in the past on my personal blog and the majority of your “new fans” don’t stick around for the long haul. They came for one post and they never return. And so it is with the web.
That’s not the type of reader you need to have top of mind. You need to think of the single reader. The person reading your words right now.
You, there. How’s your day?
Sorry about that. Breaking the Fourth Wall is a popular topic to write about lately because of Deadpool. I couldn’t resist.
One reader, singular and multiplied
Every reader is one individual reader. Two readers are two individual readers. A thousand readers isn’t one giant lump of readers like a plop of mashed potatoes on your plate.
Another scoop, please.
They are one individual reader multiplied one thousand times over.
So the next time you feel as if you’re dumping your words into the Internet landfill where stories go to die, known as THE VOID, think about the one individual reader who swung by and read the words you put out there for the world to see — even if it was only one person on this planet of 8-billion plus who read it.
If it helps, harken back to the first blog post you ever wrote, however long ago it was, and remember that first visitor who stopped by your site. Didn’t it make you wonder who that awesome human being was and think to yourself, “Who is that amazing person?”
Answer: your mom, probably.
Once you think of that amazing person on the other side of the screen aka The Lone Reader, you will turn into The Grateful Writer.
It’s a healthier way to think once you hit publish and share your words online. That’s what makes for a better Internet.
Hi Yo Silver, Away!
P.S. Whether it’s “Hi Yo Silver” or “Hi Ho Silver,” I’ll leave that to you for investigation on the web. I always thought it was “Hi Ho Silver,” but IMDB tells me it’s “Hi Yo Silver.” I’m far too young to know the truth as The Lone Ranger never aired on Nick at Nite when I was a kid.
My dad would probably know but he’s not exactly able to answer questions any more.
Context
The word vomit you are about to read following this paragraph is where this post originally began. What you finished a minute ago, above the subheading “For Context” about The Lone Reader, is where I landed after getting the below out of my system. Keep that in mind.
I think this means I have a growth mindset.
I need to ask my wife.
She’s a counselor.
Why am I annoyed with Medium at the moment? Boost or bust is kinda bulls—t and General Distribution is a joke. Is “kinda” even needed here?
Probably not.
It’s gotten to the point I feel like I did something wrong. The good (and bad) news is it’s not just me. I’ve read about a dozen writers expressing the same concern — from editors of respected publications at Medium to writers who have been boosted repeatedly in the past and now, like me, are getting their work and/or the stories they nominate rejected one after the next.
This morning I even found a publication that just started up that will showcase all the pieces that were nominated for a boost but rejected that left their respective editors and writers scratching their heads. I already hit the Follow button because I’m more interested in what’s being rejected for a boost on Medium than what is being accepted.
What is going on?
I started writing on Medium one year ago, in August 2023, and this month is, hands down, the most abysmal month I’ve had on the site in terms of views and reads. How bad is it? With the month ending in a few short days, I sit at 62 reads after having surpassed 1000 followers a couple of weeks ago.
Sixty-two.
Not for one story, but all my stories combined.
And what’s either downright pathetic or laughable, take your pick, is the bulk of the traffic I’ve received is because I sent it there by linking to one of my stories a few days ago — from this site.
I know there are folks in the blogging world wondering why I’m even on Medium in the first place. Isn’t that site infested with spam, bots, and AI? Isn’t it up to its eyeballs with a bunch of BS self-help gurus trying to get you to sign up for their email list?
That’s a lengthy essay for another day. The short version is:
- Find new writers I enjoy reading and support their work,
- Find new readers that’ll never stumble on my personal blog otherwise because the Internet and its search engine overlords, old guard and new breed marketing gurus, and SEO manipulators make it impossible to surface interesting blogs present day, and
- Make a little dough on stories that otherwise earn nothing on my personal blog.
As much as I’d love to survive on my writing from my personal site by way of my supporters link, I don’t have enough willing supporters presently and I’m not on Substack whose entire model is based on “pay for stories you like to read.”
I give readers the DONATE option on my personal site and most ignore it. Thank you to those who don’t ignore it. You make this site possible because it’s not free to run and the thousands of words I share each week take quite a bit of time to put down on paper.
Writing is an art form, like music, film, and well, art, and I believe artists should be able to earn money doing what they do. Writing is not simply a hobby of mine. It is how I make a living, and as well all know: nothing in this world is free.
I’m pro-pay writers for their writing while simultaneously being against hard paywalls without an available free version. Hence, why my personal site is completely free even though Medium is paywalled. Every story I post on Medium can be found on my site at no-charge. I use canonical links and have no qualms with this approach.
It’s cool though. The last thirty days, well, really: the last 90 days on Medium when it all started to begin its descent into the abyss for me, has given me more appreciation than ever for my personal blog and gratitude for the individual reader.
When I write on my personal site, I know my followers here will see it. Whether they choose to read it or not is up to them. Being a follower of mine on Medium, on the other hand, means zip.
You want readers on Medium.
Followers are a vanity metric.
There are writers with 50,000 followers on Medium who up and leave at the drop of a hat because their stories are no longer circulated to anyone all the while the platform celebrates the Tik Tok Takeover of the topics pages. Makes no sense.
Because will my Medium followers see my latest story? Let’s spin the algorithmic wheel and find out. It looks like you landed on “Not likely, Mr. Pillow.
Wanna try again?
Oh, the Magic 8-Ball says, ‘The Future Is Bleak.’” That’s the game you play when you write on a platform not owned by you. You are at the mercy of the Great Oz behind the curtains of their algorithm.
Good writing is subjective.
So is humor.
Memoir.
Whatever topic you write about.
The boost is especially subjective and, clearly, dependent on episodic mood swings and whether someone had their cup of coffee already in the morning.
And was their coffee too cold, too hot, or just right?
I subscribe to Medium. I read on Medium. Hell, I upgraded to the “Friend of Medium” membership level, which, in hindsight, feels like a mistake.
My gripes are me keeping it real. The boost is great when you get one. It’s helped me financially. But I’m more interested in people seeing, viewing, and reading my stories by way of a General Distribution system that doesn’t come off as broken.
If the “For You” tab is representative of what Medium thinks I, a reader and paid subscriber to the site, like and want to read, then they are missing the mark.
The writers I enjoy reading the most on the platform write to crickets and limited engagement because you aren’t surfacing the best of the best. Medium is, in its current state, circulating formulaic stories with titles straight out of a Headline Analyzer tool.
There’s only so much trauma and drama a human being wants to read. There are only so many humor pieces that come off as McSweeney’s rip-offs I can take.
As a writer, I’m reminded of being flailed around in a riptide off the beaches of Nags Head, North Carolina, when I was a kid. Just when you think you can swim back to shore, there it is!
There’s mom and dad!
The riptide jerks you back under water and slams you on the ocean floor a little more and now you’re exhausted and feel like giving up.
My frustration is this: Medium can do better.
If Substack decides in a coming quarter to unveil a combined membership level, where subscribers can pay to support multiple sites at once (think: 3 sites for $5/month or 10 sites for $15/month), it’ll be too late.
Medium likes to think of their site as complementary to other platforms and they aren’t wrong about that — right now.
But do you think Substack feels the same way?
I’m not even on the site (yet) but I don’t think they launched their Notes feature because they thought of it as complimentary to Twitter. No, they knew it could serve as a direct competitor — and their writers love it.
End note: Remember this last bit originally came first and the first bit last. Growth mindset man.
I grew.
I grew.
P.S.S. Thank you lone reader(s).
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