That’s it for Medium for Me

The first version of this article was published on Medium at:

I was never going to get rich on the Medium platform. I probably write entirely the wrong thing and spend way too much time on graphics (see image below).

I get it. My humour is niche, my memoir is reliably miserable and my think pieces are way too ‘thinkie’.

That’s not a word, but it is customary to allow the person who wishes to quit to rant incoherently for a bit, before summoning security and showing them the door.

So, while I fill a cardboard box with one dying pot plant, one monitor gonk one photo of my scowling teenagers and non-plussed wife from the figurative desk I can no longer bear to sit behind, let me explain what led me to this moment.

In short, it was a direct comparison between my views, reads and earnings on Medium and Vocal for the first five months of the year. They are pretty representative of my experience on the two platforms I have been on for five years.

By the way, in five years of being on the Medium platform, I have never subjected my readers to a Medium Moan and definitely never mentioned earnings or stats. That’s a popular gambit to encourage views, claps (the Medium appreciation indicator) and comments. The Medium version of this post is a me-too affair – I wondered whether it would get the longed-for traction that every single other story I have posted there has not. So far, the paint hasn’t quite dried, but it isn’t looking great.

I have stayed away from meta-Medium posts for two reasons:

1. There has been little in the way of earnings. I don’t offer courses, I don’t promise to make you rich through crypto or how to develop ingenious side-hustles. My father was rather a good salesman, and I am therefore able to smell bullshit from a country mile away. What’s more, I like to think that I have a well-developed moral position on it. It’s wrong to promise on a whim or a hope. In a sense, I have nothing to sell. My most successful side-hustle offering would be If you want to be miserable and poor, give me all your money and I might show you how.
2. Meta-Medium posts can be very boring. They are great if you are interested in the ‘economy’ part of Attention Economy, but if you are more interested in developing your writing rather than a new penny-click side-hustle, they won’t do much for the ‘attention’ part of Attention Economy.

The actual point of this piece

You probably understand by now that my views and reads on Medium are about as sexy as time spent in the Accident and Emergency Room. In May and the first week of June, I made zero $ on Medium. There were approximately 150 reads and not one ¢. To be clear, I would expect a tiny bit of loose change, even one single cent, from those admittedly low reads, but nada, nothing, zilch.

To get a better sense, I then compared all of 2025 so far. The first five months of this year on Medium netted me 75 cents. Oof! Reads on Vocal accounted for almost double that at $1.47. The real kicker, however, is the prize fund. I’ve earned/won $55 in Top Stories and runner-up prizes since the start of 2025. Vocal is the clear winner.

Now I’m a grown-up. No, really, I am. I don’t expect much over and above a bit of fair dealing. I write well and — on this platform, for example — I earn cash, gather a few bouquets and I place in competitions. It’s a long way from any kind of book deal, but it is fair and open. I like to think I was bringing something different to both Medium and Vocal, so it will be interesting to see if this intense navel-gaze of hard cheese and bad faith earns me more than usual on Coach Tony’s platform. Time will tell, but I’m outta there.

See you here on Vocal.