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Fascinating Parallels Between Bubblews and Medium
Plus signs of a small recovery in earnings
If you want another perspective about what is happening on Medium, the article below on Hubpages is eye opening and startling. It chronicles the fall of a similar platform, Bubblews, which opened in 2012 and died in 2015.
The parallels between what is happening on Medium now and what happened to Bubblews in 2015, are interesting and highly relatableā¦
- Payments were severely delayed
- No one knew what was going on
- Then one day, they announced the closure of the site
I am not saying Medium is dying. I very much hope itās transitioning to become a better platform, with less Medium meta, better circulation of the best writing, more reads on our high-quality stories, and fewer bots.
But we donāt really know whatās going on, and Iām backing up my stories just in case. I hope Medium survives the long haul. I will be very sad if it were to disappear completely, even if they dropped the partner program incentive and reverted to being an unpaid blogging platform.
Iām still of the belief that the current situation will be resolved, but what āNew Mediumā will look like on the other side of this debacle is unknown.
Today, there are early signs of a small recovery in earnings. Most of my stories published after 6 January have received less than half a cent per read, with one high quality story earning zero for 6 member reads.
Yesterdayās story āWhat Tony Told Editors About Medium Earningsā earned almost two cents per read on average, accruing a massive $1.44 for 80 reads. Thatās impressive compared to the recent zeros on my stats.
This also compares favourably to $0.92 for 288 reads I received on 13th January, and 2 cents for 25 reads on 12 January. Hopefully things are improving. I would sometimes get 1 cent for some member reads before the fallout, so 2 cents on average is more aligned to normality. And at least itās going in the right direction.
Hereās the Bubblews story by Mel Carriereā¦