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The Brutal Reality of Medium. What’s Changing and How I’m Responding

What no one tells you about writing here

Derek Hughes
New Writers Welcome
4 min readJan 19, 2025

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Photo by David Gomes:

I’d put it off for months.

My Medium income was strong. So I cut my hours at work. I was confident I could keep this going. 8 months earning $1000.

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It was time to bet on myself & go part-time.

I opened my Medium profile, expecting the usual stats, but what I saw hit me like a punch in the gut. My earnings had plummeted — a 30% drop in just one month. That’s not just a dip; that’s a cataclysmic event. If a company had seen numbers like that, the CEO would’ve been out the door. I felt sick.

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In the past 24 months, I’ve written 450 articles. I’ve been featured in respected publications like Writing Cooperative and Better Marketing. I know the ropes, I understand how the platform works. That’s why, when everything came crashing down, I felt the panic. Suddenly, I didn’t feel in control anymore.

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Derek Hughes
Derek Hughes

Written by Derek Hughes

I'm an old bloke with zero writing experience. In 18 months, I built a $35k writing business. Get my free 5-step system: https://www.derekhughes.biz/

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