Thoughts From The Cloud 24/08

I still find Medium to be a relatively tricky platform to use, as a poet. There are some aspects that I admire, such as the avoidance of AI articles, but the payment pricing for short articles/poems still bugs me. I am not looking to purchase a vehicle with whatever earnings I receive, but I do expect that regular postings should at least equal the costs of the platform’s membership cost.

There are the usual suggestions — e.g. submit your work to a larger publication. While this works for most people, I have a preference not to, as I self-publish my work, and there are always caveats when it comes to publishing on others’ sites.

The other option is to perform an intensive process of quid pro quo to read others’ work and clap until my hands fall off. I simply refuse to perform my reading (which I perform with great pleasure) with such a motivation. I do a lot of this on WordPress, with a preference to comment, rather than ‘like’.

There is no doubt that Medium gatekeeps and funnels its algorithms for viewership towards its paid accounts. This is something that I accept, although I still do find it somewhat sad that I have supposedly 568 followers, when none of them have read anything in the past year or so. Do I feel disgruntled? No, but you might as well unfollow, if you are reading this, and are no longer interested.

I am unsure of what I am hoping to achieve with this post, really, apart to say that I still write and I still post, despite the oddity of my Medium limbo.