META MEDIUM

A Quadrillion Reasons Why Earnings Go Down

Or around that many reasons

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Omigod! Earnings are down! I’ve been shadow-banned! Or did Medium change the algorithm? Maybe everybody hates me! I know, I posted too often. Or was it not often enough? Was it because I blocked people who annoyed me? Am I posting at the wrong time of day?

Relax. If I’ve learned one thing in the time I’ve been writing on the internet, it’s that earnings charts can look like a steep climb up or a steep slide down. They can also look like a roller coaster.

And yes, sometimes it means the ride is over. I have written at sites where the money was really, really good, and then it faded away until the doors closed forever. But plenty of times I have heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth and yet it wasn’t the end at all.

Some of the quadrillion reasons include:

Somebody else’s earnings are up

The giant pile of money that Medium shovels into the hungry mouths of members is, in fact, finite. Another way to look at it is as a zero-sum game: if you win, someone else loses.

So if Jack has a big fat viral Boosted story that showers golden coins upon him for several weeks, Mary may be wondering why she earned seventeen…