You are spot on with the Ponzi analogy. I remember having read similar comments. What surprises me, though, is that hardly anybody seems to see the two mathematical reasons behind it.
First, as with almost everything else on the internet, attention (to bloggers) follows a power law distribution, not a Gaussian normal distribution. That is, while in any given month there are very few bloggers who earn more than 5,000 $, the median seems to be around 0$. That is, half of all bloggers don’t make any money at all, and more than 95% make less than 100$.
Of course, we don’t know the exact numbers. Medium, being privately owned, does not disclose them. But when you ask Bing, Bard or ChatGPT, the estimates converge on the numbers that I mentioned above.
Second, the Medium business model clearly favors readers, not writers. As a subscribing reader/member, your 5-dollar monthly subscription buys you access to ALL the blogs and publications on the platform. That’s a lot better than having to pay a monthly subscription (of, say, 5 $) for any individual blog/publication that really interests you.
That’s an ingenious business model for medium.
For the writers, however, it is worse. They have to compete for that part of medium’s subscription income that medium is willing to distribute to its writers. With an estimated 1 million paying members vs. 200.000 to 400.000 bloggers, that doesn’t add up for 99% of the bloggers.
To get into the league of the tiny number who make some noteworthy income, you have to produce lots and lots of content on a daily basis. That is easier in a “drivel-discipline”, like writing about writing, then in a serious discipline, like medicine or science, where the research that goes into any of your posts takes 80% of the production time (at least that’s my experience).
So, if making money is one’s motivation to start writing on medium, it’s not worth the effort.
If getting your ideas and contributions out into the world is your motivation, then medium has something to offer. Here I need to mention @dr-mehmet-yildiz, the founder and chief editor of the Illumination family of publications.
First of all, the publications present very high-quality posts. But most importantly Dr. Yildiz is an extremely supportive and helpful editor, who goes the extra mile to support writers. And he is upfront with respect to earnings illusions.
None of those self-styled writing-about-writing gurus can hold a candle to that man.
On a personal note: When I joined medium about 6 months ago, I was initially also somewhat fascinated by those click-bait posts about earnings. But once I ran the numbers (see above) I decided to discard the Ponzi-schemed writing-about-writing category from my radar. Don’t pay any attention to those anymore. It’s a total waste of time.
