I Had My Partnership with Medium Revoked For No Clear Reason. Here's What I Learned.

DISCLAIMER

Before I say anything this is my experience with Medium. If you want to give them a try, by all means go for it. Their partner program is a great opportunity for new writers.

What did I learn from Medium?

I started this article when I was still really upset so I wanted to say nothing, but now that some time has passed I'll save you from having to read my rant about the injustice of paying money to become a part of a program and then having the opportunity torn away from you just three weeks later. Rejection is a big part of the writing world, so I will calmly explain my plight and move on with my life on Vocal. Hopefully I'm able to find my place here.

I’m more confused than anything else when it comes to being revoked from Medium's program. I, who has been labeled a “Goody Miss Two Shoes” my entire life was labeled a plagiarizer by Medium staff. More specifically, my emailed response from tech support said I had artificial engagement, which they define as asking someone to read an article and engage with it and you do the same for one of that reader’s articles. Ironically I did do this after my membership was revoked and I knew there was no hope of getting it back. I just wanted to see what it was like. The most hilarious thing about that experience was that I got one engagement total and the user actually taught me how to better format my articles, which is far from artificial engagement, but to be fair, I doubt the other user found anything enlightening about my history article.

Things I wish I had done differently

• Mistake #1- Rose Colored Glasses- I eagerly signed up for an annual plan. All websites heavily advertise their annual plan because they make more money that way. To get us to sign up they normally discount it to make it sound more appealing. In hindsight being charged $50 instead of $60 doesn’t sound like that big of a discount, but you can’t write on Medium without a membership. I assumed I would be writing during every moment of my free time like I did as a kid. Subsequently, I now have a year to read through as many 'Member Only' articles that I want, but I get nothing in return.

I have always had bad timing. It was inevitable when I found a website like Medium, which met my needs by allowing me to write anything I wanted that something would go wrong.

• Mistake #2- Bad Timing (part I)- I of course had to sign up at the beginning of the holiday season. I have no doubt that the staff at Medium are probably overwhelmed at the moment with an influx of help requests. I’m not the only person to lose their membership recently and moreover, more people are at home from work and school and may just be discovering their service and need help. To make matters worse there’s a time crunch to worry about. We are merely days away from Christmas and the start of Hanukkah. No one wants to be working when they could be celebrating or at least relaxing.

• Mistake #3- Bad Timing (part II)- If you currently have a Medium account and try to make a help request, you may stumble across a statement that says medium is currently investigating a problem with their clapping system. Clapping is the equivalent of liking an article over there. I wanted to roll my eyes when I saw this because how could they not see a flaw in revoking partnerships right now? Across all my articles over there I have less than twenty claps total. I still am proud of every engagement I have on Medium (even the one from the user that only read my article because I read theirs). Even though I was hurt by the Medium staff believing there was no way I had so many people engage with my writing within 3 weeks, I want to look at this positively. I know they probably only gave my articles no more than 5 minutes, even their emailed response sounded mostly copy/pasted, but I want to try to think that they believed there was no way that so many people care about this tiny writer.

What did I gain from this experience?

What I learned from my experience with Medium is to not go into something having my hopes too high because it’s inevitable that I may be disappointed in some way. There’s a ton of things I wish I could’ve had a chance to do with my Medium account that I will do here instead. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry with the Medium staff, but I do feel disappointment every time I Google something and a Medium article pops up in the search. That’s never happened to me with Vocal, but on the bright side it could still happen one day.

P.S. You may be wondering how much money I gained on Medium in the 3 weeks I was allowed into their partner program. It all came to a grand total of….8 cents.