Medium Makes Up
My short-lived saga of deportation and exile is over. After getting the Media boot I am back in from the cold and once again warmed at the fires of the Partner Program. All told I was down for six days, and back up and running by the seventh day. Not too shabby although I would question the point of it.
Now that my barring from membership in the Partner Program has been unlocked I can be active again. Honestly, any victory I might feel has nothing to do with any benefits that the program carries and everything to do with just being in the club.
I had stopped posting articles, in spite of a backlog I had hoped to upload. I didn’t post them not because they wouldn’t make any real money — because that is my experience, they don’t — but because they couldn’t make any money. As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s more about endorphins than simoleons.
This brief ejection only underscored the true lack of real compensation. In a previous essay, I pointed out that the algorithms at Medium operate in a quasi-crepuscular state of vague revelation. Okay, I didn’t say it like that, but that’s what I meant. The algorithms go through mysterious calculations and out pops compensation for the writer’s work. All well and good. I’m okay with that.
I’m even okay with the balancing act by the good folks at Medium to maximize their profits while remaining attractive enough to keep a stable of writers busily maintaining fresh content. Funny thing is, there are so many writers and so much undiscovered talent, that the internet will always provide a fresh lineup for our hosts at Medium. As writers, we can devalue each other through our sheer numbers.
Please don’t get me wrong. I enjoy writing for Medium. There are no parameters…
